{"title":"Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders","authors":"Anahita Arian","doi":"10.1093/isr/viac059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac059","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54206,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Review","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78051293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Matthias Hofferberth, Daniel Lambach, Martin Koch, Anna Holzscheiter, Maryam Zarnegar Deloffre, Nina Reiners, Karsten Ronit
Scholars of world politics can readily list the global governors of our time, but why and how did these particular actors gain agency in the first place? While there is impressive scholarship on single global governors and their respective impact, there is little comparative work and systematic theorization on what agency in world politics is and how actors gain it. This forum brings together contributions that apply relational frameworks to the question, focusing on the dynamics of self-agentification, delegation, and recognition. Individual contributions detail different empirical cases, from individuals to the G20, and introduce concepts for meso-level theorizing. Taken together, the contributions call for a more dynamic research agenda that not only allows scholars to reconstruct how agency emerges but also pushes us toward an agency-focused reframing of global governance, which is needed to ensure the continued relevance of the paradigm.
{"title":"Forum: The Why and How of Global Governors: Relational Agency in World Politics","authors":"Matthias Hofferberth, Daniel Lambach, Martin Koch, Anna Holzscheiter, Maryam Zarnegar Deloffre, Nina Reiners, Karsten Ronit","doi":"10.1093/isr/viac054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac054","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars of world politics can readily list the global governors of our time, but why and how did these particular actors gain agency in the first place? While there is impressive scholarship on single global governors and their respective impact, there is little comparative work and systematic theorization on what agency in world politics is and how actors gain it. This forum brings together contributions that apply relational frameworks to the question, focusing on the dynamics of self-agentification, delegation, and recognition. Individual contributions detail different empirical cases, from individuals to the G20, and introduce concepts for meso-level theorizing. Taken together, the contributions call for a more dynamic research agenda that not only allows scholars to reconstruct how agency emerges but also pushes us toward an agency-focused reframing of global governance, which is needed to ensure the continued relevance of the paradigm.","PeriodicalId":54206,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Review","volume":"52 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Over the last two decades, climate security has become an increasingly salient policy agenda in international fora. Yet, despite a large body of research, the empirical links between climate-change and conflict remain highly uncertain. This paper contends that uncertainty around climate–conflict links should be understood as characteristic of complex social–ecological systems rather than a problem that can be fully resolved. Rather than striving to eliminate uncertainty, we suggest that researchers need to learn to cope with it. To this end, this article advances a set of principles for guiding scholarly practice when investigating a complex phenomenon: recognizing epistemological uncertainty, embracing epistemological diversity, and practicing humility and dialogue across difference. Taken together we call this ethos epistemological pluralism, whereby scholars self-consciously recognize the limits of their chosen epistemology for understanding the climate–conflict nexus and engage with other approaches without attempting to usurp them. Reviewing the last decade of climate–conflict scholarship, we show that climate–conflict research already manifests many of these ideals; however, we also identify problematic patterns of engagement across epistemological divides and thus plenty of scope for improvement. To illustrate why a diversity of methods (e.g., qualitative and quantitative) will not suffice, the article critically discusses prior research to illustrate why at least two epistemological approaches—constructivism and positivism—cannot be synthesized or integrated without significant analytical cost, and elaborates why excluding insights from any one would lead to an impoverished understanding of the climate–conflict nexus. We conclude with five practical recommendations of how scholars can help realize the ideal of epistemological pluralism in practice.
