John Karlsrud with his insider knowledge asks and answers the right questions: Why does the UN act the ways it does, and how do those ways of operating become established policy norms? This is an accessible and valuable book.
Roger Mac Ginty, Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies,
University of Manchester, UK
Out of new conceptual space, Karlsrud adapts the linked ecologies framework to provide fresh analytical thinking on norm arbitrage as a policy practice with real impact.
Diane Stone, University of Warwick, UK and Centenary Professor,
University of Canberra, Australia
John Karlsrud provides a valuable new perspective for understanding and explaining the dynamics of UN peacekeeping missions. Norm Change in International Relations should be read by anyone wishing to understand the evolution of UN peacekeeping practices and how norm change is enacted within international organizations.
Andr Broome, Director of the Centre for the Study of Globalisation
and Regionalisation, University of Warwick, UK
Where do new peacekeeping norms come from? John Karlsruds incisive book shows how senior mission leaders in the field and broader epistemic communities that advocate on peacekeeping issues bring their ideas to the competitive arena of the United Nations, and why certain ideas, including the responsibility to protect and the need for integrated missions, won out in the battle for normative supremacy.
Paul D. Williams, Elliott School of International Affairs,
the George Washington University, USA
Norm Change in International Relations
In recent decades there have been several constructivist scholars who have looked at how norms change in international relations. However, few have taken a closer look at the particular strategies employed to further change or looked at the common factors in play in these processes. This book seeks to further the debates by looking at both agency and structure in tandem.
It focuses on the practices of linked ecologies (formal or informal alliances), undertaken by individuals who are the constitutive parts of norm change processes and who have moved between international organizations, academic institutions, think tanks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and member states. The book sheds new light on how norm change comes about, focusing on the practices of individual actors as well as collective ones. The book draws attention to the role of practices in UN peacekeeping missions, how these may create a bottom-up influence on norm change in UN peacekeeping, and the complex interplay between government and UN officials, applied and academic researchers, and civil society activists forming linked ecologies in processes of norm change. With this contribution, the study further expands the understanding of which actors have agency and what sources of authority they draw on in norm change processes in international organizations.
A significant contribution to the study of international organizations and UN peacekeeping, as well as to the broader questions of global norms in international relations (IR), this work will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations alike.
John Karlsrud is a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI).
Routledge Research on the United Nations
1Chairing Multilateral Negotiations
The case of the United Nations
Spyros Blavoukos and Dimitris Bourantonis
2Individual Agency and Policy Change at the United Nations
The people of the United Nations
Ingvild Bode
3Reforming UN Decision-Making Procedures
Promoting a deliberative system for global peace and security
Daniel Niemetz Martin
4The UN International Criminal Tribunals
Transition without justice?
Klaus Bachmann and Aleksandar Fati
5Norm Change in International Relations
Linked ecologies in UN peacekeeping operations
John Karlsrud
Norm Change in International Relations
Linked ecologies in UN peacekeeping operations
John Karlsrud
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2016 John Karlsrud
The right of John Karlsrud to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Karlsrud, John, author.
Title: Norm change in international relations : linked ecologies in UN
peacekeeping operations / John Karlsrud.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015028344 | ISBN 9781138942707 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315672984 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: United NationsPeacekeeping forces. | Peacekeeping
forces. | International relationsPhilosophy. | International relations
Social aspects.
Classification: LCC JZ6374 .K37 2016 | DDC 341.5/84dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015028344
ISBN: 978-1-138-94270-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67298-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Gabriel and Ive with love
Contents
This book has two origins. While working for the UN peacekeeping mission in Chad and the Central African Republic (MINURCAT), I found myself struggling with a puzzle the more I got to know the key principles or norms guiding peacekeeping, the more I came to realize that these norms did not constitute a harmonious set of principles, but could even be directly at odds with each other in given situations. I was struck by how my boss, Victor Angelo, the UN special representative of the secretary-general (SRSG) and head of MINURCAT, continuously had to carefully consider how to respond to emerging situations, weighing the various norms guiding peacekeeping missions against each other. In doing this, he was relying on experience from a long career as a UN official and the inculcated norms that follow, consulting headquarters in New York, but he was also asking for input from the staff around him.
The peacekeeping mission I was working for, MINURCAT, had been mandated to help the government of Chad protect vulnerable populations and humanitarians in the eastern part of the country and also to provide institutional support to strengthen the rule of law and facilitate intercommunity dialogue at the local level. In this mandate there was a potential conflict between giving support to the government to enable it to expand and (re-)establish authority, while at the same time remaining an impartial mediator at the local level. Although the mission did not have a political mandate to mediate between the government and the rebels who were vying for power (which made it somewhat of an outlier in terms of peacekeeping missions), there was strong tension between the mandates we were given a tension that in my view is common to all peacekeeping missions today. This tension emerges from the fact that while peacekeeping missions today are supposed to be impartial, maintain consent of the main parties, and use as little force as possible, they are also supposed to extend state authority and protect civilians against harm, even when the perpetrator is the state itself. These core and conflictual norms of peacekeeping have developed since the beginning of the UN itself, a point to which I return in the following.
