NORMS IN A MULTILATERAL WORLD
Abstract
Some endists like Francis Fukuyama said this (End of Cold War) was the end
of history, even the Americans opened up to China hoping the power of tradedriven liberalism would also push liberal ideas into communist China making
it come to the table of liberalism like the rest of the world was doing…they
were wrong
BRIGHT MHANGO (D2019008)
mutafire@live[.]com
Norms in a multilateral world
When the Cold War ended, a new liberal economic order rose to prominence on the back of
the American hegemonic might. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was formed and
capitalism flourished, globalization was in full swing. Sovereignty became eroded as trade
championed by trans-national bodies spread.
Some endists like Francis Fukuyama said this was the end of history, even the Americans
opened up to China hoping the power of liberalism driven trade would also push liberal ideas
into communist China making it come to the table of liberalism like the rest of the world was
doing.
Around the same time the liberal system also saw the spread of global norms, stipulations of
what is right or wrong. These included: gender equality, ending child labour and free trade
among other norms were pushed or spread onto the world. When Chlorofluorocarbons were
found to be contributing to climate change as greenhouse gases the were promptly banned
from refrigerants in 1995 and soon all refrigerators from 1996 forward started to be
manufactured free of CFCs.
The soft power of the West was unleashed on the world, when Iraq invaded Iraq, the
international system was made to believe that the US response was to protect the Kuwaiti
people, the same logic was deployed in the Yugoslavia conflict.
Terms like global governance came to the fore and started being thrown around. The French
Conseil d’analyse économique global governance being defined as:
‘… procedures of different status, ranging from simple consultation between governments to
the adoption of common legislation, and including the formulation of a consensus on goals to
be reached, mutual recognition, or the definition of good practice (soft law). It rests on
intergovernmental cooperation or on action taken by specialised multilateral institutions
endowed with appropriate instruments; in certain cases, also on the normalising behaviour of
private operators … It derives its legitimacy (or not) from delegation by states, from the
ratification of treaties by parliaments, and from taking into account the expressed viewpoints
of the different sectors of civil society1.’
Zürn simply qualifies it as a “transnational regime” those “norms and rules agreed upon and
applied by nonstate transnational actors, without the involvements of governments
(governance without government)”—e.g. the anti-doping rules of the International Olympic
Committee2.
1
Conseil d’analyse économique, Gouvernance mondiale. Rapport de synthèse (Paris: La Documentation
française, 2002), p. 3.
2
Zurn, M. (1998). Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaates. Globalisierung und Denationalisierung als Chance.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
1
What is Multilateralism?
"Multilateralism" describes a way of coordinating relations among three or more states
(Ruggie, 1993:11). It is a direct opposite of unilateralism which sees states going at it alone.
The Atlantic Council’s 2016 Global Risks 2035 report forecasts a world headed toward
multipolarity with limited multilateralism.3
Defining norms
Many have doubted that norms explain much of the behaviour of states in international
relations. Morgenthau (1960) considers it harmful to give norms any attention at all in the
discipline of International Relations, but he is a staunch realist and was writing during the
Cold War.
Janice Thomson (1993:81) contends that the most useful definition of an international norm
is "only that 'as a rule' states engage in such practices," a definition that encompasses all
observed patterns of behaviour. Axelrod (1986) similarly defines norms as standard
behaviours, although he adds the qualifier that actors are often punished when seen to be
violating the norm.
A better definition describes norms as "a set of intersubjective understandings readily
apparent to actors that makes behavioural claims on those actors" (Finnemore, 1994:2, fn. 2).
Norms can explicitly be detected when codified in law, treaties, or preambles of international
organizations. However, international norms also can be identified, firstly, by examining
states practice of compliance or violations. Other times, norms can be detected by examining
noncomplying states’ justifications of its noncompliance. Examples are plenty such as the
norm of sovereignty, the norm of just war, the norm against nuclear weapon, the norm against
slavery, the norm against apartheid, the norm against colonization, and the norm of human
rights. (Kim, 2015)
In neorealism, which focuses on security issues, norms reflect the distribution of power
among states and have an only limited influence as intervening variables between power
distribution and international outcomes.
In contrast, neoliberals, who have worked primarily on economic interactions and have a
relatively optimistic view of the likelihood of sustained international cooperation, tend to
accord those intervening variables a more enduring and significant influence than do the
neorealists.
Writing in the publication “The Concept of the Political and the Theory of International
Disputes” Morgenthau argues in that study that there simply cannot be common norms
3
The Atlantic Council (2016) Global Risks 2035: The search from a New Normal. Accessed
on
10/02/20
from
URL:
https://espas.secure.europarl.europa.eu/orbis/sites/default/files/generated/document/en/Global
_Risks_2035_web_0922.pdf
2
pursued by all or even a majority of states because they are in the end driven by a “will to
power” that forcibly divide them into “friends and enemies”4.
While rational choice sees norms as reflections of the fixed preferences of the most powerful
states, the constructivist approach believes that one of the roles norms play is to help
determine those preferences
However, liberals like Keohane argue that states form agreements to mitigate international
anarchy. This argument is supported by James Morrow’s study that found in terms of laws of
war, ratification by democracies correlates with greater compliance. Thus, democracies are
most likely to comply with international law compared with illiberal regimes.
Norms are obeyed not because they are enforced, but because they are seen as legitimate.
constructivists argue that states and their interests are socially constructed by “commonly
held philosophic principles, identities, norms of behaviour, or shared terms of discourse”. In
this view, norms establish standards of appropriate behaviour that are created socially, which
then guide states to expected levels of conduct. Constructivists like Wendt and Finnemore
believe that shared understandings are highly valued by states, such that states comply
because they respect norms greater than the actual treaties.
How Norms are Formulated and Spread/ inculcated
Rooted in regime theory: regime theorists say that there is cooperation despite anarchy.
Often, they cite cooperation in trade, human rights, and collective security, among other
issues. These instances of cooperation are regimes. The most commonly cited definition
comes from Stephen Krasner, who defines regimes as "institutions possessing norms,
decision rules, and procedures which facilitate a convergence of expectations".
Sandholtz and Stiles (2008) argue that international norms have been shaped by two main
currents: Sovereignty rules and liberal rules.
Subnational entities play a huge role in the creation of global norms. The UN, for example,
has also been widely listed as a source of global norms; the Millennium Development Goals
are an example of UN-driven norms.
Non-governmental organisations are for example credited as being very instrumental in
pushing for bans on land mines. They are thus another source of norms.
Karl Kaiser. In 1969 he highlighted the permeability of national frontiers to all kinds of crossborder flows, creating dense webs of interaction between civil societies. According to Kaiser,
this produces a “multinational politics” with two main characteristics: the possibility of a
penetration of society from outside; and the growing interdependence between national
political systems. Henceforth we may see global international norms which are bound to
influence the internal of states, including their constitutional makeup.
Despite more than two decades of consistent opposition to the international norm prohibiting
the juvenile death penalty, the United States internalized that norm by incorporating it into
4
Schmitt, C. (1976) The Concept of the Political. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
3
domestic constitutional law. Similarly, after fifteen years of persistent opposition to nuclear
non-proliferation norms, China gradually abandoned its opposition and incorporated
international norms into its domestic export control regulations.
While norms range from gender, anti-torture and standards in treatment of refugees or
prisoners, some new norms have recently come to the fore with the coming of technology.
Thus, new areas of cybersecurity, space, genetics, anti-terrorism approaches, artificial
intelligence and norms related to climate change.
A critical look at norms: United States Puzzle.
The US led the formation of multinational instruments to deal with global problems in the
40s and 50s. NATO, the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, the Breton Woods
System, the World Health Organization– “a whole array of organizations that collectively
created a kind of international safety net, safeguards, and problem-solving mechanisms in the
international system (Zakaria 2008).
All this seems to be distant as the US seems to be on a path to negating the very principled in
championed and sometimes forced others to adopt.
As the Atlantic Council puts it The United States (US) has become of one of the biggest
puzzles in predicting what the future holds:
‘The founder of the old order—cantered on liberal market values—has become blatantly selfinterested and nationalistic under President Donald Trump. At the same time, the United
States has become more divided, making it difficult to make any predictions about future
trends post-Trump.’