{"title":"Coping with Complexity: Toward Epistemological Pluralism in Climate–Conflict Scholarship","authors":"Paul Beaumont, Cedric de Coning","doi":"10.1093/isr/viac055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac055","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last two decades, climate security has become an increasingly salient policy agenda in international fora. Yet, despite a large body of research, the empirical links between climate-change and conflict remain highly uncertain. This paper contends that uncertainty around climate–conflict links should be understood as characteristic of complex social–ecological systems rather than a problem that can be fully resolved. Rather than striving to eliminate uncertainty, we suggest that researchers need to learn to cope with it. To this end, this article advances a set of principles for guiding scholarly practice when investigating a complex phenomenon: recognizing epistemological uncertainty, embracing epistemological diversity, and practicing humility and dialogue across difference. Taken together we call this ethos epistemological pluralism, whereby scholars self-consciously recognize the limits of their chosen epistemology for understanding the climate–conflict nexus and engage with other approaches without attempting to usurp them. Reviewing the last decade of climate–conflict scholarship, we show that climate–conflict research already manifests many of these ideals; however, we also identify problematic patterns of engagement across epistemological divides and thus plenty of scope for improvement. To illustrate why a diversity of methods (e.g., qualitative and quantitative) will not suffice, the article critically discusses prior research to illustrate why at least two epistemological approaches—constructivism and positivism—cannot be synthesized or integrated without significant analytical cost, and elaborates why excluding insights from any one would lead to an impoverished understanding of the climate–conflict nexus. We conclude with five practical recommendations of how scholars can help realize the ideal of epistemological pluralism in practice.","PeriodicalId":54206,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Review","volume":"51 24","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Research on armed conflict's gender dynamics has expanded significantly in the past decade. However, research in this field pays little attention to sexual orientation and gender identity. Moreover, where scholarship focused on violence against sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals during war exists, it is largely divorced from work on gender-based violence (GBV) in conflict-related environments and from sexuality studies. In this article, we integrate these bodies of work and argue for the theoretical expansion of GBV as a conceptual, empirical, and analytic category to study and explain targeted attacks against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise queer individuals. We suggest two theoretical interventions to better equip existing GBV frameworks to explain violence perpetrated against SGM people. We argue, first, that violence targeting SGM communities is GBV, as sexuality and gender identity are integral components of gender, and second, that analyzing gender dynamics adds to our understanding of when, how, and why targeting SGM individuals composes part of an organization's regulatory “repertoire of violence.” We examine violence in Colombia's civil war as an illustrative application of our approach and we identify future, fruitful research avenues with important policy implications for studying and responding to GBV during war.
{"title":"Queering Gender-Based Violence Scholarship: An Integrated Research Agenda","authors":"Meredith Loken, Jamie J Hagen","doi":"10.1093/isr/viac050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac050","url":null,"abstract":"Research on armed conflict's gender dynamics has expanded significantly in the past decade. However, research in this field pays little attention to sexual orientation and gender identity. Moreover, where scholarship focused on violence against sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals during war exists, it is largely divorced from work on gender-based violence (GBV) in conflict-related environments and from sexuality studies. In this article, we integrate these bodies of work and argue for the theoretical expansion of GBV as a conceptual, empirical, and analytic category to study and explain targeted attacks against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise queer individuals. We suggest two theoretical interventions to better equip existing GBV frameworks to explain violence perpetrated against SGM people. We argue, first, that violence targeting SGM communities is GBV, as sexuality and gender identity are integral components of gender, and second, that analyzing gender dynamics adds to our understanding of when, how, and why targeting SGM individuals composes part of an organization's regulatory “repertoire of violence.” We examine violence in Colombia's civil war as an illustrative application of our approach and we identify future, fruitful research avenues with important policy implications for studying and responding to GBV during war.","PeriodicalId":54206,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Review","volume":"51 16","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Science for Critique? Doing Critical International Relations in a Quantum World","authors":"Italo Brandimarte","doi":"10.1093/isr/viac056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac056","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54206,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Review","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78519643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper criticizes the epistemic foundations of democratic state-building, which are derived from a model of political transitions according to which liberal democratic institutions will transform a hitherto authoritarian and troubled country into a more prosperous and stable society and, therefore, foreign interventions to establish these institutions are realistic and worthy investments, provided they are properly planned based on knowledge of what has worked elsewhere. This expectation is based upon two epistemological premises. The first premise, linearity, is that social and institutional change exhibits identifiable input–output relations connecting socioeconomic conditions and outcomes. The second premise, ergodicity, is that these relations, inferred from past samples, provide reliable probabilistic projections about future outcomes, which can guide the focus of policy interventions. Drawing from the study of complex systems, the paper indicates why these two premises offer a flawed conception of political transitions and why radical and large-scale interventions, such as state-building, will tend to generate unintended consequences rather than the planned effect.
