By focusing on the observed disconnect between the mainstream Anglophone liberal peace paradigm and the narratives and practices of “new” peacebuilding actors such as China, Russia and Japan, this project seeks to study normative global transformation by analysing the manner in which both top-down and bottom-up dynamics influence the nature, content, and direction of normative change. In doing so, it advances a new theoretical and methodological framework that seeks to offer an innovative contribution to contemporary scholarship on a) norm diffusion; b) the role of rising powers in global governance; and c) the (re)shaping of international order. The existing literature on norm studies in International Relations (IR) has achieved much to shed light on the process through which global norms are communicated and diffused to local actors, as well as on how local agents strategically adapt and reformulate global norms to fit their national, cultural and institutional contexts. There remains, however, a critical gap in our thinking about how localised norms become embedded and reflected in foreign policy practices, and how this in turn may affect the evolution and substantive content of norms at the global level. Moreover, there is a considerable ambiguity concerning the dichotomy between norm shaper/taker and norm entrepreneur/protector - how, in particular, one actor, for various strategic and ideational reasons, may act neither as an active norm promoter nor as an internaliser, but may practice its own interpretation of a particular norm without explicitly rejecting “mainstream” understandings of it. When such an actor is a major state as in the case of aspiring (peacebuilding) powers such as China, Japan or Russia, in what ways, and through which mechanisms, are the global dynamics of normative transformation affected? To address these questions, this project aims to develop a matrix-based approach that goes beyond norm localisation to also capture the ways in which localised norms are potentially fed back into the global context. Focusing specifically on the field of peacebuilding, on which the applicants have been working for the past decade, and by analysing three aspiring powers at the national level (China, Japan and Russia), the project seeks to understand norm evolution and transformation not merely as a top-down process, but simultaneously as a bottom-up process allowing for the possibility that peacebuilding norms emerge and evolve through a dynamic, multi-directional flow of normative influences, practices and mechanisms. Based on our existing network of scholarly and policy-practitioner contacts in the peacebuilding arena, the research team intends to undertake in-depth textual analysis, key informant interviews and stakeholder consultations in Beijing, Moscow and Tokyo, as well as in the two main multilateral peacebuilding hubs Geneva and New York. Deliverables will include a series of academic journal articles, an edited volume featuring scholars from China, Japan and Russia, an interactive web page, as well as a set of issue briefs destined for peacebuilding professionals and a wider public.
