Everyone wants (a) peace: the dynamics of rhetoric and practice on 'Women, Peace and Security'

摘要

Everyone wants (a) peace: the dynamics of rhetoric and practice on 'Women, Peace and Security' 'Women, Peace and Security' (WPS) is not just any normative agenda: everyone wants a piece of it. WPS is characterized by unprecedented recognition by states at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the presence of multiple stakeholders, including its own transnational NGO network focused on the first Resolution, 1325. The high degree of participation from civil society in framing the norm from the outset-driving their own access to contestation-makes WPS relatively unique among global normative agendas. It is therefore a good case in which to examine the 'dynamics of dissent' and test the effects of discursive and behavioural contestation on normative change. The article seeks to advance the thriving literature on the UN WPS agenda and to further develop the exploratory approach to contestation, which evaluates normative progress based on increased access of all those affected by the norm to practices of norm validation. It maps norm contestation at distinct sites, reflecting a sequence of WPS events referenced at the 2015 UNSC open debate on WPS. It evaluates practices of contestation with regard to affected WPS stakeholders' access to political agency and assesses 'whose practices' affect norm change and transformative change in the WPS agenda. The authors conclude that the relative access of the wide range of stakeholders to the different repertoires and constellations of contestation affects the outcomes of WPS. They suggest that scholars should evaluate diverse practices of contestation and identify expanding spaces and choices for a variety of local, national and regional perceptions of gender-equal peace and security. This article forms part of the special section of the May 2019 issue of International Affairs on 'The dynamics of dissent', guest-edited by Anette Stimmer and Lea Wisken. China vs the WHO: a behavioural norm conflict in the SARS crisis This article studies a conflict over two competing norms in which the actors demonstrated incompatible positions not through arguments, but through actions. During the SARS crisis, China and the World Health Organization (WHO) entered a norm conflict over the precedence of sovereignty or global health security. Both resorted to behavioural, not discursive contestation: while the WHO practically but not rhetorically challenged the sovereignty norm by acting according to the norm of global health security, China-without openly acknowledging it- contravened the basic principles of global health security by acting according to the overlapping sovereignty norm. Why and with what consequences do actors choose to contest norms through actions rather than words? The article accounts for the resort to behavioural contestation by pointing to the strategic advantages it offers for furthering a contentious norm understanding without facing the social costs of making it explicit. It furthermore highlights that behavioural contestation may feed back into and change the odds of discursive contestation as its practical effects provide rhetorical resources to (de-)legitimate one or the other position. The propositions are illustrated in the interactions of China and the WHO during the SARS crisis and the subsequent norm development. This article forms part of the special section of the May 2019 issue of International Affairs on 'The dynamics of dissent', guest-edited by Anette Stimmer and Lea Wisken.