Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Beyond the “Norm Entrepreneur” Model: Rwanda, Darfur, and Social Sanction among UN Diplomats

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13600821003626377

1469-798X

David Ambrosetti,

Economic Sanctions and International Relations

Abstract When investigating why state decision makers opt for intervention in the heart of armed violence abroad, many scholars refer to new humanitarian norms appearing among state officers, particularly within the UN. In these approaches, "norm entrepreneurs", and the high risks of public opprobrium they are supposed to induce, stand at the front stage of normative change. Compliance with newly promoted normative ideas seems totally bereft of professional risks, though. This paper intends to bring back in a dimension of norms that is central in sociology: social sanction. Investigating how social sanctions are practically enacted among diplomats at the United Nations precisely provides useful data to detect the many norms that prosper beyond—and before—normative enterprises, and to assess why the humanitarian idea and the recent "responsibility to protect" still have weak normative effects, practically speaking. The international failures in Rwanda and more recently in Darfur deserve re-examination in this prospect. Notes 1. Alex J. Bellamy, "Whither the Responsibility to Protect? Humanitarian Intervention and the 2005 World Summit", Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2006), pp. 143–169. 2. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity, 1992). 3. Piers Robinson, The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention (London and New York: Routledge, 2002); Andrew Hoskins and Ben O'Loughlin, Television and Terror: Conflicting Times and the Crisis of News Discourse (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 4. Jack Snyder, "Anarchy and Culture: Insights from the Anthropology of War", International Organization, Vol. 56, No. 1 (2002), pp. 7–45 (esp. pp. 7–9). 5. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 6. James March and Johan Olsen, "The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders", International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4 (1998), pp. 943–969. 7. Vaughn P. Shannon, "Norms are What States Make of Them: The Political Psychology of Norm Violation", International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 2 (2000), pp. 293–316. 8. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall (eds.), Turbulent Peace: The Challenge of Managing International Conflict (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001); idem, Taming Intractable Conflicts: Mediation in the Hardest Cases (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2004); Stephen J. Stedman, Donald Rothchild and Elizabeth M. Cousens (eds.), Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder: Lynne Rienner; International Peace Academy/Center for International Security and Cooperation, 2002). 9. Stephen J. Stedman, "Introduction", in Stedman, Rothchild and Cousens, op. cit., pp. 19–20. See a similar view in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall, Taming Intractable Conflicts, op. cit., pp. 26–28. 10. Martha Finnemore, "Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention", in Peter Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 153–185; Neta Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Thomas Risse, Stephen Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Thomas G. Weiss, Military-Civilian Interactions: Intervening in Humanitarian Crises (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); Nicholas Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 11. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, "International Norms Dynamics and Political Change", International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4 (1998), pp. 887–917 (p. 895). 12. Amitav Acharya, "How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism", International Organization, Vol. 58, No. 2 (2004), pp. 239–275 (esp. p. 242). 13. They are "groups that mobilize popular opinion and political support both within their host country and abroad […] stimulate and assist in the creation of like-minded organizations in other countries, and […] play a significant role in elevating their objective beyond its identification with the national interests of their government." Ethan Nadelmann, "Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society", International Organization, Vol. 44, No. 4 (1990), pp. 481–482. 14. Ibid. Nadelmann borrowed from Howard Becker the notion of "moral entrepreneurs", agents "who 'operate with an absolute ethics' in seeking to create new rules to do away with a perceived great evil". Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Free Press, 1963), p. 148, quoted in Nadelmann, op. cit., p. 482. 15. Finnemore and Sikkink, op. cit., p. 888. 16. David Halloran Lumsdaine, Moral Vision in International Politics: The Foreign Aid Regime, 1949–1989 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Peter Viggo Jakobsen, "The Transformation of United Nations Peace Operations in the 1990s: Adding Globalization to the Conventional 'End of the Cold War Explanation'", Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 37, No. 3 (2002), pp. 267–282. 17. Adam Branch, "Against Humanitarian Impunity: Rethinking Responsibility for Displacement and Disaster in Northern Uganda", Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2008), pp. 151–173; David Chandler, Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-building (Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2006); François Debrix, Re-envisioning Peacekeeping: The United Nations and the Mobilization of Ideology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Mark Duffield, "Getting Savages to Fight Barbarians: Development, Security and the Colonial Present", Conflict, Security and Development, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2005), pp. 141–159; Roland Paris, "International Peacebuilding and the 'Mission Civilisatrice'", Review of International Studies, Vol. 28, No. 4 (2002), pp. 637–656; Sherene Razack, Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). See a similar critic applied in another realm of international politics in Acharya, op. cit., pp. 242–244. 