How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism
TLDR
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.Abstract:
Questions about norm diffusion in world politics are not simply about whether and how ideas matter, but also which and whose ideas matter. Constructivist scholarship on norms tends to focus on “hard” cases of moral transformation in which “good” global norms prevail over the “bad” local beliefs and practices. But many local beliefs are themselves part of a legitimate normative order, which conditions the acceptance of foreign norms. Going beyond an existential notion of congruence, this article proposes a dynamic explanation of norm diffusion that describes how local agents reconstruct foreign norms to ensure the norms fit with the agents' cognitive priors and identities. Congruence building thus becomes key to acceptance. Localization, not wholesale acceptance or rejection, settles most cases of normative contestation. Comparing the impact of two transnational norms on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), this article shows that the variation in the norms' acceptance, indicated by the changes they produced in the goals and institutional apparatuses of the regional group, could be explained by the differential ability of local agents to reconstruct the norms to ensure a better fit with prior local norms, and the potential of the localized norm to enhance the appeal of some of their prior beliefs and institutions.I thank Peter Katzenstein, Jack Snyder, Chris Reus-Smit, Brian Job, Paul Evans, Iain Johnston, David Capie, Helen Nesadurai, Jeffrey Checkel, Kwa Chong Guan, Khong Yuen Foong, Anthony Milner, John Hobson, Etel Solingen, Michael Barnett, Richard Price, Martha Finnemore, and Frank Schimmelfennig for their comments on various earlier drafts of the article. This article is a revised version of a draft prepared for the American Political Science Association annual convention, San Francisco, 29 August–2 September 2001. Seminars on the article were offered at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, in April 2001; the Modern Asia Seminar Series at Harvard University's Asia Center, in May 2001; the Department of International Relations, Australian National University, in September 2001; and the Institute of International Relations, University of British Columbia, in April 2002. I thank these institutions for their lively seminars offering invaluable feedback. I gratefully acknowledge valuable research assistance provided by Tan Ban Seng, Deborah Lee, and Karyn Wang at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies. I am also grateful to Harvard University Asia Centre and the Kennedy School's Asia Pacific Policy Program for fellowships to facilitate my research during 2000–2001.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Spreading global models and enhancing banal localism: the case of local government cultural policy development
TL;DR: In this paper, a case analysis of the media coverage of an R&D project aimed at developing local government cultural activities in Finnish towns and cities is presented, showing that although the project contributed to standardizing localGovernment cultural activities and spreading the idea of cities as strategic actors, through the way in which the project was covered in the local media, it strengthened a local viewpoint on the whole process, drawing on and constituted residents identification with their local domicile and the idea that local government citizens are members of a team that has to do well in global competition.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Normative Challenge of Interaction: Justice Conflicts in Democracy Promotion
Annika Elena Poppe,Jonas Wolff +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue for an alternative perspective on "democracy promotion as interaction" and present a typology of justice conflicts that will, in future research, enable us to empirically analyze the normative challenges brought about by the interactive nature of democracy promotion.
Journal ArticleDOI
Herding cats: the role of persuasion in political change and continuity in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
TL;DR: Tan et al. as mentioned in this paper examined the role of peer pressure in efforts by member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in socializing a reluctant or recalcitrant member(s) toward a diplomatic posture or policy position.
Journal ArticleDOI
‘Living by Example?’ The European Union and the Implementation of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the case of the emerging responsibility to protect norm (R2P) and argue that the EU's implementation has been more limited and slower than one would expect from the NPE procedural ethics of "living by example".
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics
TL;DR: Keck and Sikkink as discussed by the authors examine a type of pressure group that has been largely ignored by political analysts: networks of activists for them influential not mean a developmental services ihss provider payments on.
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms
TL;DR: The term "New Institutionalism" is a term that now appears with growing frequency in political science as mentioned in this paper, and there is considerable confusion about just what the new institutionalism is, how it differs from other approaches, and what sort of promise or problems it displays.
MonographDOI
Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics
Margaret E. Keck,Kathryn Sikkink +1 more
TL;DR: Keck and Sikkink as mentioned in this paper examine a type of pressure group that has been largely ignored by political analysts: networks of activists for them influential not mean a developmental services ihss provider payments on.
Related Papers (5)
The power of human rights : international norms and domestic change
Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics
Margaret E. Keck,Kathryn Sikkink +1 more