The Two Sides of Recognition: Gender Justice and the Pluralization of Social Esteem

Abstract

This article seeks to sketch the contours of a good society, distinguished by its gender justice and the plural recognition of egalitarian difference. I begin by reconstructing Nancy Fraser's arguments highlighting the link between distributive justice and relations of recognition, in particular as it applies to gender justice. In a second step, I show that the debate on the politics of recognition has confirmed what empirical analyses already indicated, namely that Fraser's status model takes too reductive a stance towards the identity-constituting effects of relations of recognition. The simple demand that identities be recognized, however, glosses over the paradox of recognition, which arises out of the ambiguity between the demand for equal respect and the demand for the recognition of difference. This paradox cannot be resolved unless one takes into consideration the compensatory effect of value pluralism, that is, the inherent pluralism of recognition, well captured in the notion of "egalitarian difference".     

The EU as Promoter of Environmental Norms in the Doha Round

This article investigates the reasons why the EU tried to promote environmental norms in the Doha round. It argues that the EU's support of a ‘greener’ World Trade Organization stems from tensions between the rigidity of the domestic dynamics of positive integration in the EU and the increased bindingness of negative integration commitments undertaken under the WTO. Consensual decision-making procedures in the EU led societal groups to push for stringent food safety and environmental regulations in the EU, and made them very resistant to change. These dynamics of positive integration, however, produced rules that were inconsistent with negative integration commitments undertaken under the WTO, at a time when the creation of a quasi-judicial dispute settlement mechanism in the trade regime had greatly increased the bindingness of WTO rules. As a result of the twofold effect of domestic and international institutional constraints, EU decision-makers were subject to compelling incentives to try and strengthen legitimate exceptions from WTO rules and immunise European regulation against WTO legal challenges. Empirical evidence on how the EU shaped its trade-and-environment agenda in the run-up to the Doha Round in 2001, as well as how it negotiated in the subsequent period, lends support to the argument.     

Consultation, Constraints and Norms: The Case of Nuclear Waste

The objectives of public consultation can clash with other policy objectives, partly because the norms underpinning public consultation clash with other institutional norms within the policy process. This phenomenon is evident in the case of selecting a site for a low-level nuclear waste disposal facility in Australia. This case shows how the results of consultation processes are moulded by the process design, which in turn is constrained by a range of policy process norms to which governments adhere. The case confirms some recent critiques of participatory practices. It also suggests that reconciling potentially competing policy process norms will be an important exercise in institutional design if elected representatives wish to mitigate citizens' alienation from their governments.     

Brandom on Norms and Objectivity

The aim of this paper is to investigate Brandom’s conception of the objectivity of norms. In Making It Explicit Brandom supports a weak notion of objectivity based on his understanding of the perspectival structure of linguistic practices. In his following works, he resorts to the Hegelian notion of recognition, adding a historical dimension to his account. I contend that this notion of objectivity can be successfully defended against the objections raised by the commentators. In particular, it does not jeopardise the same possibility of communication, as claimed by Habermas and others, unless a strongly objective notion of communication is assumed. However, the paradigm shift from a strong to a weak understanding of objectivity entails a consequent revision of the conception of social criticism.     

The Puzzle of Gender-equal Political Participation in Sweden: The Importance of Norms and Mobilization

Political participation is higher among men than women in most parts of the world. However, earlier research has shown that this does not hold true in Scandinavia, including Sweden, where gender differences are remarkably small. This article studies the causes of the Swedish situation. A conventional hypothesis is formulated based on research from other parts of the world. It assumes that gender-equal participation in Sweden can be explained by the lack of gender differences in certain political resource and motivational factors that are often analyzed. However, this hypothesis is not supported by the data, which instead indicates a female disadvantage with regard to both resources and motivation. Two alternative hypotheses are developed and shown as empirically viable. The first assumes that women more often adhere to norms that emphasize the importance of being politically active, which promotes their participation in politics. The second focuses on collective mobilization based on interests specific to women. In line with this hypothesis, only women are shown to be members of women's organizations and hold more radical opinions on issues related to gender equality and reproduction. These factors have a positive impact on women's participation, and together they explain a noticeable amount of the male advantage with regard to conventional explanatory factors. Therefore they are important contributory causes of gender-equal participation in Sweden, although other factors, not discussed here, also contribute. Quantitative methods are used in the analyses, and the study material is the 1997 Swedish Citizenship Survey.     

Bringing Social Norms Back In

This article gives a rationalistic, individualistic explanation of social norms. Two different explanatory models for aggregate social phenomena are presented. It is argued that the emergence of such norms can be given a kind of socio-cultural evolutionary explanation, with boundedly rational actors, in social interaction situations having the characteristics of community. Their maintenance in larger settings, however, require that they are internalized into behavioral habits. These results, it is argued, are relevant for several fields of political science.     

Educational Attainment and Social Norms of Voting

Political Behavior - Why does the likelihood of voting increase with education in the US? Prominent theories attribute education’s effect to human capital, which affords individuals resources...     

