Rhetorical adaptation, normative resistance and international order-making

China’s advancement of the responsibility to protect

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8911599
AutoresCourtney J Fung (0000-0001-6498-6006, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen55
Número2
Páginas193-215
Fecha de publicación2019-06-20
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCooperation and Conflict (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0010-8367 • E-ISSN: 1460-3691
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0010836719858118
OpenAlexW2950113905
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas16
Referencias citadas100

How do rising powers execute normative resistance to shape international order? Contrary to the existing literature, I argue that rising powers are productive agents of normative change and international order-making, through the use of rhetorical adaptation to contest pre-existing orders. Rhetorical adaptation is a strategy and set of tactics that simultaneously modifies norm content, while reducing critiques of obstructionism. To make this argument, this article traces China’s efforts as a ‘norm shaper’ regarding the responsibility to protect through the inception, institutionalization and implementation of the norm in the landmark 2011 Libya intervention. China layers traditional sovereignty norms under the responsibility to protect, focusing and narrowing the emerging norm by fortifying the primacy of the state. While I show how China resists co-option into an evolving ontological order that challenges traditional sovereignty, the article also addresses the unforeseen consequences of China’s normative efforts that ‘backfired’ to permit the use of the responsibility to protect to justify Libyan regime change. More broadly, this article speaks to rising powers as agents crafting international order, and the process of normative resistance that occurs throughout the norm life cycle. I draw from publicly available documents and semi-structured interviews with Chinese foreign policy and United Nations elites

Argument (complex analysis · China · International law · Law and economics · Norm (philosophy · Normative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Responsibility to Protect · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Sovereignty · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Development and Aid · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law