Politics

2009
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Sikkink, Kathryn. 2009. “From State Responsibility to Individual Criminal Accountability: A New Regulatory Model for Core Human Rights Violations.” The Politics of Global Regulation, edited by Walter Mattli and Ngaire Woods, 121–50. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Publisher's Version
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2008
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Sikkink, Kathryn. 2008. “The Role of Consequences, Comparison and Counterfactuals in Constructivist Ethical Thought.” Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics, edited by Richard M. Price, 83–111. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Publisher's Version
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Sikkink, Kathryn. 2008. “From International Relations to Global Society.” The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, edited by Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal, 62–83. New York: Oxford University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract
Historically speaking, the study of international relations has largely concerned the study of states and the effects of anarchy on their foreign policies, the patterns of their interactions, and the organization of world politics. However, over the last several decades, the discipline as begun moving away from the study of ‘international relations’ and toward the study of ‘global society’. This shift from ‘international relations’ to ‘global society’ is reflective of several important developments that are the focus of this article. The article begins with a discussion of the anarchy thematic and what John Agnew (1994) has called ‘the territorial trap’, and surveys some of the critical forces that compelled international relations scholars to free themselves from this trap. It then explores the shifts in the what, who, how, and why of the study of international relations. It considers the terminological shift from the study of international governance to the study of global governance, justified because the purposes of global governance no longer reflect solely the interests of states but now also include other actors, including international organizations, transnational corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and new kinds of networks.
2005
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Sikkink, Kathryn. 2005. “The Transnational Dimension of the Judicialization of Politics in Latin America.” The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America, edited by Rachel Sieder, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell, 263–92. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Publisher's Version
2002
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Khagram, Sanjeev, James V. Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink, ed. 2002. Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms. University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis. Publisher's Version
2001
Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. 2001. “Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and Comparative Politics.” Annual Review of Political Science 4: 391–416. Publisher's Version Abstract
Constructivism is an approach to social analysis that deals with the role of human consciousness in social life. It asserts that human interaction is shaped primarily by ideational factors, not simply material ones; that the most important ideational factors are widely shared or “intersubjective” beliefs, which are not reducible to individuals; and that these shared beliefs construct the interests of purposive actors. In international relations, research in a constructivist mode has exploded over the past decade, creating new and potentially fruitful connections with long-standing interest in these issues in comparative politics. In this essay, we evaluate the empirical research program of constructivism in these two fields. We first lay out the basic tenets of constructivism and examine their implications for research methodology, concluding that constructivism's distinctiveness lies in its theoretical arguments, not in its empirical research strategies. The bulk of the essay explores specific constructivist literatures and debates in international relations and comparative politics.
1998
Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998. “Transnational Politics, International Relations Theory, and Human Rights.” Political Science and Politics 31 (3): 517–21. Publisher's Version
Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.” International Organization 52 (4): 887–917. Publisher's Version Abstract
Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.
1997
Development Ideas in Latin America: Paradigm Shift and the Economic Commission for Latin America
Sikkink, Kathryn. 1997. “Development Ideas in Latin America: Paradigm Shift and the Economic Commission for Latin America.” International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge, edited by Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard, 228–56. Berkeley: University of California Press. Publisher's Version
Full Chapter
Used with permission.
1995
Sikkink, Kathryn. 1995. “Nongovernmental Organizations and Transnational Issue Networks in International Politics.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (American Society of International Law) 89: 413–15. Publisher's Version