Arguing Against New International Norms - a preliminary investigation.

Much of the growing research on how norms influence state behaviour has focused on successful norm diffusion and revealed much about the identity of norm-promoters, their strategies and their resources. Empirical research has also made it clear that norm entrepreneurs' efforts to bring about change encounter (and often provoke) resistance - both indifference and outright opposition. Broadly speaking, our interest in this paper is those who openly oppose attempts to establish new international norms. Who are these resisters? What arguments do they make? Our goal in this paper is to study resisters and their arguments in deliberations and debates at the UN. We focus on two specific cases: gender non discrimination and Responsibility to Protect. Building on the norm diffusion literature and insights from the literature on transnational advocacy networks, we develop an analytical framework that enables us to identify and categorize the arguments resisters use. We expect that many of these will be based on principled ideas. This means that we conceptualize opposition/resistance to new norms as a political struggle over which norm rather than a norm-or-no-norm struggle.Please e-mail for a full copy of the paper. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]