Norm linkage as politics of legitimacy: The interaction of protection and prosecution norms in humanitarian intervention debates

• Applicant: Dr. Caroline Fehl
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: from 2016 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 280446800

What should the „international community“ do in the face of mass atrocities being committed in a country? Since the end of the Cold War, different international norms have emerged that call for an international intervention in such cases: a “duty to protect”, which postulates that the international community should intervene with military means, if necessary, if a state is unwilling to shield its citizens from violence; and a “duty to prosecute”, which demands that atrocity crimes that would go unpunished in the respective state be prosecuted by international criminal justice mechanisms. Although both intervention norms have different objectives – the prevention of atrocities on the one hand and their punishment on the other –, potential synergies and conflicts between them have been debated ever since their inception: Can prosecutions deter violence and protect civilians, or do they have escalating effects? Do Military interventions for the protection of civilians further or jeopardize the goals of international criminal justice? The ongoing debate about these questions is not limited to academic circles, but is also conducted by political actors. The project examines this political discourse and its underlying political dynamics: Which interpretations of the relationship between protection and prosecution duties have prevailed in international debates about interventions – and why? This research question is investigated on the basis of a quantitative content analysis, combined with comparative and process-tracing methods. Can we confirm the claim by some observers that political actors construct linkages between protection and prosecution strategically to legitimize contested intervention decisions? For instance, do governments use the alleged deterrence effect of criminal trials as an excuse to avoid more costly military protection measures? Or is the international community’s discourse – and thus ultimately its collective intervention practice – driven by different factors? To answer these questions, the project develops a theoretical model of norm linkage, which can be transferred to other policy Areas to make a broader theoretical contribution to research about international norms. According to this model, positive or negative linkages between norms are discursively constructed by political actors. These linkage discourses can be driven by different Motives and structural conditions. The first phase of the project focused on analyzing whether strategic motives can be discerned in debates about Darfur, Libya and Syria, and whether the evolution of the discourse reflects the influence of power inequalities, institutional authorities or precedents. Following the only partial confirmation of these hypotheses, the proposed extension project will use a broadened database and a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to test alternative hypotheses connecting norm linkage to political actors’ cultural predispositions and to collective learning.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants