Applying a social-constructivist approach to her richly detailed case history, Audie Jeanne Klotz demonstrates that normative standards such as racial equality can serve as much more than a weak constraint on fundamental strategic concerns. Norms can play a crucial role in the formation of global policy.

After forty years of protest against apartheid, the world celebrated Nelson Mandela's inauguration as South Africa's first democratically elected president. Klotz considers why racial discrimination in South Africa became a global concern and why-in a remarkable change of practice-nations and international organizations adopted sanctions against the Pretoria regime. By explaining how the world community actively came to condemn apartheid, Norms in International Relations contributes to broader debates on the role of norms in global politics.

Klotz rehearses a fascinating history, combining the power politics of economic sanctions and the normative politics of racial equality. She reenacts the events that resulted in the United Nations decision to oppose apartheid. The author also analyzes anti-apartheid activism in the British Commonwealth and in the Organization of African Unity, and she documents changing attitudes toward South African racial separateness in the United States, Britain, and Zimbabwe.

About the Author

nAudie Klotz is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Reviews

Klotz offers a persuasive argument that in the South African case the moral principle of racial equality influenced policy on a different, often conflicting, level from economic and strategic factors.

* Foreign Affairs *

The puzzle Audie Klotz seeks to explain is why a large number of international organizations and states adopted sanctions against the Apartheid regime in South Africa despite strategic and economic interests that had fostered strong ties with it in the past. Klotz argues that the emergence of a global norm of racial equality is at the heart of the explanation.... The book fills in important gaps in both regime theory and constructivism.... Klotz demonstrates in a nicely argued section that neoliberal regime analysis shortchanges the role norms play in international politics.... She elaborates three transmission mechanisms that link norms and policy choice: community and identity; reputation and communication; and discourse and institutions.... This is... a foundation upon which other scholars should build.

* World Politics *


Awards
Winner of Winner of the 1996 Edgar S. Furniss Book Award (Me.



Book Information
ISBN 9780801486036
Author Audie Klotz
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 155mm * 13mm