State Sovereignty or Human Rights? The Dynamics of Norm Competition Between Human Rights Protection and State Sovereignty in British Foreign Policy

The paper explores the norm competition between sovereignty and human rights norms related to the debate about humanitarian intervention. As social constructivist research suggests, norms influence the behavior of actors. The assumption that action is guided in accordance to what is seen as appropriate becomes problematic when following two conflicting norms becomes possible. This leads to a problem for an actor who internalized both norms and is therefore prone towards two conflicting, but appropriate actions. The paper argues that the actor has to “choose” which norm seems to be (more) appropriate and that the result of this “choice” may also be changing due to norm dynamics between the colliding norms. The problem of colliding norms and changing preferences among them is explored by taking a closer look at the humanitarian intervention debate: While the human rights norm would favor an intervention, state sovereignty would favor a non-intervention. The paper works with the assumption of norm hierarchies as a possibility for an actor to tackle the problem of colliding norms without completely opposing one of the norms. As competing norms may be subject to dynamics, so norm hierarchies may change. This is analyzed by looking at British debates about humanitarian interventions and noninterventions from the early 90s onwards in situations where massive human rights violations took place. While in earlier debates the state sovereignty norm was preferred, later the human rights norm was guiding instead. This had a significant impact for the British behavior within international organizations, especially within the Security Council. The paper traces this development from recognizing the norm competition till the change of the norm hierarchy and changing actor preferences. It examines which domestic and transnational factors and which actors where decisive for this change.