This article problematises the status quo bias in IR socialisation research, and develops an alternative concept of competitive socialisation, through which subaltern actors internalise dominant norms, enhance their competitive edge, and enact more equalised power relations in global politics. The dominant strand of IR socialisation research mostly conceives of socialisation as a status-quo-oriented practice that reinforces the existing power hierarchy, such as teacher-student relationship. This has resulted in a one-sided theory neglecting the importance of proactive and self-directed socialisation efforts embarked upon by subaltern actors themselves. Based on an alternative sociological approach that defines socialisation as a practice of self-enhancement, this article develops the concept of competitive socialisation and articulates alternative pathways to the internalisation of dominant norms. It applies this framework to the cases of Chinese socialisation into the peacekeeping community, and Russia's socialisation into the multilateral development community. These case studies demonstrate that the holistic internalisation of dominant Western norms has enabled Beijing and Moscow to challenge the existing global power hierarchy. This, in turn, resulted in fundamental changes in their behaviours from initial norm rejection, to passive acceptance, and finally to active learning and norm internalisation.

Rapid and comprehensive social change is required to mitigate pressing environmental issues such as climate change. Social tipping interventions have been proposed as a policy tool for creating this kind of change. Social tipping means that a small minority committed to a target behaviour can create a self-reinforcing dynamic, which establishes the target behaviour as a social norm. The possibility of achieving the large-scale diffusion of pro-environmental norms and related behaviours with an intervention delimited in size and time is tempting. Yet, the canonical model of tipping, the coordination game, may evoke overly optimistic expectations regarding the potential of tipping, due to the underlying assumption of homogenous preferences. Relaxing this assumption, we devise a threshold model of tipping pro-environmental norm diffusion. The model suggests that depending on the distribution of social preferences in a population, and the individual cost of adopting a given pro-environmental behaviour, the same intervention can activate tipping, have little effect, or produce a backlash. Favourable to tip pro-environmental norms are widespread advantageous inequity aversion and low adoption costs. Adverse are widespread self-regarding preferences or disadvantageous inequity aversion, and high costs. We discuss the policy implications of these findings and suggest suitable intervention strategies for different contexts.

This article traces recent changes of the practices and justifications of the use of force in intervention, in the context of African security governance, highlighting how these changes interact with norm transformations at the scale of the global order. In doing so, it conveys how a long-standing pattern of norm contestation between international and African actors over external intervention vs sovereignty, has started to give way to a mutually accepted division of labour. After 9/11, the paradigm of liberal interventionism has been incrementally replaced by the framework of stabilisation, with a re-prioritisation of sovereigntist agendas. This has increased collaboration between international and African actors, specifically prompting the United Nations and the African Union to divide tasks of mandating and enforcement, thereby increasing inter-institutional ‘order’. This consensus, however, far from signifying wider compliance with ‘liberal ordering’ principles, rather indicates the need to revisit central assumptions of the International Relations norm diffusion literature. While the latter emphasises the diffusion of ‘good’ international norms, especially pertaining to human rights and democratisation, the growing consensus on ‘intervention as stabilisation’ instead exposes how post-9/11 justifications of practices that carry the potential to downsize the scope of such norms, are starting to resonate across international, regional and national sites of policy and practice.

This article investigates dynamics of mobilization over environmental and human rights norms in the context of undemocratic governments. We test the suggestion in norm diffusion theories that the success of domestic struggles in this context depends on the level of internalization of norms brought about by international pressure. We find that the internalization (or lack thereof) of global norms by the Government of Sudan does not explain its recognition of environmental justice claims in this case. Furthermore, the various litigation efforts pursued by affected people outside Sudan did not influence their campaign. However, a combination of the political climate in the country and a unique political interplay between the government and a distinct group of the affected people may have led to the singular success of their campaign. We use a combination of discourse analysis, legal analysis, norm mapping, and semi-structured interviews to reach conclusions.

Recent studies on global performance indicators (GPIs) reveal the distinct power that nonstate actors can accrue and exercise in world politics. How and when does this happen? Using a mixed-methods approach, we examine the impact of the Aid Transparency Index (ATI), an annual rating and rankings index produced by the small UK-based NGO Publish What You Fund. The ATI seeks to shape development aid donors' behavior with respect to their transparency—the quality and kind of information they publicly disclose. To investigate the ATI's effect, we construct an original panel data set of donor transparency performance before and after ATI inclusion (2006–2013) to test whether (and which) donors alter their behavior in response to inclusion in the ATI. To further probe the causal mechanisms that explain variations in donor behavior we use qualitative research, including over 150 key informant interviews conducted between 2010 and 2017. Our analysis uncovers the conditions under which the ATI influences powerful aid donors. Our mixed-methods evidence reveals how this happens. Consistent with Kelley and Simmons's central argument that GPIs exercise influence via social pressure, we find that the ATI shapes donor behavior primarily via direct effects on elites: the diffusion of professional norms, organizational learning, and peer pressure.

