Promoting democratic norms? Social constructivism and the ‘subjective’ limits to liberalism

Abstract

This article argues that, since the end of the Cold War, the understanding of democratic norm promotion has shifted through three conceptually distinct and chronologically distinguishable stages: the early 1990s view that democratic norms would be universalized with the Cold War victory of liberal ideals and the spread of new global norms of good governance; the mid-to late-1990s view that barriers to the promotion of democratic norms could be understood as the product of state or elite self-interests; and the perspective dominant since the 2000s, that the promotion of democratic norms necessarily involves much deeper and more extensive external intervention in order to transform social institutions and societal practices. Through charting the shifts in the understanding of democratic norm promotion, this article seeks to highlight the problems inherent in norm promotion discourses that emphasize the importance of subjective agency, normative choices, and cultural and ideational frameworks of understanding.A key problem being that, in the downplaying of social and economic context, agency-based understandings tend to degrade the rational capacities of -and to exoticize and problematize -the non-Western subject. The social constructivist approach, which presupposes a closed or endogenous framework of societal reproduction, has thereby been a crucial paradigm through which Western democracy promotion discourses have shifted to emphasizing the subjective policy barrier posed by the allegedly 'nonliberal' mindset of the non-Western subject.

One Size Does Not Fit All: An Analysis of US and EU Democracy Promotion in the Western Balkans

“…6 Michael McFaul, "Democracy Promotion as a World Value" The Washington Quarterly, vol: 28, no:1, Winter 2004 see e.g. O'Donnell and Schmitter 1986;Przeworski 1997;Diamond 2008;Burnell 2000;Youngs 2002;Smith 1994;Teixeira 2008;David Chandler, "Promoting Democratic Norms? Social Constructivism and the "Subjective" Limits to Liberalism," Democratization, vol: 20, no: 2, 2013, pp.…”

Regional party networks and the limits of democratic norm diffusion in Southeast Asia

“…Its prominence grew exponentially after the end of the Cold War when scholars began to frame new approaches to explain the global spread of democracy (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998), human rights norms and institutions (Risse et al, 1999) and the rise of regionalism in international relations (Acharya, 2009). More recently, as the global spread of democracy came to a halt (Diamond, 2008), the latest generation of norm theorists has turned their attention to the limits of norm diffusion (Chandler, 2013) and, increasingly, the diffusion of authoritarian rather than democratic norms and values (Tansey, 2016).…”

A General Framework for International Conflict under Incomplete Information

“…Conflict between states comes at a great cost (Pinker, 2011;Goldstein, 2011;Pond, 2017;Neuenkirch and Neumeier, 2016), motivating extensive research into the conditions for the onset of war or economic sanctions (Chandler, 2013;Gartzke, 2007;Bueno de Mesquita et al, 1999;Pinker, 2011;Maoz and Russett, 1993;Dixon, 1994;Hufbauer et al, 2007). To this end, scholars have developed a large number of theories to understand how conflict in international relations develops.…”