Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

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International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

The European Community (EC) is the most successful example of institutionalized international policy co-ordination in the modem world, yet there is little agreement about the proper explanation for its evolution. From the signing of the Treaty of Rome to the making of Maastricht, the EC has developed through a series of celebrated intergovernmental bargains, each of which set the agenda for an intervening period of consolidation. The most fundamental task facing a theoretical account of European integration is to explain these bargains. Today many would revive neo-functionalism’s emphasis on sui generis characteristics of EC institutions, in particular the importance of unintended consequences of previous decisions and the capacity of supranational officials to provide leadership. This article joins the debate by reasserting the self-critique, advanced almost two decades ago by Emst Haas and other leading neo-functionalists, who

Preferences and Power in the European Community: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Approach

The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.

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The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders

The newest liberal institutionalism asserts that, although it accepts a major realist proposition that international anarchy impedes cooperation among states, it can nevertheless affirm the central tenets of the liberal institutionalist tradition that states can achieve cooperation and that international institutions can help them work together. However, this essay's principal argument is that neoliberal institutionalism misconstrues the realist analysis of international anarchy and therefore it misunderstands realism's analysis of the inhibiting effects of anarchy on the willingness of states to cooperate. This essay highlights the profound divergences between realism and the newest liberal institutionalism. It also argues that the former is likely to be proven analytically superior to the latter.

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Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism

Social constructivism in international relations has come into its own during the past decade, not only as a metatheoretical critique of currently dominant neo-utilitarian approaches (neo-realism and neoliberal institutionalism) but increasingly in the form of detailed empirical findings and theoretical insights. Constructivism addresses many of the same issues addressed by neo-utilitarianism, though from a different vantage and, therefore, with different effect. It also concerns itself with issues that neo-utilitarianism treats by assumption, discounts, ignores, or simply cannot apprehend within its characteristic ontology and/or epistemology. The constructivist project has sought to open up the relatively narrow theoretical confines of conventional approaches—by pushing them back to problematize the interests and identities of actors; deeper to incorporate the intersubjective bases of social action and social order; and into the dimensions of space and time to establish international structure as contingent practice, constraining social action but also being (re)created and, therefore, potentially transformed by it.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2601360.pdf

What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge

Of blind men, elephants and international integration*

International regimes are attitudinal phenomena. They are thus subjective and exist primarily as participants' understandings, expectations or convictions about legitimate, appropriate or moral behavior. Regimes are identified and their tenets described by studying records of participants' perceptions gleaned either from interview transcripts or from appropriate documents. Theorizing concerning international regimes currently focuses upon identifying analytic characteristics that might become bases for comparative empirical studies and foundations for generalization. Particularly promising are comparisons of international regimes with regard to specificity, formality, modes of change, and distributive bias. The regime that buttressed late 19th century European colonialism is compared to the international food regime of the present day with respect to these analytic features. Observations on the two cases suggest reasons why some international regimes are durable and others fragile, why some invite wide compliance and others provoke deviation, and why some change while the international structure of power remains constant but others change only after the weak become strong.

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International regimes: lessons from inductive analysis

In an operational sense, European integration amounts to the transnational harmonization and standardization of diverse national laws, practices, and norms. Insight into the integrative process in Western Europe, therefore, can be gleaned by looking into problems encountered during attempts at transnational harmonization. Case studies of national attempts to implement EEC directives in the fields of regional aid, pharmaceutical marketing, investment control, and fiscal harmonization point up important interplays between regional harmonization and domestic politics. Evidence concerning the politics of regional implementation shows that the ability of an EEC country to contribute to European integration depends fundamentally upon its government's ability to act politically in its domestic arena.

Domestic Politics and Regional Harmonization in the European Communities

The relevance of transaction analysis to the study of regional integration has been the subject of controversy. In dialectical fashion though, this controversy has produced improved understanding. Early exponents, who tended at times to overestimate the efficacy of the transaction approach, have accepted its limitations, and, by the same token, some early critics of transaction analysis have accepted its usefulness. Overall, we have come to recognize that regional integration is a multidimensional phenomenon, much more complex than initially imagined. Transaction approaches are appropriate and useful for investigating some aspects of regional integration; they are less useful for investigating others.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0020818300017513

International Transactions and Regional Integration

The global food problem is delineated and a set of concepts for analyzing the world food system is provided and used to critically examine the food system. The global food problem consists of an interrelated set of elements which affect countries differently. These elements are 1) the food shortage threat; 2) instability in the food supply stemming from price fluctuations unpredictable markets and an undependable trade flow; 3) an unpredictable supply of food for importation; 4) low agricultural production in developing countries; and 5) malnutrition. The global food system consists of production centers consumption centers and distribution channels. Conditions that characterize the system are the result of regimes i.e. the rules and norms which control the system at any particular point in time. A regime can be identified by 1) observing transaction flows the allocation of resources and food diplomacy patterns; 2) by examining the agendas of food issue forums; and 3) by listening to the arguments used to bolster or criticize specific food policies. The global food system created by the current regime which has been in existence since the 1940s is a system which divides the countries of the world into surplus and deficit countries and has 2 distributional channels. These channels are 1) commercial sellers and buyers and 2) concessionally linked donors and recipients. The regime which created this system was imposed primarily by the US government. The regime is characterized by 1) a belief in the free market system 2) a willing to provide famine relief but a refusal to address the chronic malnutrition problem 3) the conditional acceptance of the distribution of food in the form of food aid outside the market system; 4) the promotion of the flow of technological information; 5) respect for national sovereignty which has the effect of preventing aid from reaching the poorest segments of the population of developing countries; 6) assignment of a low priority to the development of self-reliance in developing countries; and 7) a willingness to accumulate a grain surplus for distribution to countries with shortfalls. The activities of multinational agribusiness tend to reinforce and support this regime. The international food network consisting largely of UN agencies can modify the food regime by 1) encouraging governments to confront critical food issues 2) collecting and disseminating information about the food problem 3) providing services which governments are unable to perform because of political considerations; and 4) legitimize policies via multilateral sanction. The system supported by the present regime promotes the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy and ignores the need for distributive justice. There are some indications that a new regime is in the process of being developed as evidenced by the new international economic order.

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Donald J. Puchala

Papers

Of blind men, elephants and international integration*

International regimes: lessons from inductive analysis

Domestic Politics and Regional Harmonization in the European Communities

International Transactions and Regional Integration

Perspectives on the international relations of food