For decades, the world's smallest states – the structurally weakest members of the multilateral system – have been considered incapable of influencing international organisations (IOs). So, why has the label small state risen to prominence over the last two decades and become institutionalised as a formal grouping in multiple IOs? Drawing on more than eighty in-depth interviews, we explain the rise of Small Island Developing States in the United Nations system, the expansion of their agenda to the Small and Vulnerable Economies group at the World Trade Organization, and then to other IOs. The adoption of the labels is evidence of small state norm diffusion. We identify the competent performance of vulnerability within multilateral settings as the key to explaining this norm emergence and diffusion. The lesson is that diffusion ‘from below’ is not always driven by a desire to increase rank. In this case small states have gained benefits by maintaining a lowly position in a hierarchy in which large is stronger than small.

Scholars of environmental law are gaining comfort with looking for law in unusual places. As a result, lists and maps of the environmental content of contractual provisions are emerging. What these lists and maps largely miss, however, is the powerful dynamic of how legal norms move across borders through contract. This article argues that contractual provisions operate as critical platforms for the migration of legal norms, ideas and technologies between project and transactional settings. Three dynamics of how this movement takes place (transfer from contract to contract, migration from contract to legislation, and entrenching private standards through contract) are explored – each revealing how contractual practices reproduce selective visions of what counts as the ‘environment’ worth protecting.

This article aims to show the added value of studying transnational advocacy networks through a discursive approach in order to better understand the outcomes of norm diffusion in postconflict contexts. I argue that constructivist approaches to norm diffusion fall short as an explanation of norm adoption because they assume an automatic process of norm propagation through socialisation mechanisms. The first goal of the article is then to discuss how the internal dynamics of discourse negotiation in transnational advocacy networks impact the diffusion and implementation of international norms. The second goal is to propose the concept of the rebound effect and to explore the conditions under which it takes place. Through data collected during extended fieldwork, the article examines a prominent case, namely the transnational campaign for the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security in Burundi and Liberia. I ask why and how the campaign was understood as a success in Liberia and as a failure in Burundi. I argue that there is another way of looking at these cases in less dichotomised ways. Crucially, my findings demonstrate how in both cases a very particular discourse on gender security is (re)produced through power relations between local and transnational activists limiting the type of policies that are advocated for and depoliticising the grassroots.

Research on norms in international relations has recently focused increasingly on the localisation and translation of normative patterns. While there is a strong interest in studying local diversity as embedded in global contexts, the question of how to accomplish this still poses a methodological challenge. In order to make visible the different global, national, local, and situational dimensions of diffusion processes, this article applies the technique of ‘zooming in’ on the respective levels. The article studies the case of a mixed court in Shanghai at the end of the nineteenth century. The court is both a special court in the context of extraterritoriality and a representative case of hybrid normativity and decision making. As this article shows, the practices of the mixed court are not reducible to its single foreign, national or local components. On the contrary, it represents an original normative institution combining various normative and procedural elements. In describing this hybrid institution, the article refers to the concept of multinormativity, understood as an extension of what has been discussed as legal pluralism, since it does not take Western concepts of the law as a major point of reference.

In the EU accession literature, there is a tendency to downplay the role of discourse in facilitating norm diffusion, particularly when domestic resistance towards European norms is strong. The assumptions in this thinking are that critical deliberations and civil society activism simply lack the potency required to elicit norm conforming behaviour in accession states and that the only realistic hope for achieving this rests with the introduction of material incentives that make the costs of normative adaptation lower than its rewards. I focus on developments in the field of LGBT politics to challenge these assumptions and to specify the conditions under which discursive strategies are likely to stimulate the domestic uptake of contentious norms. I highlight shared identity as a crucial factor in the success of discursive influence, contending that under conditions of identity convergence, a cultural environment prevails in which norm promoters can more effectively ignite a process of deliberative reflection, shame norm-violators into conformance and cultivate resonance around controversial ideas. I develop these arguments through an analysis of LGBT and accession politics in Croatia and Serbia, contending that Croatia’s strong identification with Europe accelerated LGBT recognition there while Serbia’s relatively weaker identification with Europe slowed it down.

There is recent scholarship suggesting that the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has now emerged as a master concept in relation to responding to mass atrocity crimes and that the R2P can further be seen as representative of an emerging global constitutional norm. In critical response, this article provides the first attempt to systematically investigate R2P’s relationship with global constitutionalisation as well as to explore its wider implication with regard to global constitutionalism. In doing so, the article examines existing discussions of R2P and global constitutionalism, tracks the normative evolution of R2P in order to determine its current ‘stage’ of norm diffusion, and further attempts to locate the extent to which the R2P can be perceived as also part of a process of global constitutionalisation. From this analysis the article concludes that although the R2P could be labelled as, at best, a weak emerging norm, it fails to meet the more demanding signifier of an emerging constitutional norm and that there is further evidence to suggest that the R2P might be better understood as a stalled or degenerating norm.

This paper offers a historical examination of the ways in which advocacy strategies and tactics have shifted in relation to political opportunities, using a case study of a hydroelectric dam project in the Brazilian Amazon, known as the Belo Monte Dam. Drawing on over three decades of resistance by transnational activist coalitions, the paper looks at how new tactics and political alignments have altered the dynamics of activism and norm diffusion in Brazilian domestic environmental, human rights and development policies. The paper argues that current theories of norm diffusion inadequately explain backslides and tend to underestimate the complexity of domestic political alignments. The case adds political insight to our understanding of the relationship of transnational advocacy strategy to environmental and human rights political realities in Brazil.