Socializing States

Socializing States
Author: Ryan Goodman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2013-09-19
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199300992

This book argues for a greater specification of how international law influences relevant actors to improve human rights. It argues that states are influenced via general social processes such as cultural contagion, identification, and mimicry. These processes occasion a rethinking of fundamental regime design problems in human rights law.

Socializing States

Socializing States
Author: Ryan Goodman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2013-09-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190203250

The role of international law in global politics is as poorly understood as it is important. But how can the international legal regime encourage states to respect human rights? Given that international law lacks a centralized enforcement mechanism, it is not obvious how this law matters at all, and how it might change the behavior or preferences of state actors. In Socializing States, Ryan Goodman and Derek Jinks contend that what is needed is a greater emphasis on the mechanisms of law's social influence--and the micro-processes that drive each mechanism. Such an emphasis would make clearer the micro-foundations of international law. This book argues for a greater specification and a more comprehensive inventory of how international law influences relevant actors to improve human rights conditions. Substantial empirical evidence suggests three conceptually distinct mechanisms whereby states and institutions might influence the behavior of other states: material inducement, persuasion, and what Goodman and Jinks call acculturation. The latter includes social and cognitive forces such as mimicry, status maximization, prestige, and identification. The book argues that (1) acculturation is a conceptually distinct, empirically documented social process through which state behavior is influenced; and (2) acculturation-based approaches might occasion a rethinking of fundamental regime design problems in human rights law. This exercise not only allows for reexamination of policy debates in human rights law; it also provides a conceptual framework for assessing the costs and benefits of various design principles. While acculturation is not necessarily the most important or most desirable approach to promoting human rights, a better understanding of all three mechanisms is a necessary first step in the development of an integrated theory of international law's influence. Socializing States provides the critical framework to improve our understanding of how norms operate in international society, and thereby improve the capacity of global and domestic institutions to build cultures of human rights,

Social States

Social States
Author: Alastair I. Johnston
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2008
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691134537

Socialization in international relations theory -- Mimicking -- Social influence -- Persuasion -- Conclusions.

The Future of Human Rights

The Future of Human Rights
Author: William F. Schulz
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2008
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780812241112

The thirteen essays in this volume provide thematic assessments of the current state of global human rights programs as well as prescriptions for future human rights policy, with topics including democracy promotion, women's rights, refugee policy, religious freedom, labor standards, as well as economic, social, and cultural rights.

The United States, Israel, and the Search for International Order

The United States, Israel, and the Search for International Order
Author: Cameron G. Thies
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2013-05-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1136675477

How do emerging states become full, functioning members of the international system? In this book, Cameron G. Thies argues that new and emerging states are subject to socialization efforts by current member states, which guide them in locating their position in the international system. Thies develops a theoretical approach to understanding how states socialize each other into and out of different roles in the international system, such as regional power, ally, and peacekeeper. The concept of state socialization is developed using role theory, a middle-range theory developed in the interdisciplinary field of social psychology. This middle-range theory helps to flesh out the theoretical mechanisms often missing in grand theories like neorealism and constructivism. The result is a structural theory of international politics that also allows for the explanation of actual foreign policy behavior by states. The foreign policy histories of the U.S. and Israel are analyzed using this theoretical approach to show how international social pressure has affected the kinds of roles they have adopted throughout their histories, as well as the kinds of roles that they have not been allowed to adopt. By considering the effects of international socialization attempts on their foreign policy behavior, Thies shows the well-known cases of the U.S. and Israel in a new light. The United States, Israel, and the Search for International Order argues that the process by which states learn their appropriate roles and behaviors in the international social order is crucial to understanding international conflict and cooperation, which will be significant for those studying both theory and method in international relations, foreign policy, and diplomatic history.

The Social Construction of State Power

The Social Construction of State Power
Author: Barkin, J. Samuel
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-05-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1529209846

Realism and constructivism are often viewed as competing paradigms for understanding international relations, though scholars are increasingly arguing that the two are compatible. Edited by one of the leading proponents of realist constructivism, this volume shows what realist constructivism looks like in practice by innovatively combining exposition and critiques of the realist constructivist approach with a series of international case studies. Each chapter addresses a key empirical question in international relations and provides important guidance for how to combine both approaches effectively in research. Addressing future directions and possibilities for realist constructivism in international relations, this book makes a significant contribution to the theorizing of global politics.

Human Rights, State Compliance, and Social Change

Human Rights, State Compliance, and Social Change
Author: Ryan Goodman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2011-11-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139504223

National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) – human rights commissions and ombudsmen – have gained recognition as a possible missing link in the transmission and implementation of international human rights norms at the domestic level. They are also increasingly accepted as important participants in global and regional forums where international norms are produced. By collecting innovative work from experts spanning international law, political science, sociology and human rights practice, this book critically examines the significance of this relatively new class of organizations. It focuses, in particular, on the prospects of these institutions to effectuate state compliance and social change. Consideration is given to the role of NHRIs in delegitimizing – though sometimes legitimizing – governments' poor human rights records and in mobilizing – though sometimes demobilizing – civil society actors. The volume underscores the broader implications of such cross-cutting research for scholarship and practice in the fields of human rights and global affairs in general.

International Institutions and Socialization in Europe

International Institutions and Socialization in Europe
Author: Jeffrey T. Checkel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2007-02-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139461370

Since the path-breaking work of Karl Deutsch on security communities and Ernst Haas on European integration, it has been clear that international institutions may create senses of community and belonging beyond the nation state. Put differently, they can socialize. Yet the mechanisms underlying such dynamics have been unclear. This volume explores these mechanisms of international community building, from a resolutely eclectic stand point. Rationalism is thus the social theory of choice for some contributors, while others are more comfortable with social constructivism. This problem-driven perspective and the theoretical bridge building it are the cutting edge in international relations theory. By providing more fined-grained arguments on precisely how international institutions matter, such an approach sheds crucial light on the complex relationship between states and institutions, between rational choice and social constructivism, and, in our case, between Europe and the nation state.

Irrational Human Rights? An Examination of International Human Rights Treaties

Irrational Human Rights? An Examination of International Human Rights Treaties
Author: Naiade el-Khoury
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2020-12-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9004439765

In Irrational Human Rights? An Examination of International Human Rights Treaties Naiade el-Khoury pursues the question how effective international human rights treaties really are and offers a discussion on the effects of treaty mechanisms.

Role Compatibility as Socialization

Role Compatibility as Socialization
Author: Dorothée Vandamme
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2022-03-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000551644

In Role Compatibility as Socialization, Dorothée Vandamme examines Pakistan’s socialization process in terms of role compatibility in the 2008-2018 period. Adopting an Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) method of analysis, Vandamme builds on role theory to develop a theory of socialization as role compatibility to explain the dynamics of Pakistan’s (dys)functioning position and its status-seeking process as a fully functioning member of the international system. Specifically, she focuses on how Pakistani civilian and military leaders define their country’s positioning towards India, the United States and China. In doing so, she traces the link between domestic role contestation at the country’s inception and the resulting domination of the military’s conception of their country, state identity, how it projects itself externally and how it is received by others. Departing from strictly structural or agent-oriented explanations, Vandamme expertly demonstrates Pakistan’s perceived role compatibility with significant others and underlines the causality between state identity, foreign policy behavior and socialization. Role Compatibility as Socialization will be of interest to graduate students and researchers who work on and with role theory and socialization theory, and for those with a research interest on South Asia.