Power, Patronage and International Norms
A Grand Masquerade

Argues that some of the least powerful countries masquerade as rights-promoters, paradoxically concealing the rights-violating effects of their patronage rule.

Valerie Freeland (Author)

9781009468534, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 June 2024

298 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.6 cm, 0.43 kg

'This is a valuable book that shows the strategic nuances that peripheral patronage states employ to navigate the complexities between international demands and the domestic electorate. … this book breaks the myth of the morally righteous and norm-driven engagement of the international community and teaches us that interests often trump values and norms and are selectively applied only when they are compatible with the underlying political goals.' Lea David, Perspectives on Politics

Why do some of the world's least powerful countries invite international scrutiny of their adherence to norms on whose violation their governments rely to remain in power? Examining decisions by leaders in Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Georgia, Valerie Freeland concludes that these states invited outside attention with the intention to manipulate it. Their countries' global peripherality and their domestic rule by patronage introduces both challenges and strategies for addressing them. Rulers who attempt this manipulation of scrutiny succeed when their patronage networks make them illegible to outsiders, and when powerful actors become willing participants in the charade as they need a success case to lend them credibility. Freeland argues that, when substantive norm-violations are rebranded as examples of compliance, what it means to comply with human rights and good governance norms becomes increasingly incoherent and, as a result, less able to constrain future norm-violators.

1. Masquerading in international relations
2. Peripherality and patronage in international relations theory
3. The strategic life of peripheral-patronage states
4. Uganda's self-referral to the international criminal court
5. Sierra Leone's truth commission and tribunal
6. Georgia's western ambitions
7. The long-term effects of strategizing
8. Conclusion
Appendix
Glossary
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB]