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Competing norms and foreign policy change: humanitarian intervention and British foreign policy

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Abstract

During the 1990s the inhibition threshold for humanitarian interventions was lowered in British foreign policy. Whereas interventions in the early 1990s were conducted or approved very reluctantly by the UK, later interventions were pursued more actively. The humanitarian intervention debate is linked to the norms of state sovereignty and human rights protection. In the case of massive human rights violations, they allow for two contrary possible options of action and collide with each other regarding the appropriate behavior. Therefore, this article takes a closer look at policymakers and their response toward this norm competition. In the observed time frame the policymaker’s response changed as the sovereignty norm gained a less prominent role. This shift was due to several factors. The governmental change of the New Labour in 1997 pushed an ethical foreign policy forward. A second factor was the development at the international level, culminating in the emergence of the Responsibility to Protect, which changed the international norm environment. The domestic norm environment shifted to give state sovereignty a less decisive role in cases of massive human rights violations.

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Notes

  1. The data is derived from Peltner (2009).

  2. For a more detailed derivation of the categories see Peltner (2009). For a similar compilation relating to normative orders and a typology of their solution strategies see Zimmermann et al. (2013). They also differentiate between hierarchisation of normative orders and the solving by third norms.

  3. Parliamentary debates allow ‘for representation of wide range of viewpoints’ (Cantir and Kaarbo 2012, p. 14) and are therefore a possible forum for a debate over competing norms.

  4. Since the civil war in Darfur lasted for so long, speeches were only selected in a limited time frame: climaxes of violence were defined and speeches were selected from 1 January, 2003 till 30 June, 2008.

  5. Speeches were selected from 1 July, 1993 until 30 June, 1996 (Rwanda), from 1 January, 1990 until 31 December, 1997 (Angola), from 1 July, 1998 until 30 June, 2001 (Kosovo) and from 1 January, 2003 until 30 June, 2008 (Darfur).

  6. The 216 speeches were distributed as followed: 25 about Angola, 20 about Rwanda, 111 about Kosovo and 61 about Darfur (one speech could be used for Angola as well as for Rwanda). Speeches were held in the Security Council (35), in the General Assembly (5), in the House of Lords (53) in the House of Commons (62) and of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office held at various occasions (60).

  7. As past events have an impact on decisions, too, the intervention in Iraq in 2003 may have influenced the British reluctance to intervene in Darfur as it undermined its standing as a ‘human intervention norm carrier[s]’ (Bellamy 2005, p. 51). This was one among other factors impeding a consensus towards interventions within the Security Council (Bellamy 2005, p. 51) but did not undermined the general willingness to intervene on humanitarian grounds.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the editors of this issue, the two anonymous reviewers and Tanja Brühl for their fruitful comments and suggestions.

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    Anne Peltner

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Peltner, A. Competing norms and foreign policy change: humanitarian intervention and British foreign policy. Int Polit 54, 745–759 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-017-0062-8

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