Changes In International Norms Research Articles

Uma nova Guerra Assimétrica na Segunda Década do Século XXI: a poluição ambiental

Who doesn't recall the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic, which collided with an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean while bound for New York on its first voyage after construction? Who doesn't also remember the tragedy of the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker that collided with submerged rock in Alaska in 1989, leaving a legacy of pollution in an area with limited resources for containment? What both tragedies have in common is that they unlocked opportunities to revise international regulations to prevent similar tragedies from happening or to mitigate potential damage. In the case of the Titanic, the Safety Of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention was studied and later approved, which among other aspects, obliged all vessels to have sufficient life-saving equipment for the entire crew. And, in the case of the Exxon Valdez, obliged all oil tankers to be built with double hulls. These disasters left important legacies for navigation safety, pollution prevention, and safeguarding human life at sea.Unfortunately, Brazil suffered pollution of its maritime coast in dimensions never previously recorded. Using freedom of navigation of the seas, the transgressor, while producing pollution intentionally or unintentionally, did not report the fact to the Coastal State and went unscathed. In this case, the extent of the disaster was huge. Many polluters however, knowing the difficulty of detecting leaks as well as the positioning of their vessel, pollute the seas without warning, with many not being detected. It is necessary to accompany (monitor and control) the navigation of a vessel in the oceans to prevent this crime from happening again, something which already occurs with air transport that is monitored and controlled all the time. This only can be achieved with changes in international norms that deal with freedom of navigation on the seas.

Everyday Lawmaking in International Human Rights Law: Insights from the Inclusion of Domestic Violence in the Prohibition of Torture

How is international human rights law (IHRL) made “everyday” outside of treaty negotiations? Leading socio-legal accounts emphasize transnational civil society activism as a driver of norm change but insufficiently consider power dynamics and the legal-institutional environment. This article sheds light on these dimensions of IHRL by reconstructing how domestic violence came to be included in the prohibition of torture in five international and regional human rights institutions. Through process tracing based on interviews and a vast amount of documentation, the study reveals everyday lawmaking in IHRL as a complex, incremental process in which a wide range of actors negotiate legal outcomes. The political implications of this process are ambiguous as it enables participation while creating hidden sites of power. In addition to challenging existing models of international norm change, this study offers an in-depth empirical exploration of a key development in the international prohibition of torture and demonstrates the benefits of process tracing as a socio-legal methodology.

Extraterritoriality in Japanese Competition Law: Reaching Foreign Entities in the Face of Changing Global Norms

The Japanese Antimonopoly Act (AMA, 1947) does not state how far its provisions reach internationally, and the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has been very cautious about applying the AMA to actions taken abroad. Instead, there is a special provision, Article 6, that prohibits enterprises from being parties to anticompetitive international agreements, and the JFTC applied this to Japanese companies for a few decades after the AMA was enacted. ... Changes in international norms prompted the JFTC to engage in a gradual shift from partial enforcement of the AMA to extraterritorial application to foreign entities. The Supreme Court’s Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) judgement (2017) is a milestone case, as the court finally pronounced that the AMA was applicable to foreign companies’ actions abroad if those actions affect the free competition regime in Japan. In the paper, the historical development of the JFTC’s decisional practice, focusing on Article 6, is examined first, and the paper considers what prompted it to change. The CRT case is then examined, and the remaining issues and future directions that Japan should take, particularly regarding the regulation of export cartels, are explored.

POLICY AND PRACTICE IN ODA DISBURSEMENTS: AN ANALYSIS OF CHANGES IN SOUTH KOREA'S OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE

AbstractSouth Korea is the only nation to become an important donor nation after being a recipient of Official Development Assistance (ODA) for several decades. In 2010, it became a member of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee, and while it has continued to use its experience as a former ODA recipient to inform its distribution practices, it also has evolved its ODA policies in response to changes in international norms and the imperatives associated with being a DAC-member nation. We know that, while policies may change, actual ODA disbursements—which nations are selected as recipients and receive ODA in what amounts—may lag or even remain unchanged. In this paper, we use the case of South Korea to determine how actual ODA disbursements change in response to policy changes. To accomplish this, we use a selection model to conduct a statistical analysis of South Korea's ODA disbursements using dyadic data from 1987 to 2016. Our results indicate that, while there has been continuity in terms of which nations receive South Korean ODA, there were also notable changes in its disbursements. Specifically, the ODA policy changes the South Korean government enacted did result in an altered profile of nations that were targeted by South Korea as ODA recipients.