18. Bellamy, op. cit.; Sandra J. Maclean, David R. Black and Timothy M. Shaw (eds.), A Decade of Human Security: Global Governance and New Multilateralisms (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006); Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh and Anuradha M. Chenoy, Human Security: Concepts and Implications (London and New York: Routledge, 2007). 19. Hugo Slim, "Dithering over Darfur? A Preliminary Review of the International Response", International Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 5 (2004), pp. 811–828; Paul D. Williams and Alex J. Bellamy, "The Responsibility to Protect and the Crisis in Darfur", Security Dialogue, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2005), pp. 27–47. 20. Acharya, op. cit. 21. African Rights, Rakiya Omar et al., Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance (London: African Rights, 1994), pp. 94–95; Alison Des Forges, Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), pp. 123–129, 141–147; Andre? Guichaoua (ed.), Les Crises politiques au Burundi et au Rwanda, 1993–1994: Analyses, faits et documents (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Universite? des Sciences et Technologies de Lille/Karthala, 1995); Gilbert Khadiagala, "Implementing the Arusha Peace Agreement on Rwanda", in Stedman, Rothchild and Cousens, op. cit., pp. 87–106; Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002), pp. 342–345; Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 1959–1994: History of a Genocide (London: Hurst, 1995), pp. 168–169. 22. Ronald R. Krebs and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, "Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric", European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2007), pp. 35–66. 23. Michael N. Barnett, "UN Security Council, Indifference, and Genocide in Rwanda", Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 4 (1997), pp. 551–578. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., pp. 558–562. 26. Ibid., p. 571. 27. Ibid., pp. 562–570, quoting Michael Herzfeld. 28. Ibid., p. 569. Samantha Power reported the strategy adopted by the US mission to the United Nations, which consisted in ensuring the belligerent that any failure to respect the Arusha peace agreement would cause the United States to demand the withdrawal of the UN mission in Rwanda. And so they did. She also attested the moral justifications the US diplomats in charge brandished for their inaction during the genocide. Power, op. cit., pp. 347, 383–384. 29. Organization of African Unity, Ketumile Masire, Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, Report of the International Panel of Seven Eminent Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events (Addis Ababa, 7 July 2000), pp. 81–85 (from §12-32 to §12-51); Power, op. cit., notably pp. 341–342. 30. Jakobsen, op. cit., pp. 269, 271–274; Alastair I. Johnston, "Treating International Institutions as Social Environments', International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 4 (2001), p. 493; Shannon, op. cit., p. 297. 31. Brent Steele, "Making Words Matter: The Asian Tsunami, Darfur, and 'Reflexive Discourse' in International Politics", International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 4 (2007), pp. 901–925. 32. On 22 July 2004, the two chambers of the US Congress officially declared that genocide was occurring in Darfur. President G.W. Bush and Colin Powell endorsed this declaration in September 2004, notwithstanding the persistent controversy about the qualification of mass crimes committed in Darfur. 33. Alex de Waal, "The Humanitarian Carnival: A Celebrity Vogue", World Affairs, Vol. 171, No. 2 (2008), pp. 43–55; Rebecca Hamilton and Chad Hazlett, "'Not On Our Watch': The Emergence of the American Movement for Darfur", in Alex de Waal (ed.), War in Darfur and the Search for Peace (Cambridge, MA: Global Equity Initiative, Harvard University; London: Justice Africa, 2007), pp. 337–366. 34. Alex de Waal, "The Humanitarian Carnival", op. cit. 35. Eric Heinze, "The Rhetoric of Genocide in U.S. Foreign Policy: Rwanda and Darfur Compared", Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 122, No. 3 (2007), pp. 359–383. 36. Ibid., pp. 368–372. 37. Ibid., pp. 376–378. See also de Waal (ed.), War in Darfur, op. cit. Nonetheless, US support for UNSC Resolution 1593 in March 2005, which invited the International Criminal Court to investigate humanitarian crimes in the Darfur region less than three months after the Sudanese government concluded a historic peace agreement with the South Sudanese rebels to put an end to a 20-year war, can been interpreted as a result of this lobbying enterprise. More "realist" practitioners often talk of an attempt to prompt regime change in Sudan. 38. Power, op. cit., pp. 373–377, 383. 39. Ibid., pp. 358–364. United Nations, Ingvar Carlsson et al., Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda (New York: United Nations, S/1999/1257, 15 December 1999), pp. 40–41; Barnett, op. cit., p. 574. 40. Organization of African Unity, op. cit., p. 84, §12.48; Power, op. cit., pp. 373–374. 41. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Penguin, 1971), pp. 26–27; Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 48–54, 103–104; Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge: Polity, 1984), pp. 3–7; Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). A new "turn" in social science has blazed from this prospect—a "practice turn". Theodore R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina and Eike von Savigny, The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (New York: Routledge, 2001); Bernard Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005); Iver B. Neumann, "Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy", Millennium, Vol. 31, No. 3 (2002), pp. 627–651. In IR, it has been heralded essentially by Nicholas Onuf and Friedrich Kratochwil. 