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Refugees, Women, and Weapons
International Norm Adoption and Compliance in Japan
By PETRICE R. FLOWERS Stanford University Press
Copyright © 2009 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8047-5973-1
Chapter One
Introduction
WHY SHOULD WE CARE about international norms and international law? For many years, international relations scholars neglected their role. The assumption was that they were not important determinants of state behavior and did not tell us much about patterns of interaction between states. But world events began to offer challenges to this view. The primary question in this book is how international norms and international law affect domestic policy change. I investigate the counterintuitive adoption of and compliance with three treaties whose international normative framework conflicted with Japan's domestic norms: the International Treaty Concerning the Status of Refugees and the Optional Protocol (nanmin no chi'i ni kansuru joyaku oyobi ni giteisho) (ratified in 1981), the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) (joshi sabetsu teppai joyaku) (ratified in 1985), and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, the Ottawa Convention or Landmine Treaty (taijin jirai kinshi joyaku) (ratifiedin 1998). I explain how conflict between international norms and domestic norms was negotiated to result in successful adoption of the international norms, and I trace the effects of this conflict on efforts to ensure compliance. In a world seemingly dominated by considerations of material and security threats, this book analyzes the significance of international norms and identity in understanding state behavior and explains why Japan defied obvious material and security interests in its decisions to adopt the three treaties investigated here.
In international relations literature, Japan is viewed as a "hard case" by those who argue that international norms matter. Asia is understood as a region where international norms and law are least influential. Scholars such as Miles Kahler argue that when Asian countries adopt international agreements, they are more likely to be trade agreements. Historians of Japan and other serious observers know better; I return to this issue in Chapter 2.
Widely accepted assumptions that human rights instruments are difficult to adopt because they conflict with Asian cultural norms lead us to expect that Japan would not have adopted these three treaties, especially CEDAW and the Refugee Convention. The third treaty considered in this study affected Japan's security by requiring changes that invalidated traditional threat perception and understandings of how best to defend Japan against attack. This third case is especially challenging to traditional international relations theory because the treaty posed a threat to Japan's security alliance with the United States; the centrality of the bilateral relationship with the United States, especially with regard to security, suggests that Japan would be keen to avoid any challenges to that relationship.
Although constructivist international relations scholars focus on the process of norm adoption, and international law scholars such as Anne-Marie Slaughter Burley (1993) identify compliance as a common area of study for scholars of international relations and international law, such questions as when and how states comply with these norms are understudied by international relations scholars. This book analyzes compliance within a constructivist framework. After establishing the reasons for adoption of international norms on women's employment, refugee policy, and land-mine policy, I follow the processes of norm compliance. I address how the processes of identity and interest formation that are key in norm adoption affect compliance. There is general agreement in compliance literature that full compliance is the exception rather than the rule. I build on Chayes and Chayes's (1993) managerial approach to understanding compliance as a process along a continuum in order to focus on how greater or lesser degrees of compliance are attained. This helps makes it possible to anticipate the actual impact of international agreements and possibly increase levels of compliance. I return to this point in Chapter 2.
Based on extensive fieldwork in Japan, this book analyzes the degree of conflict between international and domestic norms and law, the strength of domestic advocates for both international and domestic law, and the state's desire for international legitimacy. More specifically, the three treaties studied here offer challenges to what it means to be Japanese, appropriate roles for women in society, and the most effective ways to defend the country. Traditional explanations of Japan's reactions to international agreements rely on Japan's "distinctive" culture or the power of economic interest groups. Both of these explanations fail to answer why Japan continues to adopt international treaties that are clearly contrary to its domestic norms.
My research illuminates how even highly contested norms are adopted and reveals the particular strategies that domestic advocates use to influence both adoption and compliance. My theoretical contribution is twofold. First, I offer a more comprehensive model to test the explanatory power of two factors that emerge as important explanations of norm adoption in the constructivist literature on norms in a non- Western state: (1) the degree of conflict between international and domestic norms and (2) the strength of nonstate actors. Although these factors are present in most cases of norm adoption and compliance, the way they interact has not been studied. Instead, each element has been isolated and analyzed independently. This approach is insufficient for a sophisticated understanding of their interaction and of the relationship between international and domestic politics. Furthermore, studies of norm adoption and norm compliance have conventionally been split so that insights gained from studying adoption are too often lost when compliance is the subject of analysis. Second, I theorize a third factor, international legitimacy, which has not been adequately incorporated before. Analysis of this factor advances understanding of the social aspects of state behavior, including the role of state identity, in norm adoption and compliance. I argue that both domestic and international concerns determine which norms matter. Norms that promise to enhance international legitimacy will be adopted even when they conflict with domestic norms. Domestic advocates are essential in institutionalizing norms and ensuring compliance and therefore facilitate the shift in identity necessary for full compliance.
Alternative Explanations and Approaches
Rationalist approaches such as neoliberal institutionalism and gaiatsu (foreign pressure) offer alternative explanations. According to neoliberal institutionalist theory, international institutions mitigate the problem that anarchy poses for international relations and state interests and identities are pregiven and orginate from within the state. Although the neoliberal institutionalist perspective does not specifically address the issue of norm adoption or compliance, it does focus on explaining cooperation in situations in which states have incentives and disincentives to cooperate. Neoliberal institutionalist theory states that the main obstacle to cooperation is cheating. Accordingly, institutions can produce cooperation by establishing rules that prevent cheating. Increased interaction, issue linkage, and access to information reduce transaction costs of individual agreements because institutions make cooperation more efficient and therefore reduce the effort of states in cooperation. These changes reduce cheating by raising its costs and providing avenues for the victim to retaliate.
