The study of international relations today requires some consolidation of the growing debates on normative inquiries. The expansion in normative writing since the 1980s has included both new substantive justice claims and new approaches for studying them. Three main developments at the end of the last century accelerated such reassessment of IR norms. First, globalization brought with it a heightened sense of our material and ideational interdependence, that we coexist in a single world and effective and sustainable solutions to shared problems cannot be achieved without regard for justice. Second, the end of the Cold war led to a renewed interest in the promotion of a just world order on account of the strengthened perception that certain sets of values concerning the well-being of mankind were now more widely shared. Third, constructivists have challenged the neoutilitarian mainstream of IR-the synthesis of neo-realism/liberalism- and attempted to rectify biases caused by its strict rationalist assumptions by placing the ideational aspects in the center of IR theory.
International society has long embraced a view that, to borrow the words of R. Aron, focused on “the minimum conditions for coexistence of states”. The pursuit of morality or justice was seen as a challenge to the maintenance of international order. However, there are now some signs that this perception has given way to a concern with individual justice, to support for humanitarian intervention, human security, protection of the global environment, sustainable use of natural resources, and demands for distributional justice from rich to poor states. But existing responses to, or implementation of the new normative claims also suggest that traditional ideas of international order, depending on such norms as non-interference, are still very attractive to the majority of states. Furthermore, the apparent revitalization of liberal norms mentioned above cannot easily be differentiated from the policies of hegemonic America. Thus, while we acknowledge the importance of investigating the process of constructing new norms and coordinating conflicts among norms, we still require a more consolidated framework for dealing with the relationship between the norms of inter-state order and global justice claims.
The eight articles appearing in this issue all represent insightful responses to the theoretical challenge briefly suggested above.

抄録全体を表示

Since it first appeared, Louis Hartz's The Liberal Tradition in America (1955) has had a major impact on the interpretation of American political thought and America's understanding of itself. His aim was to study the logical consequences of naturalized liberalism in the United States and show that ‘ideological consensus’ rather than ‘absence of ideology’ is what defines the uniqueness of America. This essay attempts to apply the concept of ‘natural liberalism’ in understanding the ‘normative character’ of U. S. foreign policy.
Hartz has argued that since the United States lacks a feudal past, liberalism is perceived as a natural phenomenon. However, precisely because liberalism is seen in this light, it could sometimes become fixed and dogmatic. The belief that the ultimate moral question of the regime is settled comes from this dogmatic reception of liberalism. Hartz argues that as a result of ethics being taken for granted, all problems emerge as ‘problems of technique.’ He further argues that when the U. S. is simply solving problems on the basis of a submerged and absolute liberal faith, it can depart from liberalism with a kind of ‘inventive freedom’ which others cannot duplicate. This tendency, when applied to international relations, tends to bring about an attitude of mechanically applying its own cultural pattern to the rest of the world. The result is double-edged; the U. S. can become a norm builder as well as a norm destroyer.
Hartz argues that interactions with the rest of the world will mitigate the dogmatic nature of naturalized liberalism and will force the United States to realize the relative nature of American exceptionalism. However, contrary to Hartz's expectations, the resulting tendency of the United States' contact with the outside world has been to further reinforce American exceptionalism and strengthen the sense of missionary liberalism.
This essay will explore the foreign policy implications of natural liberalism and how these reinforce American exceptionalism. It will show that the United States will act as a norm builder when it can comfortably project its self-image to international relations. This was the tendency immediately after World War II when the United States successfully created the normbased post-war world order. However, the recent tendency has been to act unilaterally, in some cases even neglecting the international norms that the United States itself has played a major role in establishing. This attitude, sometimes referred to as ‘deinstitutionalization of the Wilsonian project, ’ has widened the gap between the United States and the rest of the world. Two domestic trends, namely the increasing religiosity and the conservative turn in U. S. politics has accelerated the widening of the gap. The U. S.' image of itself as a norm builder and the fact that the world no longer sees it so will continue to pose difficult questions for the U. S. and the world.

