Alan Bloomfield – författare

Over recent decades International Relations scholars have investigated norm dynamics processes at some length, with the ‘norm entrepreneur’ concept having become a common reference point in the literature. The focus on norm entrepreneurs has, however, resulted in a bias towards investigating the agents and processes of successful normative change.This book challenges this inherent bias by explicitly focusing on those who resist normative change - norm ‘antipreneurs’. The utility of the norm antipreneur concept is explored through a series of case studies encompassing a range of issue areas and contributed by a mix of well-known and emergent scholars of norm dynamics. In examining the complexity of norm resistance, particular attention is paid to the nature and intent of the actors involved in norm-contestation, the sites and processes of resistance, the strategies and tactics antipreneurs deploy to defend the values and interests they perceive to be threatened by the entrepreneurs, and whether it is the entrepreneurs or the antipreneurs who enjoy greater inherent advantages.This text will therefore be of interest to scholars and students of International Relations, International Law, Political Science, Sociology and History.

Bloomfield charts India’s profoundly ambiguous engagement with the thorny problem of protecting vulnerable persons from atrocities without fatally undermining the sovereign state system, a matter which is now substantially shaped by debates about the responsibility to protect (R2P) norm. Books about India’s evolving role in world affairs and about R2P have proliferated recently, but this is the first to draw these two debates together. It examines India’s historical responses to humanitarian crises, starting with the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, concentrating on the years 2011 and 2012 when India sat on the UN Security Council. Three serious humanitarian crises broke during its tenure - in Côte d'Ivoire, Libya and Syria - which collectively sparked a ferocious debate within India. The book examines what became largely a battle over ’what sort of actor’ modern India is, or should be, to determine how this contest shaped both India’s responses to these humanitarian tragedies and also the wider debates about rising India’s international identity. The book’s findings also have important (and largely negative) implications for the broader effort to make R2P a recognised and actionable international norm.

Over recent decades International Relations scholars have investigated norm dynamics processes at some length, with the ‘norm entrepreneur’ concept having become a common reference point in the literature. The focus on norm entrepreneurs has, however, resulted in a bias towards investigating the agents and processes of successful normative change.This book challenges this inherent bias by explicitly focusing on those who resist normative change - norm ‘antipreneurs’. The utility of the norm antipreneur concept is explored through a series of case studies encompassing a range of issue areas and contributed by a mix of well-known and emergent scholars of norm dynamics. In examining the complexity of norm resistance, particular attention is paid to the nature and intent of the actors involved in norm-contestation, the sites and processes of resistance, the strategies and tactics antipreneurs deploy to defend the values and interests they perceive to be threatened by the entrepreneurs, and whether it is the entrepreneurs or the antipreneurs who enjoy greater inherent advantages.This text will therefore be of interest to scholars and students of International Relations, International Law, Political Science, Sociology and History.