The Politics of Norm Glocalisation: Limits in Applying r2p to Protecting Children

Abstract

Two-thirds of the global child population lives in countries affected by violent and high-intensity conflict. International humanitarian law provides broad protection for children in the event of armed conflict. However, as the 2017 report of the un Secretary-General on children and armed conflict stresses, the scale and severity of grave violations has increased. This paper addresses the central puzzle of why the existing legal and normative frameworks of child protection have achieved so little, in addressing the marginalisation and disempowerment of children in armed conflict. We argue that the contemporary application of r2p in protecting children will be limited unless at least two fundamental challenges are met: (a) taming power politics; and (b) squaring inherent contradictions between the global r2p norm and national and regional normative frameworks of child protection. We highlight the case of Japan to illustrate the limits of the contemporary application of r2p in protecting children.

Power, shared ideas and order transition: China, the United States, and the creation of the Bretton Woods order

“…Moreover, as Ruggie (1982: 413) acknowledged, his own account of the transition to the Bretton Woods order was overwhelmingly focussed on the ideas of superordinate states – those industrialised countries situated relatively high in the power ranking. Since then, constructivist and English School scholars have emphasised the subordinate state-side of order transitions, and their role in furnishing an order’s content, legitimacy and endurance (Acharya, 2004, 2009, 2011; Clark, 2011: 4; Goh, 2013; Prantl and Nakano, 2011, 2018; Reus-Smit, 2001). Contributing to that literature, this paper theorises how an order’s ideas are shared, and illustrates some of the idea-sharing mechanisms adopted by subordinate states.…”

“…Acharya’s (2011) ‘norm subsidiarity’ framework demonstrates how Third World states influenced the creation of regional orders by rejecting certain global norms, or by exporting locally-constructed norms. 4 However, while crucial in highlighting the agency of subordinate states, the norm diffusion literature suffers from a second limitation: it depicts ideas as being passed on in a linear, uni-directional fashion from global to local or local to global levels, thereby treating ideas as ‘finished products’ that emerge relatively fully formed at either the global or local levels (Krook and True, 2010: 107–108; Prantl and Nakano, 2011: 210, 2018: 105–106). 5 In so doing, it obscures the interactive dynamics at work as ideas move fluidly between blurred, rather than ‘mutually separate’, global and local levels (Lu, 2021: 8).…”

“…Alternatively, subordinate states may exercise ‘power over ideas’ by challenging, reinterpreting or exploiting ambiguities in, a superordinate state’s idea (Carstensen and Schmidt, 2016: 326; Prantl and Nakano, 2011, 2018). To do so, subordinate states may engage in acts of shaming and public criticism to bring superordinate states’ behaviour in line with a subordinate state’s understanding of a particular idea (Carstensen and Schmidt, 2016: 326; Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998; Risse et al, 1999).…”

“…Or, they may engage in knowledge appropriation or translation, whereby they appropriate the ideas of a superordinate state, translate them to fit their own subordinate state context, and then use those ideas to delegitimise the superordinate state’s behaviour or the extant order (Cheney, 2017; Kroll, 2013). Finally, the subordinate state may contest a superordinate state’s idea by qualifying its key properties, or containing its local application, and then feeding this re-interpreted idea back to the global level (Prantl and Nakano, 2011: 213–217; 2018: 107–109). Regardless of whether the superordinate state ultimately internalises the subordinate state’s idea, each of these mechanisms represents a form of idea sharing: the subordinate state’s reinterpreted idea may become embedded in new international practice, or the superordinate state may feel persuaded or compelled to adhere to the subordinate state’s understanding of the meaning of an idea because of the perceived political costs of public censure, or because of the desire to have its ideas, and thus authority, legitimised in the eyes of subordinate states (Clark, 2011: 4).…”

“…5 In so doing, it obscures the interactive dynamics at work as ideas move fluidly between blurred, rather than ‘mutually separate’, global and local levels (Lu, 2021: 8). As Jochen Prantl and Ryoko Nakano (2011: 210, 2018) and Xiaoyu (Lu, 2021: 6) have demonstrated, it is crucial to reveal these interactive dynamics to capture the continual ‘feedback loop’ or the ‘constant process of negotiation and appropriation’ as ideas are shared internationally between actors operating across local and global levels.…”