Petrice Flowers - Refugees, Women, and Weapons: International Norm Adoption and Compliance in Japan

Stanford University Press
Stanford, California

2009 by the Board of Trustees of the

Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Flowers, Petrice R.

Refugees, women, and weapons : international norm adoption and compliance in Japan / Petrice R. Flowers. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780804772365

1. JapanForeign relations19452. Treaties. 3. International obligations. 4. International law. 5. International relations. I. Title.

DS889.5.F56 2009

327.52dc22 2008055816

Typeset by Westchester Book Group in 10.5/12 Bembo

For my nieces and nephews who fill
my life with hope and joy:

Dont
Princess
Monae
Sydnei
Myles
Dalon
Brice
ArreAnna
Nia

Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

IN RESEARCHING AND WRITING this book, I have incurred many personal and intellectual debts. I have been fortunate to have had the support of many people along the way, and although I cannot mention each individually, I offer my heartfelt thanks to all of them. I owe special thanks to Kathryn Sikkink, who has provided excellent guidance and encouragement during the first years of my career. Kathryn, Dick Price (now of the University of British Columbia), Bud Duvall, Allen Isaacman, and other mentors in the Department of Political Science and the MacArthur Program at the University of Minnesota greatly contributed to my intellectual development, teaching, and scholarship. I am grateful for funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science that enabled me to conduct research from 2002 to 2004 at the University of Tokyo. In Japan, I am indebted to Iwasawa Yuji for graciously agreeing to host me during my stay at the University of Tokyo. I would also like to thank Yamashita Yasuko, Ishikawa Eri, Omi Miho, and Hayashi Mika for their assistance at various stages of this research. I left Tokyo in 2004 for a position at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa, where I am fortunate to have great colleagues in the Department of Political Science and at the Center for Japanese Studies. I want to give special thanks to Helen Kinsella, Susan Loveland Lett, Ann Towns, and Kristin Willey for their company as great friends and intellectual companions. Thank you to Cyndy Brown for her editorial skills. The book is much stronger because of the hard work of Jessica Walsh and Stacy Wagner at Stanford University Press and the thorough reading, thoughtful comments, and helpful suggestions of two anonymous reviewers. I am also grateful to Charles Eberline for his skillful copyediting. Finally, Noa Matsushita deserves recognition for doing a last-minute check of Japanese names.

My achievements are always heavily dependent on the collective energy of those outside the academy who help me restore my perspective, rejuvenate my spirit, and keep me centered. I appreciate the encouragement of my large extended family. My parents, Ronald and Sheila, and my sisters and brothers, Sharice, LaRonne, LaNice, Ronice, LaDonne, and Lakisha, helped me stay grounded and kept me motivated. Calvin and Francis Washington and the rest of my Washington familys warm concern gave me great comfort. I am especially gratified to have had a number of awesome women in my grandmothers, Sarah and Isadora, and the sistersPearl, Leomi, Ethel, Easter Mae, Ruby, Zipporah, Laverne, and Hilmawho taught me to live with grace and dignity without extinguishing my fire. Finally, I want to thank Kevin, an amazing man with whom I have the privilege of making an incredible journey.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE about international norms and international law? For many years, international relations scholars neglected their role. The assumption was that they were not important determinants of state behavior and did not tell us much about patterns of interaction between states. But world events began to offer challenges to this view. The primary question in this book is how international norms and international law affect domestic policy change. I investigate the counterintuitive adoption of and compliance with three treaties whose international normative framework conflicted with Japans domestic norms: the International Treaty Concerning the Status of Refugees and the Optional Protocol ( nanmin no chii ni kansuru jyaku oyobi ni giteisho ) (ratified in 1981), the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) ( joshi sabetsu teppai jyaku ) (ratified in 1985), and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, the Ottawa Convention or Landmine Treaty ( taijin jirai kinshi jyaku ) (ratified in 1998). I explain how conflict between international norms and domestic norms was negotiated to result in successful adoption of the international norms, and I trace the effects of this conflict on efforts to ensure compliance. In a world seemingly dominated by considerations of material and security threats, this book analyzes the significance of international norms and identity in understanding state behavior and explains why Japan defied obvious material and security interests in its decisions to adopt the three treaties investigated here.

In international relations literature, Japan is viewed as a hard case by those who argue that international norms matter. Asia is understood as a region where international norms and law are least influential. Scholars such as Miles Kahler argue that when Asian countries adopt international agreements, they are more likely to be trade agreements. Historians of Japan and other serious observers know better; I return to this issue in Chapter 2.

Widely accepted assumptions that human rights instruments are difficult to adopt because they conflict with Asian cultural norms lead us to expect that Japan would not have adopted these three treaties, especially CEDAW and the Refugee Convention. The third treaty considered in this study affected Japans security by requiring changes that invalidated traditional threat perception and understandings of how best to defend Japan against attack. This third case is especially challenging to traditional international relations theory because the treaty posed a threat to Japans security alliance with the United States; the centrality of the bilateral relationship with the United States, especially with regard to security, suggests that Japan would be keen to avoid any challenges to that relationship.

Although constructivist international relations scholars focus on the process of norm adoption, and international law scholars such as Anne-Marie Slaughter Burley (1993) identify compliance as a common area of study for scholars of international relations and international law, such questions as when and how states comply with these norms are understudied by international relations scholars. This book analyzes compliance within a constructivist framework. After establishing the reasons for adoption of international norms on womens employment, refugee policy, and land-mine policy, I follow the processes of norm compliance. I address how the processes of identity and interest formation that are key in norm adoption affect compliance. There is general agreement in compliance literature that full compliance is the exception rather than the rule. I build on Chayes and Chayess (1993) managerial approach to understanding compliance as a process along a continuum in order to focus on how greater or lesser degrees of compliance are attained. This helps makes it possible to anticipate the actual impact of international agreements and possibly increase levels of compliance. I return to this point in Chapter 2.