Liberal Norms Research Articles

In search of the intrinsic value of one country two systems: from selective adaptation to normative consensus

PurposeThis article examines the effects and implications of the 2019 social movement in Hong Kong and those of the enactment of the National Security Law (NSL) for Hong Kong for one country two systems (OCTS). It further explores how these factors potentially promote or threaten the intrinsic value of OCTS a normative consensus. It also discusses the factors underpinning the rationale of OCTS as a normative consensus and whether this consensus is inviolable and sustainable.Design/methodology/approachThis article uses the concept of selective adaptation, especially the element of complementarity to explainthe legal behaviour of the Peopleʼs Republic of China (PRC) in relation to Hong Kong and to examine the effects and implications of the 2019 social movement in Hong Kong and those of the enactment of the NSL for Hong Kong for OCTS. It further explores how these factors potentially promote or threaten the intrinsic value of OCTS a normative consensus. It also discusses the factors underpinning the rationale of OCTS as a normative consensus and whether this consensus is inviolable and sustainable.FindingsIt is still possible and feasible for China and the West to work out a normative consensus to sustain and/or restore the core values of Hong Kong – the rule of law, freedom of expression, and political participation – while accommodating the PRC's political concerns about national sovereignty and security. This intrinsic value of OCTS in terms of seeking complementarity and coexistence between the Western liberal norms of governance and Chinese socialist ideology, should be acknowledged and that the OCTS policy should remain in full force to serve as a normative consensus between China and the West, and the feasibility of this proposed normative consensus rests on the PRC's self-interest.Originality/valueThis is one of the very few original research that applies the paradigm of selective adaptation to explain and understand the legal behaviour and phenomenon in relation to PRC's policy towards Hong Kong.

Constructive Role Ambiguity and How Russia Couldn’t ‘Get Away’ with Its 2022 Ukrainian Invasion

Since 2008, the Russian government conducted two invasions of sovereign territory in Eastern Europe prior to the current crisis in Ukraine. In 2008 Russian troops invaded Georgia, dramatically beginning a process of slowly dismantling the sovereignty of a self-identified European state. In 2014 Russia annexed Crimea and de facto established two pro-Russian independent oblasts inside Ukrainian territory. Throughout this process, and despite outrage, Western nations continued to interact favourably with Russia, allowing sanctions to lapse. However, the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed this standard interaction dramatically. But why was Russia unable to get away with this invasion? Using role theory, I shall show how the construction of the Russian ‘[co]compatriot defender’ role conception has been used to strategically mask contradictory foreign policy behaviour. By analysing UN Security Council speeches, I will show how the operationalisation of constructed role ambiguity was used to ‘shield’ this role from contradictions between Russia’s behaviour and western nations’ expectations. Constructed ambiguity was deployed with regards to passportisation and the liberal norms of R2P and humanitarian intervention, thus preventing role conflict between Russia and Western nations. However, since 2022 Western nations have ceased to buy into this role ambiguity.

Sustainable building arenas: Constructing a governance framework for a sustainability transition in Cambodia’s urban built environment

Transition governance approaches for the building sector have been discussed for more than a decade. Very little work has however moved beyond the socio-political contexts of the Global North to scrutinize the spatial-institutional challenges of sustainability transitions in the Global South, or more illiberal contexts. Consequently, this paper introduces a transition governance framework, a Sustainable Building Arena (SBA), that addresses the contextual particularities of the urban building regime and its de/stabilizing factors in the case of Cambodia to inform transformational change. The design of the SBA draws on the literature on urban transition management, transition management in the Global South, as well as transdisciplinary transition management arenas, and extends these concepts to Cambodia’s urban built environment. It furthermore builds upon the results of an extensive analysis of the socio-technical system and an evaluation of residential buildings in Phnom Penh, including indoor environmental conditions. The SBA is conceptualized as an informal institution and as a protected and co-creative space at the science-policy-business-civil society interface. It allows sustainability-minded but often marginalized actors to co-produce and pluralize knowledge - including the co-development of problem framings, visions and transition strategies – and facilitates cooperation, as well as the creation of alternative discourse coalitions and networks of social capital. Overall, the paper argues that such scientifically grounded and participatory processes, that are attentive to and designed for the particular spatial-institutional context, can indeed support the development of actionable knowledge, the empowerment of marginalized actors and support collective action for transformative change in the built environment sectors in contexts outside the Western liberal norm of transition studies.