抄録全体を表示

This paper examines the relevance of an English School approach by focusing on the process of debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) by the G8 and international financial institutions (IFIs) in the late 1990s. Some of the world's poorest countries, with the support of non-governmental organizations, demanded debt forgiveness from the developed countries and the IFIs before the Millennium, and the comprehensive debt relief package was adopted in the G8 Cologne summit.
In the process of the HIPC debt relief, it was evident that there was no central authority to deal with the debt issue in the anarchical states system, unlike domestic society. However, the lack of central authority did not bring chaotic consequences for creditors themselves, or for the relationship between the creditors and debtors. Therefore, one can point out the existence of a widely accepted norm about inter-state borrowing. ‘Borrowed money should be repaid’ is one of the oldest, consistent, and fundamental norms and rules in any society, and international society is not an exception. Like individuals and firms in domestic society, a state has a legal and moral obligation to repay. Apart from the persistence of norms and rules which have been observed by sovereign states, existing international institutions also played a central part in the process of debt relief. The Paris Club, G7/8 summits, and International Financial Institutions such as the IMF and World Bank represent such institutions, although each of them is different from others in terms of organizational structures. At the same time, the elements of world society were amply present. Trans-national NGOs like Jubilee 2000 played an important role, representing the normative force beyond national borders.
The English School shares similarity with constructivism in many respects, such as its tendency to regard international norms as important. However, they take different approaches to the study of international relations in some points. For instance, the constructivists emphasize (and often exaggerate) the aspect of change in international politics, and the essence of their approach is to prove how progressive norms have changed the perceptions of policymakers and subsequently led to the transformation of domestic policy. By contrast, for English School theorists, progressive norms are not the only type of norms, as a norm means shared values and interests among states and they do not necessarily lead human society toward the good.
The English School has been highly criticized for the lack of empirical study and neglect of economic issues, but this study concludes that the case study of the HIPC debt process can be well understood by employing methodological pluralism and trilogy of the English School perspective. I argue that the process of international debt relief has shown that three elements of International Relations theory, that is, realism (states system), pluralism (international institutions and multilateral diplomacy), and global society (universal norms and ethics) were all present in the process, and they were interacting each other.

抄録全体を表示

Since the end of the World War II, there have been enormous amounts of international norms vis-à-vis economic development assistance. However, there have been few studies as to how international norms affect states' behavior. Thus, understanding the effect of the international norms on the foreign aid policy is crucial for the advancement of international development cooperation.
Many Constructivists claim that states comply with international norms because they consider them “appropriate.” However, in reality, there are multiple (and often competing) international norms and states choose to comply only with particular international norms. Constructivists presuppose the existence of a unique international norm and hence do not explain how and why states choose certain particular international norms among the many available. Therefore, examining this selection process of international norms by political actors is essential in understanding the influence of international norms in general.
This article examines the legislation of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 by focusing on the political process as to how the most “appropriate” norms were chosen. In the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973, the Nixon administration finally enacted two international norms-the BHN norm and poverty alleviation norm to justify its own strategic foreign aid policy. Originally, these two international norms were the justification employed by USAID. At that time, the White House was undertaking foreign aid policy reforms and trying to abolish the bilateral technical assistance program and USAID. Facing the danger of extinction, USAID chose these two international norms as justification for emphasizing the significance of the bilateral technical assistance program and the role of USAID as its implementing institution. USAID succeeded in convincing the Nixon administration and as a result, these two international norms were enacted as an official goal of the U. S. foreign assistance. In fact, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 has been ineffective because of the small size of the funds allotted to development aid and because of their strategic use. However, in the Millennium Challenge Act of 2003, the same two international norms-the BHN norm and the poverty alleviation norm-were enacted again and substantive funds were appropriated.
This case suggests that if political actors consider the international norms good tools of pursuing their own self-interest, the international norms can enable the legislation of the foreign assistance act and provide a prototype for more future legislation that may be more effective.

抄録全体を表示

In international relations theory after the end of the Cold War, much attention was paid to the internal conflicts and international responses thereto. This has partly been because the United Nations (UN) Security Council has become a forum for East-West cooperation, rather than one of confrontation as during the Cold War period. As a result, the role the UN has been playing was also changed.
This article focuses on the normative implication of the international territorial administration (ITA) by the UN, as one of the new dimensions of the UN's peacekeeping operations, conducted in the places like East Timor and Kosovo. Though ITA is conducted based upon the consent between the parties to the conflicts and the UN, this operation, even as one of tools of post-conflict peacebuilding, often faces criticism that such operation is a continuation of the “imperial past”. This criticism closely relates with how we observe and identify the nature of our world today.
During the past fifteen years, a political jargon using words and phrases such as “failed states”, “humanitarian intervention”, “human security”, ITA and so on. These words and phrases try to legitimize, or even dress up, the particular policy goals pursued by the particular group of States and international organizations. However, for the countries and societies on the recipient side, they tend to revolt against these ideas as interference to internal matters, even if the particular peacekeeping and peace-building mission has the procedural legitimacy.
In cases of ITA, despite of its procedural legitimacy, it is often regarded as a new means for dominant States to rule the society and its people and as a recurrence of “hierarchical” international order which is now legally prohibited by the norm of self-determination. This would also show that, by the expansion of the role which the UN would and could play in the field of the maintenance and restoration of international peace and security, there seems to imply new divisions among States and bring about the fundamental change of norms such as sovereignty, equality among States and non-interference. While the author points out that statements explaining the UN's role in peacekeeping and peace-making are often made, mainly by Western writers, to legitimise certain policies espoused by particular part of international community, he also asserts that what we need now is a normative approach to operations and policies that sees through the camouflaging jargon and we should take the view of the oppositions more seriously.

