Small States and Humanitarian Norm Development

With his work Peter Katzenstein has shaped the development of several strands of research both in comparative politics and IR. His work bridged the study of international relations and domestic politics and brought the study of norms, culture, and national identity in the field of security studies.1 This paper takes inspiration from Peter Katzenstein’s landmark study of small states in international political economy and tries to build on his insights about the ways in which the particular policymaking processes and traditions of small states affect their policies in the field of arms control and humanitarian law. As in the field of economic policies, I find that the process of defining foreign and security policy in small consociational democracies is characterized by compromise seeking and close cooperation between different stakeholders. Even if institutional structures have evolved over time and institutional constraints have been relaxed, domestic culture still matters for policymaking. Secondly, in trying to account for the distinctive roles Norway and Belgium have played on the international arena in negotiating new treaties banning landmines and cluster munitions, drawing on Peter Katzenstein’s work on national identity, I find that state identities have steered those countries along different paths at the international level