Principles from the Periphery: The Neglected Southern Sources of Global Norms

Abstract

Introduction In recent years, scholars of global governance have written much about the influence of global norms. It is often assumed in this literature that global norms originate in materially powerful Northern countries. The assumption is understandable. Policymakers and societal groups from dominant states often play a central role in setting agendas in global governance and in shaping global ideas and beliefs about what behavior is appropriate. Norms emerging from their domestic political settings are also often diffused to poorer and less powerful countries through various processes such as emulation and coercion. While this assumption is widespread, it deserves to be questioned. For example, scholars such as Liliana Obregon, Louise Fawcett, and Ivan Jaksic explore Latin American contributions to debates on international law in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (1) Jorge Dominguez also highlights how the strong Latin American defense of nonintervention in the early twentieth century generated international norms such as the rejection of armed intervention to collect international public debts. (2) Others analyze how Southern anticolonial and nationalist movements in the postwar period helped to shape the evolution of international law. (3) Jennifer Clapp and Linda Swanston also demonstrate how more recent international environmental norms have been pioneered in the South and diffused from there to Northern countries. (4) These (and other) analyses demonstrate important Southern sources of global norms. This central insight deserves greater recognition and further exploration by scholars of global governance, a task to which this special section seeks to contribute. Drawing on new historical research, the articles in the collection reveal Southern origins of norms that are central to contemporary global governance such as commitments to universal participation, international development, and international human rights. Across diverse issue areas, they highlight the need to abandon the assumption that global norms emerge only from the North and call attention to the important agency in global norm making of individuals from the South. Martha Finnemore and Michelle Jurkovich set the stage by analyzing the role that Latin American governments played before World War I in establishing the important norm of universal participation at multilateral conferences. Building on that history, Eric Helleiner explores the neglected Southern origins of the norm that international institutions should support the economic development of poorer countries. Kathryn Sikkink examines the often overlooked contribution of Latin America to the creation of the norm of international human rights after World War II. …