Journal article
Is the Good News About Law Compliance Good News About Norm Compliance? The Case of Racial Equality
International organization, v 72(2), pp 351-385
01 Mar 2018
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
The most important international human rights norms are legalized or codified in international treaty law. Yet pernicious practices at odds with these norms endure and sometimes even increase after legalization. According to conventional wisdom, this is because agents commit to but do not comply with international law and the underlying norms. I develop a theory of evasion to explain why norm violations persist even when states technically comply with the law. Because legalization transposes social norms into international law imperfectly, it creates gaps between laws and underlying norms. Because of these norm-law gaps, legality and normative appropriateness will diverge. States caught between opposing pressures from pro-violation and pro-compliance groups exploit this gap through what I call evasionthe intentional minimization of normative obligations that technically complies with international law but violates underlying norms. I demonstrate the theory's empirical purchase in the cases of the French expulsion of Roma immigrants and the Czech school segregation of Roma children. Under the cover of technical compliance with the law, these states violated the norm of racial equality. The argument cautions that the good news about law compliance is not necessarily good news about norm compliance, broadens our understanding of norm violators' agency, and has practical implications for human rights advocacy.
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Details
- Title
- Is the Good News About Law Compliance Good News About Norm Compliance? The Case of Racial Equality
- Creators
- Zoltan I. Buzas - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- International organization, v 72(2), pp 351-385
- Publisher
- Cambridge Univ Press
- Number of pages
- 35
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Politics
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000431736800004
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85043711263
- Other Identifier
- 991019167410804721
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Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Web of Science research areas
- International Relations
- Political Science