Power and Profit at Sea: The Rise of the West in the Making of the International System

The making of the international system from c. 1500 reflected distinctively maritime dynamics, especially “gunboat diplomacy,” or the use of naval force for commercial gain. Comparisons between civilizations and across time show, first, that gunboat diplomacy was peculiarly European and, second, that it evolved through stages. For the majority of the modern era, violence was central to the commercial strategies of European state, private, and hybrid actors alike in the wider world. In contrast, large and small non-Western polities almost never sought to advance mercantile aims through naval coercion. European exceptionalism reflected a structural trade deficit, regional systemic dynamics favoring armed trade, and mercantilist beliefs. Changes in international norms later restricted the practice of gunboat diplomacy to states, as private navies became illegitimate. More generally, a maritime perspective suggests the need for a reappraisal of fundamental conceptual divisions and shows how the capital- and technology-intensive nature of naval war allowed relatively small European powers to be global players. It also explains how European expansion and the creation of the first global international system was built on dominance at sea centuries before Europeans’ general military superiority on land.

Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan by Kate McDonald

Reviewed by: Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan by Kate McDonald Jessamyn R. Abel (bio) Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan. By Kate McDonald. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2017. xviii, 254 pages. $34.95, paper. Since at least the publication in 1998 of Louise Young's path-breaking Japan's Total Empire, scholars have been exploring the many ways in which cultural activities and materials helped shape Japanese imperialism through their impact on the goals, desires, and expectations of the Japanese people. Kate McDonald's excellent Placing Empire takes this ongoing work along a new path, asking about the roles in empire building of mobility and representations of place, specifically through tourism promotion and travel writing. Through thoughtful analysis of a wealth of varied materials related to travel within the empire, she demonstrates that Japanese tourism to Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria (and, conversely, the tight restrictions on colonial [End Page 411] travel to the Japanese islands) contributed to what she labels the "spatial politics of empire," by which she means "the use of concepts of place to naturalize uneven structures of rule" (p. 7). McDonald traces the changing ways in which travel and the promotion of tourism by a variegated group of people she refers to collectively as "colonial boosters" helped to convince the Japanese public that colonial territories were and should be an integral part of the empire, while at the same time clarifying and maintaining a hierarchy among these disparate spaces, thus helping to remake ideas about the "inner territory," the colonies, and the empire as a whole. The preface of this book places it in the context of the study of imperialism, both in general and of Japan in particular, but its impact extends well beyond that field, contributing equally to scholarship on mobility and tourism. Taking the lead from scholars primarily in geography, sociology, and anthropology who have examined the meanings of movement for our understandings of space and place, historians have begun to consider the significance of space and mobility from our own disciplinary viewpoint. McDonald brings this field into conversation with the study of imperialism, highlighting the significance of mobility—and, importantly, the contrast between mobile and immobile populations—in the conceptualization, creation, and maintenance of empire and national identity. She also engages with work on tourism, showing the tremendous political significance of this leisure activity, as the collective experiences of Japanese tourists enjoying the sights in colonized territories helped legitimize and structure the empire. McDonald skillfully links together various levels of analysis, for instance, by showing how changes in international norms following the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 prompted new approaches to selling imperial tourism, which in turn impacted the spatial politics of Japanese empire. The book's overarching narrative about the spatial politics of empire demonstrates a shift from the early promotion of colonialism through a "geography of civilization" to the careful differentiation among diverse spaces and peoples within the empire through a "geography of cultural pluralism." In the two chapters that make up the first of the book's two sections, McDonald shows how advocates of empire used tourism to foster a sense of the colonies as part of Japan but lagging behind. They "placed" the colonies within Japan's history, economy, and nation by shaping the places travelers would visit and sights they would see through guidebooks and itineraries. For instance, situating important battle sites of the Russo-Japanese War as must-see tourist destinations for visitors from Japan engendered an affective connection to Korea and Manchuria, while highlighting the infrastructures of circulation and production displayed the close integration of the colonies in the empire. In contrast, the people of these spaces were consistently portrayed as uncivilized, stuck chronologically behind the Japanese nation. In these ways, colonial promoters mobilized tourism to doubly justify Japanese [End Page 412] imperialism: first, by convincing travelers that these territories were proper parts of Japan; and second, by suggesting the civilizing benefits of Japanese rule. The second section of the book, consisting of three chapters, shows how the spatial politics of Japanese imperialism was transformed by the two-pronged change that marked the empire and the...

The Humanitarian Turn at the United Nations: Using Machine Learning Algorithms to Understand Changes in International Norms

The Humanitarian Turn at the United Nations: Using Machine Learning Algorithms to Understand Changes in International Norms

Beyond diffusion: cyclical translation of international rule-of-law commission models in Guatemala

According to the prevailing diffusion approaches, norms and institutional models in the international realm emerge and are diffused through transnational advocacy networks. According to localisation research, they are adopted and changed by local actors, who adjust them to fit their interests and normative context. Neither approach takes into account the cyclical element of translation. Rather, they both present unidirectional models of diffusion. Focusing on Guatemala, this article shows how institutional models for international rule-of-law commissions in post-conflict states were translated in a cyclical process between different domestic and international contexts. It outlines two modes of cycles in this process: (1) norm application and (2) international norm change.

International norm polarization: sexuality as a subject of human rights protection

International norm polarization is a rare but recurring process within international norm dynamics. Polarization describes the most combative response to attempted norm change: ‘a candidate norm is accepted by some states but resisted by others, leading to a period of international disputation between two groups in which socializing pressures pull states toward compliance with rival norms’. We identify several cases of polarization and explain this phenomenon by elaborating the constructivist model of the norm life cycle to processes of international resistance to norm change as well as to norm acceptance. We also draw on social identity theory (SIT) to examine group-psychological responses where disputed norms become closely linked to state identity. We illustrate these dynamics with reference to conflict over the norm that recognizes sexual orientation and gender identity as subjects of international human rights protection. Over the past decade this candidate norm has become increasingly contentious internationally, and bitter debates over resolutions concerning extra-judicial killings and discrimination have divided the United Nations General Assembly and Human Rights Council. The article makes a primary contribution to analysis of international norm change and also contributes to an emerging literature concerning sexuality and international relations.

Is the Sum Greater than the Parts? The Terms of Civil War Peace Agreements and the Commitment Problem Revisited

The dominant theoretical approaches to civil war negotiations in the field of political science have sought to explain both the scarcity and high failure rates of negotiated agreements in civil conflicts. This historical pattern, however, has fundamentally changed in the last two decades as changes in international norms and laws, as well as the increased prevalence and competence of peacebuilding professionals, now require conflict actors to have a greater commitment toward negotiations and the enforcement of agreements. While actors in interstate wars seek to avoid accountability, civil war actors seem to embrace the opportunities that these new dynamics create to achieve broad‐based reforms across numerous areas of policy and government. The result, we suggest, is that stakeholders evaluate agreements based on their potential to accomplish an array of sociopolitical objectives. In addition, for strategic and practical reasons, they perceive that those agreements that include more reforms across multiple policy sectors will have the greatest potential.Our examination of nearly two hundred agreements found evidence that the peacemaking potential of a negotiated agreement between civil war adversaries is greatly enhanced when reforms are pursued across many different policy domains. Conversely, our analysis suggests that the greater the number of policy areas left untouched by a peace agreement, the more likely the stakeholders will be to follow that agreement with additional negotiations to enhance that agreement, or, alternatively, the more likely that violence will resume.

A Rising China and the Normative Changes in International Society

Normative changes in the Western-dominated international society have been taking place, symbolized by the evolution from the “standard of civilization” to the “new standard of civilization”. And the West has always been the developer of the new norms in international society, and changes in international norms reflect the link between power on one hand and norms, rules and institutions on the other. That is a fact or an invented reality which a rapidly rising China has to deal with, and its implications on China’s future relationship with the international society are sure to be great and far-reaching.