抄録全体を表示

More than a decade has passed since the concept of human security was coined by the UNDP's Human Development Report. This article attempts to illustrate how the emergent ‘norm’ of human security has been developed in discourse of various actors, and how it has been adopted in policies and practices of human security. Main questions are how human security was invented and elaborated as a new ‘norm’ by ‘norm entrepreneurs, ’ and what main characteristics of the human security ‘norm’ are and how such characteristics and prescription of the ‘norm’ appear in practice of global governance.
The first section of this article attempts to demonstrate human security as ‘norm-complex’ that consists of preexisting norms encompassing related issue-areas and other new norm elements. Human security is also a reconciliatory norm that amalgamates competing or contradicting norms under a common principle. Then it hypotheses detailed stages of norm creation: invention of an original norm, adaptation (remodeling) of presented norm by various interested and motivated actors, and then editing and publication of the norm by, for example, independent international commissions. Editor's role can be intrinsically important for selecting and combining relevant norms or in reconciling and amalgamating competing norms.
The human security ‘norm’ was invented by NGOs and UNDP who tried to advocate human-centered development at the beginning of the 1990s. It was actively introduced into Canadian and Japanese governments' policy slogans. In the process, Canadian government rewrote (remodeled) the ‘norm’ by targeting on an aspect of ‘freedom from fear’ in order to legitimize its recent international policies such as its advocacy against anti-personal landmines. Although the emergent norm of human security began to be accepted by many international organizations, NGOs, and governments, human security at the same time caused a serious concern that it challenges a constitutive norm of non-intervention or national security. Then the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the Commission on Human Security took the initiative to edit the ‘norm’ so that it can more easily be accepted by various actors.
The article then describes particular patterns of global governance that emerges from the property of human security norm-complex. The first pattern is a public policy network that connects various actors of NGOs, firms and governments. The second distinctive pattern is international territorial administration in post conflict situations, which is based on hierarchical governance. Lastly a concept of ‘complex global governance’ that combines different modes of governance will be explored as an indispensable element of human security governance. Complex global governance needs a mechanism of ‘meta-governance, ’ which should draw more attention in future research.

抄録全体を表示

In this paper I attempt to develop an open source approach to norm dynamics in world politics by criticizing a widely-accepted approach articulated by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink. Their “life cycle” approach is based on a set of assumptions. The first assumption is that norms are decomposable and should be analyzed on a one-by-one basis. Second, norm entrepreneurs develop and distribute a norm to its “users” in a one-way fashion. Third, norm change refers to the replacement of an existing norm by a new one. Fourth, social learning means that an actor is persuaded to accept a new norm. Fifth, norm internalization will lead to the taken-for-grantedness of a norm.
By contrast, I argue that a set of interrelated norms should be an important unit of analysis because a “norm-complex” can have a distinctive property: internal contradiction among its sub-norms. This unique character of a norm-complex presents an actor with a challenge: how to “comply” with conflicting directives. If a hierarchy among sub-norms cannot be established at the outset, then proponents of a new norm-complex will release it as a “beta” version which will likely be developed jointly by its proponents and “users.” Thus, norm dynamics is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. What is more, it involves not as much a social learning as a collaborative learning, or joint and continuous elaboration of a norm-complex.
We can usefully analyze this process by regarding a norm-complex as an open source software with the following attributes: its codes are open to the public; it is freely distributed; its users are allowed to modify any codes; and a revised software is freely redistributed. An open source software development occurs neither in the market nor in a hierarchical organization but in a voluntary “innovation community”: a network among “user-innovators” who are engaging in a process called “distributed innovation.”
Drawing upon this insight, I posit that a norm-complex can be productively developed within a global public policy network among various stakeholders. This hypothesis is illustrated by an inquiry into the distributed innovation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) norm within the United Nations Global Compact. This Compact is a multistakeholder learning network whose participants jointly explore best practices of CSR and turn them into de facto standards.