Insurantial imaginaries: Some implications for home-owning democracies

‘Insurantial imaginaries’ describes the shared structures of comprehension and action that establishes the social value of insurance and its practical influence. As insurance is a bricolage of economic, legal, political, cultural and moral elements that vary across time and space, for insurance to be intelligible and functional, these imaginaries render this dynamic complexity into stable and discrete forms. In this paper, we explore one such imaginary constituted through the intersection of housing and insurance norms, vis a vis house and contents insurance, in home-owning democracies. Drawing on the cases of Australia and the United Kingdom, we observe how a rise in renting in these countries is resulting in an increase in underinsurance, with renters less likely to insure their assets. This is refashioning a long-standing insurantial imaginary shaped by socio-cultural aspirations for home-ownership, liberal norms of individual autonomy, and links between home-ownership and democracy, including participation in voting. In observing that this imaginary valorises home-ownership and insurance, and problematises renting and underinsurance, we draw attention to the covert power of insurance in co-constituting everyday practices and identify a novel spatialised insurantial imaginary. In grounding our analysis within home-owning democracies, we also make a broader contribution to economic and financial geography by extending understanding of the complex spatial nature of financial mechanisms and processes, and how market-based economies appear to be reconfiguring democracy.

Democratic Peace and Covert Military Force: An Experimental Test

How should we reconcile covert war with normative theories of the democratic peace? Proponents argue that these interventions are consistent with democratic peace theory, as leaders intervene covertly to escape backlash by a public that has internalized liberal norms. Yet we know little about public opinion regarding the covert use of force. Using a survey experiment, we find that respondents are more favorable towards covert interventions against democratic targets than our theories assume, and that even citizens who value transparency the most still wrestle with a trade-off between their normative commitments and the instrumental benefits they perceive covert actions to hold. Our results thus help to explain why American leaders have repeatedly chosen to conduct covert military operations against fellow democracies, and raise important questions about the scope conditions of normative theories of the democratic peace.

From the Varieties of Democracy to the defense of liberal democracy: V-Dem and the reconstitution of liberal hegemony under threat

ABSTRACT In recent years, democracy has been facing increasing challenges. How has comparative regime research responded? Focusing on the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, this paper argues that the perception of serious threats to democracy in general and liberal norms in particular has given rise to a convergence around the liberal conception of democracy, reversing a previous turn towards recognising its conceptual contestability. In tracing V-Dem’s discursive turn from the contestation to the decontestation of democracy, the paper reconstructs two mechanisms that concern the ways in which academic research relates to the outside world and that have jointly pushed V-Dem scholars towards embracing unequivocally liberal conceptions of regime type and regime change. As a response to the crisis of democracy, this gradual abandonment of a pluralist conceptualisation of democracy is understandable but also deeply problematic as it contributes to downplaying the inherent limitations of liberal democracy.