Three visions of the bomb: Australian thinking about nuclear weapons and strategy

This article argues that, over the decades, Australians have held three different, coherent, long-lived ‘visions’ of nuclear weapons and strategy. Those visions—which we have labelled Menzian, Gortonian and disarmer—compete on four grounds: the role that nuclear weapons play in international order; the doctrine of deterrence; the importance of arms control; and the relevance of nuclear weapons to Australia's specific needs. We believe this ‘textured’ framework provides a richer, more satisfying, and more accurate understanding of Australian nuclear identity, both past and present, than previous scholarship has yielded. Moreover, the competition between the three visions might not be at an end. Changes in international norms, in proliferation rates, in regional strategic dynamics, or even in the deterrence doctrines of the major powers could easily reawaken some old, enduring debates. Australian nuclear identity faces an uncertain future.

Sovereignty, Human Rights, and Responsibility: Changes in China’s Response to International Humanitarian Crises

The question of whether human rights are above sovereignty has dominated China’s human rights discourse. Relying on a sovereignty-human rights spectrum, this article reviews China’s behaviors, particularly its participation in the UN Security Council, in managing the three major international humanitarian crises in the post-Cold War era—Rwanda, Kosovo, and Darfur, and finds that there have been impressive changes in China’s response to the crises. Yet, a content analysis of China’s official discourse on human rights finds that China’s attitudes towards sovereignty and human rights have not changed much. Drawing on constructivist international relations theory, this article attempts to explain the paradox. It is argued that the international discourse on the “responsibility to protect” has brought about changes in international norms regarding violations of human rights and humanitarian law, and that, having undergone in recent years an identity change from a defensive power of bitterness and insecurity to a rising power aspiring to take more responsibility, China is more concerned about its national image and more receptive to international norms, which has led to the changes in its response to international humanitarian crises.

Roundtable Discussion of Jennifer Lind'SSorry States: Apologies in International Politics

How can Japan put its past behind? Scholars, journalists, and activists frequently argue that Japan cannot solve its “history problem” unless it follows West Germany's lead in offering contrition for World War II violence. Into this debate, Jennifer Lind'sSorry States: Apologies in International Politicsoffers an original and provocative contribution. Lind argues that while countries should acknowledge past atrocities, frequent public apologies can be domestically polarizing and diplomatically counterproductive.Sorry Statesoutlines a theory of remembrance and threat perception and tests it in a comparative study of Japanese-South Korean and Franco-German relations after World War II. Its methods, data, and findings will interest not only East Asianists, but also scholars of international reconciliation and security studies more broadly. This roundtable presents three critical essays in addition to a response by the author. They discuss the mechanisms through which historical memory influences perceptions of threat, the relative weight of ideational versus material factors in threat perception, and whether changes in international norms and economic interdependence may increasingly pressure countries to confront past violence.

Dynamics of International Norm Change: Rules against Wartime Plunder

International norms change over time, but we do not fully understand how and why they evolve as they do. In this article, I explore a general model of international norm change. The model builds on two foundations. First, normative systems themselves generate tensions that lead to change. Those tensions are of two major types: (1) conflicts between the generality of rules and the specificity of concrete experience; and (2) conflicts between separate bodies of rules. Second, specific disputes push these normative conflicts to the fore and provoke arguments about the meaning and application of rules. The outcomes of those arguments necessarily modify the rules. The process of normative change is thus a cycle, linking rules to actions to arguments, which in turn reshape the rules. In order to explore the empirical utility of the model, the article assesses the evolution of the rules of war with respect to the plundering of artistic and cultural treasures. Relying on both secondary and archival materials, the analysis focuses on two crucial turns through the cycle of normative change, the Napoleonic Wars and World War II. The empirical account shows that the cycle of normative change depicted in the abstract does correspond to real-world processes.

France and the problems of security and international disarmament after the first world war

This article argues that disarmament negotiations in Geneva played an important but hitherto little understood role in the evolution of French security policy after the First World War. While the majority of French policy-making elites remained unconvinced that collective security and arms reductions could ever form the basis of France's national security policy, they were forced to adapt to the changes in the international and domestic political contexts of the post-war era. Policy makers found it increasingly difficult to ignore the growing prominence of discourses of disarmament and mutual assistance both inside France and in international society. In order to adapt to changes in international norms, foreign policy evolved away from traditional strategies based on the balance of power and military alliances towards multilateral security pacts and an intensified focus on international law. This new approach, which was an amalgamation of traditional alliance politics and liberal internationalist principles, would remain at the centre of French diplomacy through to the mid 1930s.