Consortium led by GPPi receives research grant on global norm evolution and the Responsibility to Protect

A research consortium led by GPPi has received a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation in cooperation with two other foundations, Compagnia di San Paolo and the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. In the fall 2012, the consortium will start a two-and-a-half-year research project called ​“Global Norm Evolution and the Responsibility to Protect.” The grant was awarded as part of the ​“Europe and Global Challenges” program run jointly by the three foundations.

In addition to GPPi, the consortium includes Dr Ricardo Soares de Oliveira of Oxford University; Professor Christopher Daase and Julian Junk of Goethe University in Frankfurt; Professor Zhang Haibin and Dr Liu Tiewa of Peking University; Professor Matias Spektor and Marcos Tourinho of Fundação Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro; Professor C.S.R. Murthy at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi; and Professor Xymena Kurowska and Erna Burai at Central European University in Budapest, where GPPi Director Wolfgang Reinicke serves as dean of the School of Public Policy.

By focusing on the debate over the Responsibility to Protect as an emerging global norm, the project seeks to examine the growing contestation of global norms by non-Western powers and how this contestation leads to ​“norm evolution.” The project will highlight the open-endedness of this process, the potential for changes in norm interpretation over time, as well as the convergence and divergence between alternative interpretations of norms.

The research project comprises two parts. The first part – actor analysis – will concentrate on how seven major powers tried to influence the Responsibility to Protect between 2005 and 2012. Those seven powers include Brazil, China, the European Union, India, Russia, South Africa and the United States. The second part – interaction analysis – is the analytical core of the project. In nine in-depth case studies of critical junctures between 2005 and 2012, the project will examine how the interaction dynamics between the major powers influenced the norm’s evolution. The case study work will be divided up and assigned to pairs of researchers, mostly connecting a Western and a non-Western researchers.