Redressing Past Human Rights Violations: Global Dimensions of Contemporary Social Movements

Abstract

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to understand the impact of newly emerging global norms on contemporary social movements and applies the framework to an empirical case of social movement for former comfort women. In the past several decades, new normative expectations around progressive issues such as human rights and environmentalism have congealed into fairly coherent global norms and influential international instruments. The progressive ideas have diffused and changed political dynamics across the globe, engendering many new social movements that pressure governments and corporations to change their practice. Scholars in international relations and social movement research have taken notice and produced many studies that examine the impact of the new global norms and institutions on contemporary social movements. This paper builds on this burgeoning literature and seeks a theoretical synthesis of the existing studies on global dimensions of contemporary social movements, incorporating ideas in the world polity research. The theoretical framework will then be applied to a case study on social