Norms in Conflict

Southeast Asia’s Response to Human Rights Violations in Myanmar

Anchalee Rüland

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780813183732
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The people of Myanmar were struck by three major human rights disasters during the country's period of democratization from 2003 to 2012: the 2007 Saffron Revolution, the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, and the 2012 Rakhine riots, which would evolve into the ongoing Rohingya crisis. These events saw Myanmar's government categorically labeled as an offender of human rights, and three powerful Southeast Asian member states—Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia—responded to the violations in very different ways. In each case, their responses to the crises were explicitly shaped by norm conflict, which may be understood as a tension between international and domestic norms. Their reactions were compelled by a need to address conflicting domestic and international expectations for norm compliance regarding human rights protection and non-interference in internal affairs.

In Norms in Conflict: Southeast Asia's Response to Human Rights Violations in Myanmar, Anchalee Rüland makes sense of state action that occurs when a governing body is faced with a circumstance that is at once in line with and contrary to its own governing policies. She defines five different types of response strategies to situations of norm conflict and examines the enabling factors that lead to each strategy. Domestic norms are known to evolve as a country's values change over time yet Rüland argues that the old and new norms may also coexist; knowledge of the underlying political context is crucial for those seeking a solid understanding of state behavior. Norms in Conflict challenges the conventional understanding of the logic of consequences in determining state behavior, advancing constructivist theory and establishing a provocative new conversation in international relations discourse.

1

Theorizing and Studying Response to Norm Conflict

Since the constructivist turn in the 1980s, IRT has dealt extensively with norms and agency in normative environments. Central elements of this literature have analyzed the impact of norms on state behavior,¹ their diffusion and localization,² as well as their evolution, contestation, and change.³ Among scholars working on Southeast Asia, a norm-centered social-constructivist view of intraregional relations has in fact been so successful that constructivism has established itself as the mainstream approach to the study of ASEAN since the early 2000s.⁴ Yet the issue of norm conflict has remained theoretically and empirically understudied both in IR theorizing generally and in regional scholarship more specifically. We have little understanding of the judgments governments make regarding compliance when the directives inherent in the norms to which they have committed appear to be mutually exclusive. This chapter addresses this lacuna by outlining a theoretical framework for explaining and empirically studying norm conflict in Southeast Asia and beyond. It spells out five ideal-type responses to norm conflict and the most important scope conditions for choosing a response that are generally applicable and can serve as a reference to other norm-related research.

NORM CONFLICTS AS DECISION-MAKING PROBLEMS

Constructivist research of the last decade has stressed the dual quality of norms as both “static and changing.”⁵ Both qualities are important, as we will see, to understanding the decision-making problem entailed in norm conflicts as well as the determining factors for their resolution. Without some sense of fixity, norms would not provide what they must, namely relatively stable standards of conduct to guide the choices of those subject to them.⁶ As such they reflect patterned behavior that is prescribed and gives rise to normative expectations as to what ought to be done.⁷ Yet, at the same time, norms are also constantly evolving, and their meaning is often subject to contestation. Only in leaving their meaning and validity open to arguing and justification is normative change possible.⁸ As a result, norms must also remain flexible. Norm conflicts as decision-making problems arise from the relatively “stable” quality of norms, which makes them recognizable and enforceable prescriptions for behavior. As Sandholtz argues, all norms are regulative, but some additionally have a constitutive effect.⁹ Given their regulative function, norms identify standards of conduct and create expectations for compliance. As a consequence, all norms have an important action-guiding function.¹⁰ In norm conflicts this action-guiding function is seriously impaired. According to Pauwelyn, “two norms are . . . in a relationship of conflict if one constitutes, has led to, or may lead to, a breach of the other.”¹¹ Hence a norm conflict occurs whenever an actor finds itself in a situation in which its normative directives are inconsistent or not uniquely action-guiding.¹² Neither norm is applicable without conflicting with the other.¹³ The clearest example can be found where one norm prohibits a certain behavior, whereas another norm obligates the same behavior. The norms’ normative directives are then mutually exclusive.¹⁴

In the realm of foreign policy, norm conflicts first and foremost relate to the policymakers’ beliefs, which are based on shared normative ideas. Socialization into those shared normative ideas may have previously occurred at both the domestic and international levels. In a norm conflict, which presents itself as a situation of choice, policymakers recognize conflicting normative directives that flow from the competing norms that regulate the relevant subject matter. The decision-making problem is this: it is only possible for a government to comply with one rule by failing to adhere to the other. To illustrate the point, let us return to the case of norm conflict in Southeast Asia: In the wake of their countries’ democratic transformations, decision makers from ASEAN’s more democratically advanced member states increasingly felt committed not only to noninterference in internal affairs but also to human rights promotion and protection. This created a dilemma in situations of gross human rights violations within the region in which both norms applied. Next to exemplifying the decision-making problem governments face in situations of norm conflict, the case also shows that often a conflict between two norms only arises as contextual changes take place, such as democratic transitions.

