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Journal ArticleDOI

Emerging powers and the responsibility to protect: non-linear norm dynamics in complex international society

Charles T. Hunt
- 14 Jul 2016 - 
- Vol. 29, Iss: 3, pp 870-890
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TLDR
In this paper, the authors identify a range of factors that drive participation (or generate hesitation) amongst emerging powers in the development and application of the RtoP and argue that norm evolution is a unique and emergent outcome of complex international society and therefore argues for using complexity thinking as a heuristic to augment current models and explanations.
Abstract
The perceived clash of norms associated with the emergence of rising powers is nowhere more pronounced than in relation to the responsibility to protect (RtoP). However, attempts to explain rising powers’ engagement with norms such as the RtoP are often limited and limiting in what they can tell us. Orthodox models portray predominantly linear and diffusionist logics of norm evolution that underplay the complex interaction implicit in unpredictable outcomes at the systemic level. This article identifies a range of factors that drive participation (or generate hesitation) amongst emerging powers in the development and application of the RtoP. It proceeds to illustrate how changes in normative behaviour emanate from top-down and bottom-up processes as well as the feedback between them. It argues that norm evolution is consequently a unique and emergent outcome of complex international society and therefore argues for using complexity thinking as a heuristic to augment current models and explanations...

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Implementing the Responsibility to Protect

TL;DR: This report provides a synthesis of the discussions at the conference and highlights key conclusions and recommendations that surfaced in the course of three days of substantive dialogue.
Book ChapterDOI

Rethinking the Study of Global Gender Equality Norms: Towards a Situated Approach

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the intersubjective nature of norms means that these are addressed, reproduced or changed in social interaction, and cannot be understood as existing outside such processes.

China and the international human rights regime

Sarah Teitt
TL;DR: The People's Republic of China (PRC) has been reluctant to embrace human rights as a justification for international interference in a state's domestic affairs as discussed by the authors, which is often associated with Beijing's desire to repel criticism of its own human rights record.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

TL;DR: The authors argue that norms evolve in a three-stage "life cycle" of emergence, cascades, and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics.
BookDOI

The power of human rights : international norms and domestic change

TL;DR: Risse and Sikkink as discussed by the authors discuss the socialization of international human rights norms into domestic practices and the long and winding road of international norms and domestic political change in South Africa.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the nature of order in world politics, and propose alternative paths to world order, including alternatives to the Contemporary States System and the Decline of the States System.
Book

Complexity: A Guided Tour

TL;DR: Richly illustrated and vividly written, Complexity: A Guided Tour offers a comprehensive and eminently comprehensible overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for the field's contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of the authors' time.
Journal ArticleDOI

How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism

TL;DR: In this paper, a dynamic explanation of norm diffusion in world politics is proposed, which describes how local agents reconstruct foreign norms to ensure the norms fit with the agents' cognitive priors and identities.
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