Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In the age of the ‘war on terror’, a key question for scholarship on ethical foreign policy is whether multilateral norms associated with international law and the UN system actually provide the only kind of legitimate normative justifications for international state acts (beyond those in self defence). Can contemporary IR theory ground judgements over legitimate moral justifications for foreign policy? This paper will argue that it cannot, as existing theories cannot explain why state actors choose certain normative international strategies over others in world politics. Moreover, existing approaches are problematic in at least two important ways: 1) they give excessively idealist and rather unconstrained accounts of states as normative actors and 2) have rejected causal analysis of normative issues in IR thus rending their explanations incapable of explaining change in international normative state action. The paper examines the existing accounts in detail in the light of the explanations they give for why state actors chose unexpected normative strategies at the end of the Cold War and during the war on terror. To address the shortcomings in existing analysis, a new research programme on normative state agency in IR is put forward in conclusion.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper deals with the normative source of political revisionism, one of the fundamental questions in international security. The post-9/11 military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the ongoing nuclear crisis with North Korea and Iran, underscore serious security threats posed by so-called rogue states. The existing dichotomy in the current international system begs the question: Why do some states challenge the international order, while the majority of others live peacefully, respecting the status-quo? The paper addresses this puzzle by emphasizing the impact of normative power and authority on potential revisionist states.
In addressing the question of political revisionist, or challengers to the international system, the conventional scholarship emphasizes either structural factors or domestic attributes. On one hand, neorealism views a collision between the status-quo and revisionist states as a result of shifts in power distribution, downplaying the complexity of the domestic politics of the involved states. On the other hand, domestic models solely stress the importance of internal causes, including decision-making processes, domestic culture, religion, and identity.
This paper attempts to overcome this disjuncture by introducing the "norm-driven change" model: an analytical framework that examines the interaction between the international normative system and the formation of domestic ideas and identity. In particular, the study focuses on how multiplicity in the international normative environment, as well as its transformation, create an uncertain environment. This normative uncertainty is likely to trigger domestic political debates within a state, and change its worldview and national identity. Through this process of identity shift, a state could emerge as a challenger to the international system.
The norm-driven change model is applied to the case of Japanese revisionism before World War II. The transformation of Japanese foreign policy in the 1920s and 1930s is attributed to the uncertain international normative environment at that time. It argues how several governing norms during the period were perceived by Japanese foreign policy establishments, and hence shaped the political discourse during the foreign policy decision-making process. A strong emphasis is placed on Western racism and the West-East dichotomy that were present during the interwar period. The model provides new insights into understanding the historical shift of Japanese politics, from a democratic government, cooperative with the international system in the 1920s, to a military-ruled regime with a revisionist foreign policy in the 1930s.
The practical implications of this analysis are far reaching, when the world today faces challenges of integrating rogue states, as well as avoiding alienating rising powers, such as China and India. The norm-driven change model elucidates how the ideas and values expressed by the existing status-quo powers, such as the United States, affect the creation of the normative environment, and consequently influence the way potentially-revisionist states relate to the world. A well-considered theoretical model of revisionism can help generate policies more sensitive to the factors that make states become revisionist.

Publication Type: Paper (prepared oral presentation)
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Is anger against one’s lot sufficient to lead people of disadvantaged groups to engage in counter-normative acts of protest such as strikes and riots? That is the main question the present research is seeking to address through the use of the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA) by Van Zomeren, Postmes and Spears (2008). According to SIMCA there are three different kinds of motives fuelling participation in collective action: a) emotional (e.g. anger against one’s disadvantage), b) instrumental (e.g. belief in the potential of one’s group to improve their disadvantaged position) and c) identification with one’s group. Drawing on data from two correlational studies (N1 = 77, N2 = 43) conducted in industrial action contexts, the current research shows that 1) the emotional pathway appears necessary to instigate participation in normative acts of protest such as petitioning and leafleting, 2) the instrumental pathway seems to be a necessary condition for participation in counter-normative acts of protest and 3) the identification pathway appears to be equally important for participation in either type of protest. Study 3 (N = 150) experimentally manipulated the salience of positively or negatively experienced social norms resulting in two conditions: a) normative and b) counter-normative, respectively. In line with hypotheses, the emotional pathway significantly predicted protest participation in the normative condition only whereas the instrumental pathway was the sole statistically significant predictor of protest participation in the counter-normative condition. Implications for the SIMCA are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Social norms form structures in which a party’s known record calls for certain responses from the group, for rewards for keeping the norm and/or punishments for violating it. The norms of the system must form an equilibrium, in the sense of providing proper incentives for the party to keep the norm and for those enforcing the norm to enforce it. The payoff commodity can often be seen face and status within the group. Public apologies function within a normative system in three ways – as supporting norms for other kinds of good behavior, as norms in themselves, and as ways to invoke other norms of promise-keeping, in that they imply promises to avoid future such offenses. As supporting norms they are unusual in that the violator is supposed to “self-punish.” A game model shows that having to punish oneself can be both an equilibrium and the most efficient one. The promise-making nature of apologies helps explain why recipients insist on hearing the specific word, but it also reveals a flaw in the system, a possible source of future conflict, in that the usual form of apologies glosses over just what the apologizer is committing to for the future.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The dominant theories of tax assignment are normative theories that articulate how tax authority ought to be divided among different levels of government. Unfortunately, research increasingly shows these theories do not explain the evolution of tax assignment nor do these theories take into account the practical considerations of tax administration. This paper first reviews the conventional textbook presentation of the theory and then proceeds to lay out the main criticisms. Next, the paper proposes that institutional analysis of tax assignment offers the basis for a positive theory and illustrates this perspective with a review of the historical development of property taxes in the U.S. In its final section, the paper sketches a preliminary set of internal and external factors hypothesized to shape the path dependent development of tax policy and administration.