42. Nicholas G. Onuf, "Everyday Ethics in International Relations", Millennium, Vol. 27, No. 3 (1998), pp. 669–694. 43. Giddens, op. cit., p. 23. 44. Katzenstein (ed.), op. cit., p. 5, defines norms as "collective expectations for the proper behavior of actors within a given identity". 45. Finnemore and Sikkink, op. cit., p. 891. 46. Crawford, op. cit., p. 40. 47. Nicholas G. Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), p. 45. 48. Berger and Luckmann, op. cit., esp. pp. 77–87; John W. Meyer, John Boli and George M. Thomas, "Ontology and Rationalization in Western Cultural Account", in George Thomas, John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez and John Boli (eds.), Institutional Structure: Constituting State, Society, and the Individual (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987), p. 13. 49. Andrew Moravcsik, "Integrating International Theories and Domestic Theories of International Bargaining", in Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson and Robert D. Putnam (eds.), Double-edge Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 3–42. 50. See Giddens' discussion of "role strain" recalled by Bruce Cronin, "The Paradox of Hegemony: America's Ambiguous Relationship with the United Nations", European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2001), p. 111. Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 118–119. 51. This is the sociological analytical model I develop in my book: David Ambrosetti, Normes et rivalités diplomatiques à l'ONU. Le Conseil de sécurité en audience [Diplomatic Norms and Rivalries at the UN: The Security Council in Audience] (Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2009). 52. Bourdieu, op. cit., esp. p. 80. Bourdieu spoke of social capital, not social resources. 53. Barnett, op. cit., pp. 551–556. The specific universe of contemporary bureaucracy shaped a large part of this normative convergence. Barnett deepened this view in his following work: Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). 54. Barnett, op. cit., p. 558. 55. Acharya, op. cit.; Peter Jackson, "Pierre Bourdieu, the 'Cultural Turn' and the Practice of International History", Review of International Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2008), pp. 155–181; Laura Neack, "UN Peace-keeping: In the Interest of Community or Self ?", Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1995), pp. 181–196; Roland Paris, "Peacekeeping and the Constraints of Global Culture", European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 9, No. 3 (2003), pp. 441–473; Wanda Vrasti, "The Strange Case of Ethnography and International Relations", Millennium, Vol. 37, No. 2 (2008), pp. 279–301. 56. Iver B. Neumann, "'A Speech that the Entire Ministry May Stand For', or: Why Diplomats Never Produce Anything New", International Political Sociology, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2007), pp. 183–200 (esp. pp. 193–197). 57. Olivier Corten, Le Droit contre la guerre. L'interdiction du recours à la force en droit international contemporain (Paris: Pedone, 2008). 58. Barnett, op. cit., pp. 574–575. 59. Neumann, "A Speech that the Entire Ministry May Stand For", op. cit. 60. David Ambrosetti, "L'Humanitaire comme norme du discours au Conseil de sécurité", Cultures & Conflits, No. 60 (2005), pp. 39–62. 61. During the public meeting of 16 May 1994, Karel Kovanda declared: "The crocodiles in the Kagera River and the vultures over Rwanda have seldom had it so good. They are feeding on the bodies of the thousands upon thousands of children and women, hundreds of whom were pregnant, and men who have been hacked to death during the past six weeks by what has turned out to be a most vicious regime […] This situation is being described as a humanitarian crisis as though it were a famine or perhaps a natural disaster. In the view of my delegation, the proper description is genocide." UN, official verbatim, New York, 16 May 1994, S/PV.3377, p. 15. 62. Barnett, op. cit., p. 572. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid., p. 560. In my research, I particularly deepened the French government's reactions, which dramatically expanded its communication towards media concerning Rwanda once the genocide began, given the military protection it provided to the Habyarimana regime before the genocide. David Ambrosetti, Normes et rivalités diplomatiques à l'ONU, op. cit. 65. Organization of African Unity, op. cit., p. 64 from §10.12 to §10.15, and p. 82, §12.36; United Nations, Anand Panyarachun, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, 2 December 2004, A/59/565, p. 23, §41, p. 34, §87. 66. The French operation 'Turquoise' triggered strong debates and reluctance from delegations of emerging countries and the G77, including China, and was endorsed by the UNSC thanks to the strong support of Madeleine Albright, despite five abstentions. See UN, official verbatim, New York, 22 June 1994, S/PV.3392. The other military operations mentioned above were more welcomed. 67. David Ambrosetti, "Les Opérations de paix de l'ONU face au risque d'un discrédit irrémédiable: La faiblesse et la sélectivité" [UN Peace Operations and the Risk of Irremediable Discredit: Between Weakness and Selectivity], Studia Diplomatica, Vol. 59, No. 2 (2006), pp. 123–139. This evolution has also been noticed by Lise Morjé Howard, UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 338–339; Crocker, Hampson and Aall, Taming Intractable Conflicts, op. cit., p. 62; Paul Williams, "La Grande-Bretagne de Tony Blair et l'Afrique", Politique africaine, No. 94 (June 2004), p. 116. 68. As David Chandler also noticed. David Chandler, "The Security–Development Nexus and the Rise of 'Anti-Foreign Policy'", Journal of International Relations and Development, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2007), pp. 362–386.