The flouting of international norms goes beyond Donald Trump, while the US calls for
liberty and respect for sovereignty, its actions do sometimes are contrary to not only the
values it champions but to established norms.
It has for example, not ratified the Ottawa Treaty which bans landmines, and it is not party to
the Rome Statute that would see them be part of the International Criminal Court. Under
Donald Trump the US has banned people based on their religion from entering the United
States, it has refused refugees and has done all it can to prevent even asylum seekers from
even reaching the United States.
Rising China, Assertive Russia unified Global South: implications on norms.
Scholars have found that the United States is trying to “wrap a web of international
obligations, relationships, and common understandings” around China5.
In terms -of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm, India, Brazil, Russia, and China have all
strongly condemned the “neo-colonial” nature of the claims made by R2P advocates. Both
5
Hun Joon Kim, The prospects of human rights in US–China relations: a constructivist understanding,
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Volume 20, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 91–118,
https://doi.org/10.1093/irap/lcy020
4
Brazil and India have made the point that domestic commitment to rights and democracy is
very different from accepting the authority of the global human rights regime to dictate
domestic priorities.
The United States faces an uphill battle, however, as authoritarians abroad question those
very principles, as detailed in the Global Risks 2035 Update: Decline or New Renaissance, a
report by Mathew Burrows, director of the Atlantic Council’s Foresight, Strategy, and Risks
Initiative in the Scowcroft Centre for Strategy and Security. Burrows warns that the
increasing power of authoritarian regimes—chief among them China—threatens to bring
back the great power competition that created so much destruction during the first part of the
20th century.
As former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pointed out, the Chinese government is
“filling the vacuum” left by a retreating United States, “and where they aren’t filling the
vacuum, the Russians are filling the vacuum.”
It is proposed that scholars and policymakers stop thinking of global order in terms of
polarity; instead, they should focus on functional, issue-based leadership across the
international system. Practically, this means the U.S. and other Western nations might
continue to be the agenda-setters on some issues; while China exercises leadership in other
issues.
China simultaneously seeks to respect, resist, and reform different aspects of existing
regimes. For example, despite its own problematic human rights record, China has
managed—by facilitating the creation of the Universal Periodic Review in 2005-2006—to
reorient the global human rights regime away from the singling out of specific abusers. In
another example, China’s investment and development assistance have selectively conformed
to international norms, and, at the same time, challenged the ways of traditional investors and
donors.
Even so, some questions remain zero sum, as the case of the Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank seems to demonstrate. China’s initiative was interpreted as a challenge to America’s
dominance of the international system. Reform of the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund, is also zero sum, and is seen as nearly impossible to
achieve. Consequently, since global reform has stalled, China is increasingly focusing on
creating new organisations and initiatives (e.g., financial credit agencies) through which it
can project its influence and pursue its interests.
China can proceed with less constraint when all that is required is inventing something new,
but with respect to issues such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and
global internet governance, China’s influence and its prospects for normative reform are
much more limited.
Some issue areas are more ambiguous. On anti-terrorism norms, China is seeking to redefine
them in a way which is congruent with its socio-political campaign against the so-called
“three evil forces” (terrorism, ethnic separatism, and religious extremism), but the lack of
clear global standards and America’s own un-exemplary record make the issue less than
black and white. China’s nascent refugee policy neither clashes nor coheres with “global
norms” because Western states have staked out a variety of positions, from welcoming
5
Canada, Germany, and Sweden to hostile America, Poland, and Hungary. China’s burgeoning
entry into the global credit rating marketplace also fits the mould.
Norms, principle, values, and rules that China is projecting have a long history and are
closely linked to domestic politics. (Kim, 2015)
In the fields of human rights, humanitarian assistance and refugee accommodation, China’s
general position and core principles have not changed significantly. However, the political
will to actively participate in international agencies’ effort in relief delivery and provision of
developmental aids has emerged from the top level of decision making in China. Moreover,
China’s participation in global health governance is a good example that China converge with
the U.S. in how to proceed with global governance mechanisms. After the New York
Declaration in 2016, the normative gap between the new principles endorsed by the U.N. and
China in the field of refugee issues is also narrowing. After year’s learning, China not only
has started development assistance, but also launched a wave of new projects that involve a
third party – usually a partner government of the OECD – and adopt commonly used
practices by international assistance agencies.