The China Effect: Democracy and Development in the 21st Century

The China Effect:Democracy and Development in the 21st Century Obert Hodzi (bio) The basic tenets of democracy are under threat worldwide as governance and human rights re-emerge as sources of ideological contention between China and the United States. Freedom House reported that between 2005 and 2020, "the number of Free countries in the world reached its lowest level…while the number of Not Free countries reached its highest level."1 African countries are prominent in this ideological contention due to their political and economic proximity to both powers. The majority of countries that Freedom House found to have regressed are in Africa and, in particular, sub-Saharan Africa, where since 2010 there have been fourteen successful military coups, most recently in Chad, Mali, Guinea, and Sudan. In all these countries, militaries re-emerged as political players in the countries' governance, shrinking the space for civil society and civilian politics. Africa is not alone, however; democracy faced major setbacks from ultra-nationalism, populist regimes, threats to minority rights, and attacks on the freedom of the press even in European Union countries such as Hungary and Poland. At the core of these challenges to democracy and political freedom is the shifting balance of power from the West to China, suggesting a showdown between authoritarianism and democracy. Undoubtedly, the emergence of nondemocratic powers such as China that contest the assumption "democracy leads to development" adds new complexities to democracy's global crisis. In short, China's extraordinary economic growth illustrated the efficacy of a strong developmental state without political pluralism. Accordingly, as China increases its influence abroad—particularly in Africa—concern is rising in the West that "the share of international power held by highly industrialized democracies is dwindling as the clout of China, India, and other newly industrialized economies increases."2 As such, an [End Page 51] understanding of what and how exactly China's rise impacts democracy and development is necessary. The "China effect" on democracy and development is complex, in part because China does not seem to actively promote its governance and development model abroad. This approach is different from the United States and the EU, which promote democracy and human rights as part of their foreign policy, including as conditions for foreign aid and bilateral development assistance. Instead, China professes a policy of noninterference and makes no demands for states to align themselves with its norms or governance model, except to acknowledge the "one China" policy. This noninterference policy seemingly offers less to understand how China is challenging the global democratic hegemony and restructuring international development. This essay highlights China's strategies to expand its influence and how they are playing out in Africa. It examines the linkages between the rise of China, internal contradictions in the West, and the resolve in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Rwanda to implement alternative development and governance models. China is at the intersection of these factors. Although the essay focuses on China, it cautions against an exaggerated focus on China and the overestimation of Beijing's capacity to mold the world into China's own image; instead, it urges an agency-focused perspective to emphasize the strategic localization of nondemocratic political norms and practices by political elites in the three African countries—Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Rwanda. These three states are examples of countries that strategically adopt a major power's policies and attractive example to extract benefits from that power. The essay concludes that China constitutes both a threat to democracy and sustainable economic development and at the same time an opportunity for refining redundant liberal norms and ideas. China's Influence Expansion Strategies Despite its extraordinary economic growth, China acknowledges that its military and economic power are insufficient to directly challenge the liberal international order, which underwrites the West's promotion of liberal democracy and the basic principles of international development. China also lacks the historical political connections to developing regions—and African countries in particular—possessed by the United States and European states such as France, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. However, China is pragmatic: it is using its economic capabilities [End Page 52] to create "parallel infrastructures of influence" to the Western-created global institutions, such as the grand...

Fall of Kabul: A Critical Analysis of The Failure of the American’s Liberal Norms

Fall of Kabul: A Critical Analysis of The Failure of the American’s Liberal Norms

Palestinian counter‐forensics and the cruel paradox of property

ABSTRACTIn disputes between Palestinian landowners and the Israeli state, several Palestinian surveyors in the West Bank use Ottoman‐era deeds to establish preinvasion land claims. Through a distinct practice of counter‐forensics, these surveyors transform landscapes, documents, and local knowledge into evidence of property ownership. They seek to establish the fact of Palestinian ownership before Israeli invasion and to build a legal and political narrative in which the settler state marks a deviation from scientific objectivity, liberal norms, and international political community. Counter‐forensics is part of a living archive of land defense in which property claims are both provisional and universal. As surveyors move through the cruel paradox of property, they engage in an anti‐colonial legal practice that seeks to hold the collective territory of the nation through a technical negotiation over individual plots of land. Their efforts reveal how property rights fail to protect Palestinian land, as well as why these rights remain important for those who defend the land. [property, law, land, surveying, counter‐forensics, settler colonialism, West Bank, Israel/Palestine]

Huawei, Cyber-Sovereignty and Liberal Norms: China's Challenge to the West/Democracies.

As China’s global footprint expands and Sino-American competition intensifies, it is apparent that one of the most important arenas for competition between Western Liberal norms and Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) authoritarian norms is going to come in competing technologies (Western/Korean/Taiwanese 5G/chips vs Huawei 5G/chips) and competing cyber-norms (Western cyber-libertarianism vs Chinese cyber-sovereignty). Inside China, China’s technologies and its cyber-sovereign norms converge.Outside of China, while China champions the norm of cyber-sovereignty, Huawei itself may pose the greatest challenge to sovereign states’ cyber-sovereignty where Huawei controls or otherwise participates significantly as a provider for telecommunications networks, given its relationship to the Chinese state. Is China sincere in advocating cyber-sovereignty as an international norm, or is this just something it is concerned about inside China?Are the laws of China and the technologies and practices of its own Huawei antithetical to China’s own stated norms of cyber-sovereignty? Is cyber-sovereignty simply a stop-gap measure adopted by an insecure regime to justify draconian censorship and thought control at home while it seeks to use its growing presence in 5G telecommunications to expand its surveillance of foreign powers/actors worldwide? Finally, in keeping with the theme of this special issue, does digital orientalism explain the growing tension between China and some of the Western/Liberal powers as it regards competition in 5G? Is the US/West needlessly securitizing Huawei and its 5G, or is there something there worth securitizing? Clarity about these issues and the implications of the answers arrived at are important for nations around the world as China expands its technological reach via Huawei and other national champions.