{"title":"Fallacies of Democratic State-Building","authors":"Aris Trantidis","doi":"10.1093/isr/viac053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac053","url":null,"abstract":"This paper criticizes the epistemic foundations of democratic state-building, which are derived from a model of political transitions according to which liberal democratic institutions will transform a hitherto authoritarian and troubled country into a more prosperous and stable society and, therefore, foreign interventions to establish these institutions are realistic and worthy investments, provided they are properly planned based on knowledge of what has worked elsewhere. This expectation is based upon two epistemological premises. The first premise, linearity, is that social and institutional change exhibits identifiable input–output relations connecting socioeconomic conditions and outcomes. The second premise, ergodicity, is that these relations, inferred from past samples, provide reliable probabilistic projections about future outcomes, which can guide the focus of policy interventions. Drawing from the study of complex systems, the paper indicates why these two premises offer a flawed conception of political transitions and why radical and large-scale interventions, such as state-building, will tend to generate unintended consequences rather than the planned effect.","PeriodicalId":54206,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Review","volume":"51 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50165898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The rise of China has returned attention to the links between power transitions and war. In this literature, three different causal mechanisms can be confused. This essay disentangles them. Power transitions can lead to three kinds of war: preventive, accidental, and revisionist. Formal models tend to study the first, in which a declining state tries to delay or prevent a rival’s ascent. However, major wars during great power transitions are usually initiated by the rising state, not the declining one. To describe these historical cases, less formal theories, especially neorealism and neoclassical realism, focus on accidental and revisionist wars, but these theories tend to fall back on nonrational mechanisms to connect changing power to the risk of conflict. This leaves a theoretical gap: Why would a rising, rational actor deliberately choose conflict, i.e., start a revisionist war? To suggest an answer, this essay demonstrates how a simple change in standard bargaining models—incorporating a nonzero probability of indecisive war—can ground realist intuitions on rationalist foundations. It further shows how this change leads immediately to an intuitive, formal definition of stability that aligns naturally with existing informal work. Then, contrary to existing realist theory, it shows why the rigorous analysis of realist assumptions leads to a nonmonotonic relationship between the offense/defense balance and war. It thus uses realism to inform and potentially redirect formal scholarship; it also uses formal scholarship to sharpen the logical foundations of realism and, in so doing, derive novel empirical predictions. The essay concludes by applying this synthesis to the rise of China today and indicating directions for deepening the formal/realist synthesis.