The primary shortcoming of this perspective is the implicit assumption that states would gain some material benefit from cooperating if only the barriers to cooperation were reduced or eliminated. Under explicitly normative international law, this is not always the case. Not only are the issues that these laws seek to address normative, but also the laws themselves often impose normative obligations on states that endorse them. These obligations do not always coincide with either domestic or international material interests. Furthermore, when states make normative commitments, the benefits they reap are not necessarily material. Legitimacy, credibility, and status are important to state survival and state interests at home and abroad. States that are opposed to a norm may adhere quickly during a norm cascade "for reasons that relate to their identities as members of an international society." As members of international society, states seek to increase their credibility and legitimacy and establish a good reputation among other states to maintain their positions as members of the community. International legitimacy also has consequences for a government's domestic basis of legitimacy and its ability to remain in power. Chapter 2 further discusses the theoretical dimensions and empirical significance of legitimacy.
The work of constructivists who argue that norms shape state interests and preferences, and that identity and interests are mutually constituted-that is, neither identity nor interests are pregiven, but each has a role in defining the other through evolving social and political practices-helps answer the question why Japan, in the cases investigated here, agreed to arrangements that imposed international and domestic obligations without any obvious material benefit. For example, Finnemore (1996a, 1996b) argues that international norms have a direct effect on domestic policies by shaping state preferences. Her study explains the adoption of the same norm in different countries even when such norms appear not to be in the state's interest. Constructivist approaches to the study of norms locate the origin of state interests in "an international structure of meaning and social value." In these approaches the role of international organizations in socializing states and constructing state interests is important in the argument that the international system changes states by changing their behavior, not by constraining them. Although her study challenges the assumption that the source of state preferences is located inside the state, Finnemore acknowledges that sometimes domestic politics are important in determining state interests. Nevertheless, she argues that domestic politics cannot explain all state interests or policy choices, especially those policies that seem to contradict or conflict with state interests. She argues that "preferences are strongly influenced and often constituted by social norms, culturally determined roles and rules, and historically contingent discourse." Finnemore does not discount the importance of domestic context and agents in shaping preferences, but she does suggest that there is a dynamic relationship between structure and agents in both international and domestic politics. This is the relationship I explore. Although domestic politics cannot explain all state interests or policy choices, domestic politics do interface with the international system to shape, guide, and influence how the state responds. By arguing that domestic politics cannot explain those policy choices that conflict with state interests, Finnemore assumes that domestic politics do not influence state interests and that the two are always in agreement. This assumption limits the influence of domestic politics to state borders and does not allow for the possibility that domestic and international political interactions take place in dependent of the state.
Arguments that consider the role of foreign pressure in Japan's foreign policy choices usually focus on the U.S.-Japan relationship and read Japan as occupying a subordinate or dependent position in its relationship with the United States. These arguments also depend on rationalist cost-benefit analysis to explain Japan's actions. As we will see, rationalist explanations do not adequately account for state action on these issues. To develop a more complete understanding of the dynamics involved, it is important to situate Japan in relation to other states in an international context where duties and obligations are defined by a state's identity, as well as its position within the international community. This allows us to broaden our understanding of foreign pressure to include identity-based pressure. Through statements of individual actors, opinion leaders, and politicians, we see that in the case of refugee policy, for example, Japanese politicians were attempting to create an identity based on what they wanted to be true about Japan as a state, what would be acceptable internationally, and what would help fulfill its international duty.
The argument I develop does not discount the role of foreign pressure in Japan's decisions to adopt international legal norms that conflict with domestic norms. Indeed, one of the contributions of my research is to show how foreign pressure is effective in Japan by focusing on the often unacknowledged fact that foreign pressure is not limited to material pressure, as most of the existing gaiatsu literature assumes, but that these external pressures include identity pressures that are essential in explaining adoption.
Three Issues: Refugee Policy, Women's Employment, and Antipersonnel Land Mines
My goal in focusing on international agreements is not to argue that they alone determine domestic behavior, but rather to explore how international and domestic political practices interact and under what conditions international norms and law can contribute to domestic policy change. Because domestic norms are filters through which we gain meaning, international norms and law must accord with domestic norms in order to limit tensions and contradictions and to improve the chances that a norm will be adopted and implemented and that some level of compliance will be obtained. My research shows that when there are strong domestic interests in support of implementing the international norm, there is a greater chance that the norm will be adopted and some level of compliance achieved, regardless of its amount of discord with domestic norms.
On the issue of women's employment, there was a high degree of conflict between the international and domestic norms concerned. Before ratification of CEDAW, most legislation related to women's employment in Japan was protective legislation that served to limit women's roles in the paid labor force. The only law that concerned employment discrimination was a law that proscribed wage differentials based solely on sex. Domestic advocates on this issue enjoyed a strong position partly because of high-profile women activists who agitated for adoption of CEDAW, a history of discrimination cases decided in favor of the female complainants, and the long history of women's movements in Japan.
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Excerpted from Refugees, Women, and Weapons by PETRICE R. FLOWERS Copyright © 2009 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission.
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