Soldiers' Dilemma: Foreign Military Training and Liberal Norm Conflict

Abstract The United States regularly seeks to promote the liberal norms of respect for human rights and deference to civilian authority in the militaries that it trains. Yet norm-abiding behavior often does not follow from liberal foreign military training. Existing explanations ascribe norm violations either to insufficient socialization or to interest misalignment between providers and recipients. One reason violations occur is because liberal training imparts conflicting norms. How do militaries respond when they confront the dilemma of conflict between the liberal norms of respect for human rights and civilian control of the military? The U.S. policy expectation is that trained militaries will prioritize human rights over obedience to civilian authorities. But when liberal norms clash, soldiers fall back on a third norm of cohesion, which refers to the bonds that enable military forces to operate in a unified, group- and missionoriented way. Cohesion functions as both a military norm (particularly at the individual level) and an interest (particularly at the institutional level). If a military prioritizes cohesion, then it will choose the path that best serves its organization, which may entail violating human rights, civilian control, or both. An exploration of the effects of norm conflict on military attitudes among the Armed Forces of Liberia uses an experiment embedded in a survey to probe the theory. Results provide preliminary evidence that norm conflict weakens support for human rights and democracy. Results are strongest among soldiers with more U.S. training.

Between the law and the actual situation: Failure as property formation in French colonial Indochina

This article complements and complicates Bhandar’s discussion of ‘racial regimes of ownership’ (2018) by examining the relational co-constitution of notions of racial and property formations in the ‘non-settler’ colonial context of Cambodia. Working through the record of intra-colonial correspondence relating to the control of non-white but also non-Khmer property interests in Cambodia, this article documents racialization’s powerful disruptive impact on liberal property formation. Colonial failure as property formation indexes, first, how the racialized categories of ethnic difference that underpinned the rationalities of French colonial rule simultaneously undermined French colonial programs to alienate land. Second, it positions the failure to reconcile a confusing array of property laws and logics as integral to maintaining paternalistic colonial (and post-colonial) authority to sort racialized populations via the privilege of property. Through the lens of French attempts to control property claims, we show how the French colonial property regime, supposedly based on universal liberal norms, was in fact also deeply racialized, requiring it to be managed in a highly localized manner, in accordance with each territory’s existing set of ethnic property relations—or the practical racial hierarchy of colonialism would unravel.

Представления молодежи о будущем России: провинциальное измерение

The article is devoted to the analysis of the image of political future of Russia, which is present in the mass consciousness of Russian youth and motivates its political participation. The materials for the analysis were obtained by means of a questionnaire. The main trends that are spread among respondents while constructing the image of the future of Russia indicate that the problem of the future, both their own and their country’s, is relevant for modern youth. The key tendency is characterized by the belief that the democratic process in modern Russia has not exhausted its development potential and democratic politics has a future. Respondents have very different ideas about what the future will be like. Nevertheless, the dominant belief is that it will be associated with the correction of those shortcomings of the current Russian democratic policy that arose in the post-Soviet period due to the discrepancy between the declared liberal norms of political communications of the state with its citizens and the current practices of managing economic and political processes in the country.

Erratum to ‘A liberal peace? The growth of liberal norms and the decline of interstate violence’

Erratum to ‘A liberal peace? The growth of liberal norms and the decline of interstate violence’

The Overflowed Liberal Norm: A Brazilian Contribution to the Anthropology of Law, by Luís Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira

The Overflowed Liberal Norm: A Brazilian Contribution to the Anthropology of Law, by Luís Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira

A norma liberal transbordada: uma contribuição brasileira à antropologia do direito por Luís Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira

A norma liberal transbordada: uma contribuição brasileira à antropologia do direito por Luís Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira

Криза концепції «ліберального миру»