{"title":"Rational Origins of Revisionist War","authors":"Richard Jordan","doi":"10.1093/isr/viac051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac051","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The rise of China has returned attention to the links between power transitions and war. In this literature, three different causal mechanisms can be confused. This essay disentangles them. Power transitions can lead to three kinds of war: preventive, accidental, and revisionist. Formal models tend to study the first, in which a declining state tries to delay or prevent a rival’s ascent. However, major wars during great power transitions are usually initiated by the rising state, not the declining one. To describe these historical cases, less formal theories, especially neorealism and neoclassical realism, focus on accidental and revisionist wars, but these theories tend to fall back on nonrational mechanisms to connect changing power to the risk of conflict. This leaves a theoretical gap: Why would a rising, rational actor deliberately choose conflict, i.e., start a revisionist war? To suggest an answer, this essay demonstrates how a simple change in standard bargaining models—incorporating a nonzero probability of indecisive war—can ground realist intuitions on rationalist foundations. It further shows how this change leads immediately to an intuitive, formal definition of stability that aligns naturally with existing informal work. Then, contrary to existing realist theory, it shows why the rigorous analysis of realist assumptions leads to a nonmonotonic relationship between the offense/defense balance and war. It thus uses realism to inform and potentially redirect formal scholarship; it also uses formal scholarship to sharpen the logical foundations of realism and, in so doing, derive novel empirical predictions. The essay concludes by applying this synthesis to the rise of China today and indicating directions for deepening the formal/realist synthesis.","PeriodicalId":54206,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Review","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85379975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Power-sharing provisions have been included in many peace agreements intended to end intra-state violent conflict, including, for example, in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Sudan, and Lebanon. Power-sharing has been subject to extensive scholarly examination. Many of these examinations focus on the impact of power-sharing on peace, often defined as the non-recurrence of violent conflict. However, the results of these examinations have not generated a consensus as to the value of power-sharing as a conflict management tool. This lack of consensus highlights a need to more clearly understand the effects of power-sharing. To fully comprehend the role of power-sharing, we must move away from simply asking if it is associated with the reoccurrence of violence and explore the paths through which it can contribute to different outcomes of interest, for example, group relations or stable government. Both Hartzell and Mehler (2019) and Keil and McCulloch (2021) seek to address this current weakness in our understanding of power-sharing, albeit in quite different ways. These books show that by paying closer attention to the impact of power-sharing on different outcomes, including a focus on the mechanisms that link its different power-sharing provisions to specific outcomes, we can develop a fundamentally deeper understanding of power-sharing.
{"title":"Power-Sharing: The Need to Explore the “Who” and the “Where”","authors":"D. Walsh","doi":"10.1093/isr/viac052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac052","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Power-sharing provisions have been included in many peace agreements intended to end intra-state violent conflict, including, for example, in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Sudan, and Lebanon. Power-sharing has been subject to extensive scholarly examination. Many of these examinations focus on the impact of power-sharing on peace, often defined as the non-recurrence of violent conflict. However, the results of these examinations have not generated a consensus as to the value of power-sharing as a conflict management tool. This lack of consensus highlights a need to more clearly understand the effects of power-sharing. To fully comprehend the role of power-sharing, we must move away from simply asking if it is associated with the reoccurrence of violence and explore the paths through which it can contribute to different outcomes of interest, for example, group relations or stable government. Both Hartzell and Mehler (2019) and Keil and McCulloch (2021) seek to address this current weakness in our understanding of power-sharing, albeit in quite different ways. These books show that by paying closer attention to the impact of power-sharing on different outcomes, including a focus on the mechanisms that link its different power-sharing provisions to specific outcomes, we can develop a fundamentally deeper understanding of power-sharing.","PeriodicalId":54206,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Review","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81779354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Scholarship drawing from a wide array of perspectives including field theoretical and functional differentiation approaches has shed increasing light on the sectoral dimensions of world politics. In contrast to dominant approaches emphasizing hierarchy and power in relations between global fields, this article offers a novel interpretive framework for understanding how diverse fields, systems, or sectors may interact and facilitate change in world politics beyond the operation of established hierarchies and power dynamics. Taking forward the previously underutilized concept of symbolically generalized media of communication, this article elucidates two processes of international political change by which different fields, systems, or sectors may transform world politics. The first process, lateral retreat, is illustrated with reference to the case study of the Protestant Reformation, in which internal changes in the religious field facilitated the development of an increasingly autonomous political domain. The second process, lateral penetration, is illustrated with reference to the international political response to the climate change and Covid-19 crises, in which the scientific sector contributed toward transformed political priorities and associated hierarchies, at least in the short term. These diverse cases are used to indicate the broad potential scope of application of the concept of symbolically generalized media of communication to enrich relational theorizing in the study of international relations, and to improve understanding of diverse dynamics of international political change missed in traditional power- (and anarchy-) centric accounts.
