Norm Proxy War and Resistance Through Outsourcing: The Dynamics of Transnational Human Rights Contestation

Hum Rights Rev (2016) 17:165191 DOI 10.1007/s12142-016-0399-1

Published online: 30 January 2016# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Abstract A great deal of constructivist international relations research on norms focuses on the diffusion of liberal human rights values. In contrast, this article analyzes how critics seek to undermine human rights principles in contexts where human rights norms are increasingly hegemonic. It argues that when norm challengers are frustrated by the institutionalization of human rights, they engage in transnational strategies to pursue their agendas. In norm proxy war, actors patronize surrogates in locales where norms are weak in the hope that victories abroad will reverberate internationally and at home. This dynamic is illustrated by American evangelical sponsorship of political homophobia in Uganda, culminating in that countrys draconian anti-LGBT legislation. When norms are resisted through outsourcing, actors contract out human rights violations in an effort to erode norms through practice, as evidenced by patterns of extraterritorial detention and extraordinary rendition to torture in the post-9/11 BGlobal War on Terror.^ Identifying these patterns broadens understanding of potential pathways of norm contestation.

Keywords International norms . Contestation . Proxy war . Outsourcing . LGBT rights . Rendition . Torture

Despite insistence that norms may promote a range of values across the political spectrum, norm scholarship has tended to pay disproportionate attention to the diffusion of liberal democratic, humanitarian, and universal human rights norms (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Risse et al. 1999; Risse et al. 2013). Considering that transnational advocacy networks, international organizations, and epistemic communities have

* Rebecca Sanders [email protected]

1 Department of Political Science, University of Cincinnati, 1115 Crosley Tower,

45221-0375 Cincinnati, OH, USA

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Rebecca Sanders1

166 R. Sanders

promoted these causes in recent decades, this is not surprising. However, this orientation raises questions as to where other types of norms fit into the landscape of political and social change. This article seeks to address this puzzle by advancing understanding of challenges to internationally articulated and legally institutionalized human rights principles, not simply as...