Norms, Interests and Institutional Change

This paper provides a norms-based account of institutional change. It compares two cases of attempted change, one successful and one unsuccessful. The argument advanced is that norm-based change occurs when the norms are congruent with the perceived interests of the actors who have the power to take on the decision. Norms affect the process of institutional change not only by providing legitimacy to some forms of political action, but also by shaping the actors' perception of their interests as well their strategies. It is argued that norms, in that sense, help political actors combine Max Weber's zweckrational (goal-orientated) and wertrational (value-orientated) categories of behaviour. Empirical evidence drawn from the context of the evolving European Union supports this argument.     

The Evolution of Citizenship Norms among Scandinavian Adolescents, 1999–2009

In the recent debate about changing citizenship norms in advanced democracies, Scandinavian countries are often considered the frontrunners of the development of a new kind of engaged citizenship. The majority of recent empirical scholarship in this field, however, has focused on the United States. In this article latent class analysis is used to ascertain whether the ideal types of engaged citizenship and duty‐based citizenship norms are relevant concepts for adolescents in Scandinavia, and whether there are significant changes in these norms between 1999 and 2009. The findings confirm that engaged and duty‐based citizens can be clearly identified and that engaged citizenship norms are becoming more prevalent. It is also found, however, that engaged and duty‐based norms are not the only norms identified in the analysis, and that important differences are evident in the background characteristics of those ascribing to different citizen norms that contradict expectations in the literature. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for changing citizenship norms in advanced democracies, including the potential implications of these changing norms for political behaviour.     

The Conditionality of Vote‐Buying Norms: Experimental Evidence from Latin America

Anti‐vote‐buying campaigns led by NGOs and political elites denounce the practice as a crass economic transaction detrimental to democracy. Do potential clients stigmatize vote buying to the same degree, or does the mass public have a more conditional view of the acceptability of vote buying? We theorize that normative evaluations of vote buying vary based on individuals’ understanding of the transaction itself and abstract societal costs associated with the practice. We assess this perspective using survey experiments conducted in several Latin American countries that present hypothetical vote‐buying situations for evaluation by respondents, varying the socioeconomic status of the hypothetical client and the client's political predispositions. We find that the disapproval of vote buying is highly conditional on the attributes of the hypothetical client and that evaluations of vote buying depend on conceptions of the concrete benefits and abstract costs of vote buying as a part of electoral politics.     

Citizenship Norms and the Expansion of Political Participation

A growing chorus of scholars laments the apparent decline of political participation in America, and the negative implications of this trend for American democracy. This article questions this position – arguing that previous studies misdiagnosed the sources of political change and the consequences of changing norms of citizenship for Americans' political engagement. Citizenship norms are shifting from a pattern of duty-based citizenship to engaged citizenship. Using data from the 2005 'Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy' survey of the Center for Democracy and Civil Society (CDACS) I describe these two faces of citizenship, and trace their impact on political participation. Rather than the erosion of participation, this norm shift is altering and expanding the patterns of political participation in America.     

Norms and Human Rights in International Relations

The three volumes on human rights reviewed here constitute the first wave of in-depth case studies of human rights from a constructivist approach in international relations. By acknowledging the theoretical contributions of these works, identifying their shortcomings and engaging in critiques of the authors' conceptions of identity and norms, this article provides direction for future studies on human rights through the constructivist framework.
Foot, R. (2000) Rights Beyond Borders: The Global Community and the Struggle Over Human Rights in China . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Risse, T., Ropp, S. C. and Sikkink, K. (eds) (1999) The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomas, D. C. (2001) The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism . Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.     

Norms, Procedures, and Democratic Legitimacy

The overall thrust of the argument points in two opposite directions: it pleads for dimming the contrast commonly drawn between political philosophy and political science but calls for a more radical distinction between the activities of politics and of philosophy, and between its rationality and that of political mediation. Within the first strand of the argument, the fact-value problem is re-examined, whilst within the second strand - the central theme of the article - the operatively legitimizing source of political norms is viewed within a procedural locale that is recognizably democratic, in that its validation is a matter of opinion, of appraisal and reappraisal in and through civic activity itself, and not directly the work of extra-political doctrines that substantively predetermine it. Although not thus preconditioned, procedural democracy is portrayed as being governed by a cognitive and institutional 'space'in which the'conversion'of doctrinal'isms'issues in'performative principles, rather than a regime of pragmatic ad hocism .     

The ASEAN Way as a symbol: an analysis of discourses on the ASEAN Norms

Has the ‘ASEAN Way’ – a set of rules of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) centered on the principle of non-interference and consensus decision-making – really established its position as an ASEAN norm? This paper aims to analyze the discourses of each ASEAN country and empirically explain their attitudes toward the norm. Specifically, I review various documentations to examine how various ASEAN diplomats have used the term ‘ASEAN Way.’ How did they come to call the principle of non-interference and consensus decision-making ‘ASEAN Way’ in the early 1990s? Why have they begun using the term negatively, as something to be reformed, in recent years? By describing the discourses on the ‘ASEAN Way’ and their changes over the years, I show that the rationality of non-interference and consensus decision-making has changed over time and shifted the positioning of the ‘ASEAN way’ as a symbol. This presents a new and empirical interpretation of the changes in ASEAN Norms.