The regional diffusion and internalisation of the norm of the responsibility to protect : lessons from the European Union and the Economic Community of West African States

This doctoral thesis aims to show how regional organisations have internalised and diffused the norm of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which aims to protect people against mass atrocity crimes. The European Union (EU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) serve as regional case studies. Theoretically, this thesis aims to connect the norms literature to the regional security governance literature, and it introduces a regional application of the norm antipreneurship literature. Several propositions are formulated to guide the empirical analysis, which focus on the relationship between regional factors and the likelihood of R2P internalisation, the regional normative status quo, and the different aspects and types of internalisation of R2P. In terms of methodology, this study adopts a constructivist approach, and it uses process tracing and critical frame analysis. The key empirical findings are that the EU engaged in norm accommodation in response to R2P, which means it adapted existing processes, policies, and institutions, without changing their essential features. The institutionalisation of R2P in the EEAS shows that the EU has a preference to internalise R2P through external policies. In the cases, the EU and its member states express formal support for the norm, they engage in prevention and apply sanctions. The use of force is more controversial, as the Libyan crisis exposed, while rebuilding policies have assumed a clearer protection aim since Libya. The case of ECOWAS shows that some of the origins of R2P actually stem from the West African region, specifically from the regional intervention practice and regional protocols. Rather than just internalising a global norm, ECOWAS thus contributed to the construction of the norm of R2P. ECOWAS takes both preventive and reactive measures in R2P-cases, while in terms of regional discourse, the organisation tends to refer to its own protocols rather than to R2P