{"title":"Lateral Relations in World Politics: Rethinking Interactions and Change among Fields, Systems, and Sectors","authors":"Alejandro M Peña, Thomas Davies","doi":"10.1093/isr/viac048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac048","url":null,"abstract":"Scholarship drawing from a wide array of perspectives including field theoretical and functional differentiation approaches has shed increasing light on the sectoral dimensions of world politics. In contrast to dominant approaches emphasizing hierarchy and power in relations between global fields, this article offers a novel interpretive framework for understanding how diverse fields, systems, or sectors may interact and facilitate change in world politics beyond the operation of established hierarchies and power dynamics. Taking forward the previously underutilized concept of symbolically generalized media of communication, this article elucidates two processes of international political change by which different fields, systems, or sectors may transform world politics. The first process, lateral retreat, is illustrated with reference to the case study of the Protestant Reformation, in which internal changes in the religious field facilitated the development of an increasingly autonomous political domain. The second process, lateral penetration, is illustrated with reference to the international political response to the climate change and Covid-19 crises, in which the scientific sector contributed toward transformed political priorities and associated hierarchies, at least in the short term. These diverse cases are used to indicate the broad potential scope of application of the concept of symbolically generalized media of communication to enrich relational theorizing in the study of international relations, and to improve understanding of diverse dynamics of international political change missed in traditional power- (and anarchy-) centric accounts.","PeriodicalId":54206,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Review","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50166087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Some norms go through long contested periods, resulting in norm change, rejection, or persisting conflict. Others are adopted quite quickly, with little resistance across diverse societies. An underlying and unanswered theoretical question is why? A foundational characteristic of a norm as a concept, and a key aspect of constructivist scholarship on norms, is the role of values and moral principles in giving norms meaning and in motivating global policy change. For a field placing significant emphasis on the importance of ideas, the limited theorizing around the value-based content of these ideas is a notable shortcoming. Emphasizing the importance of moral values as among the most deeply held beliefs, I outline a theory of how moral values and moral distance can help explain why certain normative processes and outcomes occur. Building from constructivist work on norms and social psychology scholarship on morality, I propose that moral distance, the degree of alignment, overlap, or separation in moral values between actors can help to explain the type of contestation, the intensity and duration of contestation, and what processes or outcomes are more likely to transpire. The shorter the moral distance, the more likely persuasion or adaptations will occur, leading to the eventual adoption of a norm. The greater the moral distance, the more likely prolonged and heated contestation will occur, leading to rejection or enduring contestation. I argue that centering the analysis of moral values and moral distance in research on normative agreement and disagreement can therefore contribute to understanding why or under what circumstances conflict is more or less likely to happen.
{"title":"What's in a Norm? Centering the Study of Moral Values in Scholarship on Norm Interactions","authors":"Kathryn Quissell","doi":"10.1093/isr/viac049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac049","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Some norms go through long contested periods, resulting in norm change, rejection, or persisting conflict. Others are adopted quite quickly, with little resistance across diverse societies. An underlying and unanswered theoretical question is why? A foundational characteristic of a norm as a concept, and a key aspect of constructivist scholarship on norms, is the role of values and moral principles in giving norms meaning and in motivating global policy change. For a field placing significant emphasis on the importance of ideas, the limited theorizing around the value-based content of these ideas is a notable shortcoming. Emphasizing the importance of moral values as among the most deeply held beliefs, I outline a theory of how moral values and moral distance can help explain why certain normative processes and outcomes occur. Building from constructivist work on norms and social psychology scholarship on morality, I propose that moral distance, the degree of alignment, overlap, or separation in moral values between actors can help to explain the type of contestation, the intensity and duration of contestation, and what processes or outcomes are more likely to transpire. The shorter the moral distance, the more likely persuasion or adaptations will occur, leading to the eventual adoption of a norm. The greater the moral distance, the more likely prolonged and heated contestation will occur, leading to rejection or enduring contestation. I argue that centering the analysis of moral values and moral distance in research on normative agreement and disagreement can therefore contribute to understanding why or under what circumstances conflict is more or less likely to happen.","PeriodicalId":54206,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Review","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79687280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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