As China’s rise becomes palpable to states, international and intergovernmental
organizations, businesses, and individuals alike, the question of China’s complex relationship
with the global normative order will come increasingly to the fore, and deserves scholars and
policymakers’ continuing attention.
In the book China Goes Global which aims to study China’s global impact by examining the
changing dynamics of the Chinese global identity, Shambaugh examines five areas –
diplomacy, global governance, economy, culture, and security – and concludes that the
China’s global impact will be modest6.
Nathan, in his 2015 unpublished manuscript, studies the likelihood of China seeking to
overthrow global norms. Similar to Shambaugh, Nathan suggests that it is less likely because
China so far has been complying with international order and have joined many international
conventions.
This means that while China will question the established norms that it cherry-picks as being
counter to its core principles, it will largely accept and adopt a lot of the pre-established and
existing norms.
What the Future of Norms will Look Like
Not so many years ago, US policy makers talked about the need for China to be a
“responsible stakeholder” in what most still saw as a predominately Western world. Today,
the whole concept of the “West” is under threat and China is making its own waves. Instead
of China or Russia conforming to the West, it looks like the West may need to adapt to an
increasingly non-Western-driven world. (Burrows, 2017)
Nevertheless, its flagrant disregard for The Hague International Court of Justice’s 2016 ruling
against Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea was a key turning point. China is far
from adhering to former leader Deng Xiaoping’s “hiding one’s light under a bushel”
6
Shambaugh, David L. (2013). China goes global: the partial power. New York: Oxford University Press
6
philosophy with President Xi Jinping talking of China having to act as a great power.
(Burrows, 2017)
A paradox of the world economy, as Fareed Zakaria points out, is that “every problem has
been globalized, but political power remains resolutely national.” People have been talking
about globalization, but with the current financial crisis, “the leaders of the western world
seem to have forgotten it…You can't have a purely national response…to a problem of
financial capitalism, because the one thing that has been truly globalized is capital.” The only
solution is to have a common framework among nations, some set of common procedures.
This, he believes, is going to be the single largest broad challenge that the U.S. faces.
(Zakaria, 2008)
Robert Jervis, in his classic research on the role of perception and misperception in foreign
policy decision-making, finds that the most distinct characteristic of ideational factors such as
ideas, beliefs, and values are their tendency toward “consistency or balance” States tend to
believe that “countries we like do things we like, support goals we favour, and oppose
countries that we oppose”; similarly, countries tend to think their enemies make proposals
that would harm them, work against the interest of their friends, and aid their opponent.
If Jervis’ theory is anything to go by, it explains why the Global South seems to be ganging
up on the West, why China is not keen on fully adopting current norms and why the West
sees China as seeking to spread a twisted version of its own values.
In the end it will all go back to money, just like it started. The USA and the West came to set
the norms because they first got rich. If anyone can get rich enough or richer in the 21st
Century, they will have a shot at setting, challenging, upholding norms. China is currently
raking up impressive GDP numbers and to some it is already bigger that the United States in
economic terms. It will thus be China which will have the most effect on what norms look
like in the 21st Century.
Russia is a nuclear power and has also been trying to show assertiveness on the world stage,
it, however, has very little financial backing to bank its push on.
The rest of the global south is also becoming rich and will collectively be able to match the
rest of eth world, but when it comes to norms, they are likely going to band with either China
or the West. This is agreement with Jervis’ theory and also because there is already a
foundation where the education system in most of the South is Western. If China can rival the
West’s thought domination among Southern elites, then a chasm will appear.
In the end, it seems unlike what the likes of Fukuyama dreamt about the future will look more
like the world Samuel Huntington wrote about in The Clash of Civilizations.
7
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9
Globalisierung
und