AbstractThis article aims to rethink the operation of norms in international policy diffusion. Norms do not simply standardize state behaviors, as is conventionally argued; norms also draw on and set up hierarchical social orders among states. Through a conceptual rethinking we gain a better understanding of where—among which states—new policies may first emerge: social hierarchies create incentives for new policies to develop at the margins of international society so that policies may diffuse “from below.” We also get a better grasp of how policy advocates frame the appropriateness or benefits of a new state practice: they must frame policy demands in terms of the international standing and rank of the targeted state. This article's empirical aspiration is to use these insights to help account for the international policy diffusion of legal sex quotas, a policy to increase the level of female legislators that developed first among “developing” states rather than among the so-called core of international society. By pointing to the link between norms and social hierarchy, the article helps account for policy diffusion “from below.”

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This article advances a hierarchy-centered approach to the study of international social pressure on states. Prior scholarship has centered on the exposure of a gap between word and deed as key for social pressure. We argue that the scholarship on social pressure would benefit from paying more attention to the centrality of social hierarchies in the dynamics and effects of social pressure on states. It is through comparative assessments — the normative ordering of states as superior and inferior and placement in a social hierarchy — that social pressure is exerted and states are prodded into action. States positioned at the top or in the middle of normative hierarchies may be subjected to different social pressure than states positioned at the bottom. Developing this claim, we contend that normative hierarchies come in several forms. Reflecting on the dynamics of these normative hierarchies is important in and of itself, in our view, as it provides a deeper understanding of how norms generate shame, embarrassment, or status anxiety. That said, understanding normative hierarchies also gives us added purchase on explaining how states manage the social pressure of being ranked.

This article argues that the (re-)constitution of diplomacy is intimately linked to gender and the practices of exclusion and inclusion of women and men over time. While the big debates in both academia and among practitioners concern the change and continuity of diplomacy in the last hundred years, gender has received scant, if any, attention. The overarching aim of this article is therefore to advance a new research agenda, which can spur future gender studies and contribute to rethinking diplomacy. It presents an original narrative about three distinct bodies of diplomatic scholarly work that focus on (1) diplomatic history; (2) descriptive representation; and (3) gendered institutions. We conclude that first there is a need to move out of Europe and North America to provide greater focus on Africa, Asia and Latin America. Second, there is a need to move beyond the descriptive single case studies towards more systematic comparisons, which can trace change in institutional gender dynamics over time. Ethnographic work can provide novel insights to gendered micro-processes and the daily mundane institutional practices. Third, as part of the gender turn in the field of diplomacy international feminist theory can generate significant theoretical contributions to the transformation of diplomacy.