抄録全体を表示

We imagine that several accepted norms such as sovereignty, equity, justice, freedom, sustainability and so on are the basis of ocean governance, but we don't know how norms come about, interact and how they change and decay. The purpose of this paper is to examine the process of normative changes from “the freedom of the seas” to “the conservation and management of the international fishery resources.” For many years since the Grotius era “the freedom of the seas” had been accepted without doubt, but after WWII many countries became independent and claimed their sovereignty on resources and sought the transformation of existed institutions built by Western countries. One example was the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention introducing the new concept “the common heritage of mankind” for deep sea-bed mineral resources and the new zone, Exclusive Economic Zone within which the coastal state would enjoy extensive rights in relation to natural resources. This LOS convention made it clear that “the freedom of the seas” was decaying, but it never addressed specific management remedies for sharp declines or depletion of many fishery resources. In this situation the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development had significant impact as it took poor management of the ocean as one of the biggest problems of environment and the UN fish stocks agreement was adopted in 1995. In this agreement “sustainable use” of fishery resources inspired by “sustainable development” declared in the Rio Declaration became the mainstream and “the freedom of the sea” was not appropriate any more. The success of “sustainable use” depends on how to manage ocean resources, in this meaning, “conservation” and “management” are used. Now another stage of normative fluctuation is beginning. There seems to be a tendency that management of fishery resources is taken at other universal environmental forums whose goals do not necessarily assume the sustainable use, but protection or preservation of fishery resources.

抄録全体を表示

Norms have played an important role in international relations, but it has been difficult to obtain a positive analysis of these norms. To what degree, then, is constructivism effective in analyzing the formation, change, and usage of norms in international relations? In this article, we considered the analytical scope of constructivism as related to norms.
Firstly, we reconfirmed the characteristics of constructivism in this article. Secondly, we reconsidered the significance of constructivism. Here, by considering the questions about constructivism in Japan, we revealed constructivism's significance. In other words, constructivism does not replace conventional theory but is an effective theoretical approach. Also, this constructivism does not aim to be a universal rule, but in order to interpret the significance of the phenomenon, we set out to positively reveal the causation. Thirdly, constructivism, when analyzing international relations and norms, it is possible to reveal the dynamism of norms by associating with the shift in knowledge of each stakeholder.
Finally, in this article, we performed a preliminary case analysis. This analysis suggested that international trade norms and global environment norms are in conflict, and in the process of aligning these norms, environmental NGOs, as norm entrepreneurs, turned this conflict of norms into a political issue. Also, as places of debate are institutionalized for discussion among stakeholders, debates on norms have become more concreted and technical, making it easier to obtain results.

抄録全体を表示

My aim in this paper is to critically explore previous studies on “Marshall Mission” and to offer a new approach.
Most of previous studies can be reduced into two different views. The first school argues that the main purpose of the mission was to make a truce and form a united democratic government in China in an effort to minimize US intervention in Asia, particularly in China. The second school focuses on the northeast of China in which the United States had endeavored to support the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) efforts to regain territory and interprets the US policy as one of anti-communist “containment”. Each of the two schools emphasizes only one of the missions of Marshall, which in each case is considered unimportant by the opposing approach. Both of them fail to capture how the United States aimed at uniting the whole areas of China.
I will explore the US policy regarding China's unification. America's postwar Asian regional order was based upon the assumption of a “united China” whose territory and political regime had to be respectively restored and fixed. However, due to the lack of such a united China, the United States had to directly or indirectly intervene in the process of the unification. Thereupon, arguments over whether the formation of the “united democratic China” or a territorial restoration unilaterally by KMT should be given primacy appeared and continued to confuse US government policy at least from 1943 to 1947. The former was emphasized mainly by the State Department and the latter mainly by the War Department.
The Marshall Mission can be reexamined in this context. In this paper, by focusing on how the US government formulated the missions of Marshall from November to December of 1945, it is argued that the resulting missions were composed of the two directions mentioned above: the mission to the northeast of China reflects the policy advocated by the War Department; while that in “China proper” (except for the northern China) was decided according to the policy of the State Department; finally in the liberated areas of northern China we find a mixture of both policy approaches. Eventually, however, the Marshall Mission failed to achieve any of the missions and thereafter the United States gave up its policy aiming at the unification of China.

抄録全体を表示