Selective Humanitarian Intervention after the End of the Cold War Evidence from 1991-2005 Data

초록

When do states intervene in humanitarian crises? Although humanitarian interventions are indicative of normative changes in the way states expand the scope of humanity worth protecting from crises, to date, humanitarian interventions have been implemented selectively. The implications of this selectivity regarding the conditions under which the norm of humanitarian intervention constrains policymakers to take action in crises remain uncharted. I argue that as the norm entrepreneurs competitively diffuse norms dictating their own policy responses toward humanitarian crises among domestic constituencies,such normative pressures impose political constraints on policymakers,who adjust their policy positions along the distribution of contending norms to minimize the political cost of repudiating the domestic constituency’s normative preferences. As the distribution of contending norms varies with the effort of entrepreneurs across humanitarian crises,resultant political constraints lead policymakers to articulate differential foreign policy vis-à-vis a perpetrator in crisis. Among the many findings,I discover that as the norm of humanitarian intervention resonates more than other norms, policymakers are more likely to adopt and substitute more forceful foreign policies during crises.

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