Norm conflicts always represent a source of uncertainty for state behavior and create serious challenges to the management of systems governed by norms.¹⁵ Although all norm conflicts create a decision-making problem, those that involve norms with a constitutive effect additionally give rise to questions about identity commitments and might therefore be particularly difficult to resolve.¹⁶

EXPLAINING CHOICE IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY

IRT has focused on three logics of action in order to explain behavior in situations of choice, respectively centering on notions of appropriateness, arguing, und consequences. Each logic comes with its own difficulties in explaining choice in situations of norm conflict. Constructivists within the “behaviorist” tradition have tended to focus on the logic of appropriateness as a mechanism of norm following.¹⁷ Actors not only follow norms because they have an interest in their general adherence by others but also because they have internalized those norms and conceive of themselves in a certain way, that is, as good global citizens.¹⁸ In a situation of choice, actors therefore do what they see as appropriate for themselves given their identities.¹⁹ As norms are “taken for granted,” compliance becomes habitual. Norm compliance is therefore largely perceived as an unconscious process, and decision-making appears to become impossible in situations of norm conflict.²⁰ The attempt at norm compliance would lead to paralysis. The respective actor—the government—would be unable to act. It would do nothing, not because it actively decides to do so, but because it does not know which of the two norms—conflicting yet viewed as equally appropriate—to follow. In a world in which agents do not operate in complete isolation and normative commitments create expectations by others regarding compliance, paralysis would be an extremely unsatisfying outcome for any agent.²¹ A government would be seen as indecisive or unreliable. Given the social costs of paralysis, it seems reasonable to assume that most governments will work hard to avoid such an outcome.

Addressing this weakness inherent in “behavioralist” approaches, constructivists of a more “reflexive” tradition have described an alternative mechanism of norm following known as the logic of arguing. Within the logic of arguing, agents leave the unconscious process of norm following and via a communicative act of argumentation try to adjudicate which norm to comply with. Norm following is then understood as an “informed choice,” and paralysis can be avoided.²² The logic of arguing not only describes a logic of action but also a mode of social interaction that enables equal participants in a deliberation to mutually challenge and explore the validity claims of the conflicting norms.²³ Validity claims can be based on the moral rightness of the norm’s underlying argument, the truthfulness and authenticity of the speaker, and the norm’s conformity with the perceived facts in the world.²⁴ In a situation of norm conflict they could be used as grounds to establish a hierarchy of order between the two conflicting norms. In theory, the logic of arguing as a mechanism of norm following thus provides the analytical tools to understand state response in situations of norm conflict. What makes the logic of arguing problematic is the scale of its scope conditions, which creates the image of decision-making as an all-inclusive and consensual process. Akin to a Habermasian “ideal speech situation,” the participants in a discourse have to be open to being convinced by the better argument and seek to find a communicative consensus—in this case on with which of the two conflicting norms one should comply.²⁵ Therefore relationships of power and social hierarchies recede into the background. But politics rarely, if ever, delivers ideal speech situations. The logic of arguing as outlined by Risse ignores that the actual decision-making power lies with the government, which in its governing role has interests of its own—most fundamentally to remain in office. These interests remain outside the framework. Once we recognize that it is the government that is doing the actual decision-making, it becomes obvious that some arguments count more than others.²⁶ As Crawford rightly points out, even in a democratic context, preexisting power and authority are not entirely removed from the scene, and therefore it is not only the force of the better argument that prevails. To the contrary, political arguments occur in a decidedly unlevel playing field of discourse between differently powerful actors.²⁷ What constitutes the “best” argument for a government in a norm conflict is very much a question of who advocates compliance with the different norms and how supportive those groups are of the government and its policies. In order to explain government choice in situations of norm conflict, we thus need a framework that allows for a consequentialist rationale while at the same time taking norms seriously.

A CONSEQUENTIALIST BUT SOCIALLY EMBEDDED APPROACH TO NORM FOLLOWING

The logic of consequence explains action in situations of choice based on a cost-benefit calculation. Scholars using this logic have traditionally dismissed the effect of norms on state behavior or simply seen it as a reflection of exogenously given interests or state power,²⁸ a point most prominently made by Krasner.²⁹ In his framework the logic of consequence is equated with an entirely egoistic disposition toward others. But there is no reason to believe that this is the case. In what follows I outline a consequentialist but socially embedded approach to norm following. It allows leaders to remain in a conscious and rational state of norm following, while at the same time factoring in the social costs that follow from their commitment to the norms in their decision-making. In line with other realists, Krasner overlooks the fact that even though governments are not punished for their actions internationally by an international enforcement agency, they are constrained in what they do by the structure of their social relations at both the domestic and international levels. Because norms are shared, commitment to a norm creates expectations toward compliance by others. They are thus part of the material and ideational context in which actors make choices. Functioning like promises, normative commitments can only be overridden by exceptional circumstances and acts of justification.³⁰ Leaders therefore have to account for their actions vis-à-vis their relevant audiences through a process of legitimization. Relevant audiences are all those communities with which a government identifies and within which it tries to secure a particular social standing.³¹ Although a government’s primary source of legitimacy is still “the people” of its own state, other audiences at the international level also have to be considered.³² It is the job of those in power to identify which audiences matter and how to speak to those multiple audiences.³³ As Jetschke points out, audiences act “as judges about the persuasiveness of arguments” and actions.³⁴ They respond approvingly to actors and their actions that are in line with the expectations they hold and penalize those that are not.³⁵ As a consequence, their approval or disapproval can help reduce the indeterminacy of norms in situations of norm conflict.³⁶ In situations of choice, a government’s commitment to a norm will create expectations for compliance with the norm among some of its relevant audiences. In response to a situation of norm conflict, this implies that a decision in favor of compliance with one norm over the other can be made based on the perceived strength of the articulated expectations of relevant audiences and the social costs the government anticipates in leaving them unaddressed. In sum, the considerations of the consequences of action go beyond the conventional self-interested understanding of the logic of conse...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Theorizing and Studying Response to Norm Conflict
• 2. Commitment to the Norms
• 3. Norm Reconciliation in Indonesia
• 4. Strategic Norm Replacement in Thailand
• 5. From Norm Reconciliation to Conflict Denial in Malaysia
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index