“Liberal peace” is a standardized practice of peacebuilding interventions in conflict countries, in which the development of social institutions in these countries is carried out according to the Western model. A number of scholarly works on the critique of liberal allow us to consider it as a kind of neoliberal ideology, when peacebuilding efforts to overcome the dynamics and consequences of armed conflict turn into the imposition of liberal norms, such as (rule of law, market economy, democracy), and even seen as a form of interference in the sovereignty of these countries. The crisis of the concept of liberal will be considered in the context of state-building and sovereignty of post-conflict countries. The concept of liberal often interprets peacekeeping intervention in negotiations as international, externally aimed at liberal norms, but internally at illiberal compromises with the ruling classes that use violence, armed non-governmental groups, and even victims of conflict. The calculation of the concept of liberal peace was based on the fact that rapid reforms in post-conflict countries towards an independent judiciary, various forms of economy and inclusive forms of involvement in the political process can create more stable configurations of and further peaceful coexistence. The technology of peacebuilding under the liberal scheme has been complicated by time constraints, in particular in the short-term budgeting and focus of international organizations on the rapid outcome of peacekeeping activities. The focus of the liberal measures was on the post-conflict reconstruction of states and the restoration of their sovereignty. The nature of the UN peacekeeping operations themselves, which have become more complex and multilateral, has also changed. In turn, the transformation of peacekeeping missions required a change in the conceptual basis of international interventions in conflict resolution and resolution. Researchers began to formulate concepts where peacebuilding takes into account not so much a liberal-oriented project of state building in post-conflict areas, as taking into account the socio-cultural context, local and traditional norms in peacemaking.

Gender-Balanced Representation and the Erosion of Global Liberal Norms

ABSTRACT How will the rise of China and other illiberal regimes affect the behaviour-shaping power of global liberal norms? The paper uses updated dyadic data on ambassadorial appointments to address this question. It focuses on the fate of a global liberal norm on gender-balanced representation. It argues that when powerful international partners discount the importance of gender balance, governments become less likely to prioritise gender balance themselves. The pattern of nodding toward partners’ norms is particularly pronounced for governments of structurally dependent, poorer countries. We find that the gender-balanced representation norm has eroded in the last five years. In this period, countries like Sweden and Germany have increased their support for global liberal norms, but China has become an increasingly vocal opponent. We also find that countries’ international power positions—not their broad cultural value systems (e.g. ‘Asian values’)—affect partner countries’ approaches. We suggest that the pressure for states to prioritise women’s political representation will weaken further unless rising powers dramatically reorient their current behaviours.

A Liberal Peace?: The Growth of Liberal Norms and the Decline of Interstate Violence

How have understandings of fundamental norms of international society changed over time? How does this relate to the decline of interstate violence since 1945? Previous explanations have focused on regime type, domestic institutions, economic interdependence, relative power, and nuclear weapons, I argue that a crucial and underexplored part of the puzzle is the change in understanding of sovereignty over the same period. In this article, I propose a novel means of examining change in these norms between 1970 and 2014 by analyzing the content of UN Security Council resolutions. This analysis is then utilized in quantitative analysis of the level of violence dispute participants resorted to in all Militarized Interstate Disputes in the period. I find that as liberal understandings of fundamental norms have increased, that the average level of violence used has decreased. This points to a crucial missing component in the existing literature: that institutions can only constrain when political actors share the right norms.

FLAGGING DETERMINANTS FOR INDIAN OUTBOUND M&A

Indian enterprises have succeeded in climbing the ladder of outward M&A transactions and out performing everyone's expectations post 1990s. This paper aims to recalibrate the empirical literature of India's outbound M&A by considering the impact of host market size, appreciation in home currency, India's trade openness and liberalization policies. This study attempts to examine the impact of the host market size, home international reserves and trade openness along with home currency appreciation on the volume of the outbound M&A by Indian firms, using augmented autoregressive distributed lag (augmented ARDL) bounds testing approach. Findings reveal that appreciation of Indian rupee and liberal norms towards trade, i.e. import and export both will inevitably benefit or push the Indian firms to acquire foreign firms overseas, in the short term as well as over the long term. This paper makes an effort to identify and describe the significant factors influencing the outbound M&A deals by Indian firms in the recent years, which were previously proved relevant for group of emerging economies at large.Keywords: Outbound M&A; India, OFDI, DeterminantsJEL Classifications: F21, F23, P45, G34DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijefi.11715