Refugees, Women, and Weapons: International Norm Adoption and Compliance in Japan (review)

Refugees, Women, and Weapons: International Norm Adoption and Compliance in Japan is about Japan's decision to sign international treaties to accept refugees, to ban land mines, and to protect women against discrimination. Petrice Flowers's research follows the constructivist tradition of Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink—minus the component on transnational advocacy networks (TANs)—in explaining norm adoption in Japan.¹ TANs are absent from her analysis because domestic advocates in Japan are linked to but do not mobilize TANs to pressure the state, unlike those in developing countries of Latin America and Asia. In fact, they may not even be linked to a national movement. In this book, Flowers seeks to understand why Japan adopts international treaties that conflict with its domestic norms. She has chosen three cases where conflict existed between domestic and international norms and where the international norm was nevertheless adopted. She then explains how these norms are implemented to varying degrees and how national identity can facilitate or limit the state's capacity to comply with the norms. To explain these variations in the level of compliance, Flowers emphasizes the state's desire for legitimacy, the strength of domestic advocates, and the degree of conflict between international norms and domestic norms and identity. For her data, she relies mostly on Diet committee records of the debates on adoption of the treaties, newspaper editorial and opinion pages from the Asahi shinbun and the Yomiuri shinbun, and about half a dozen personal interviews with activists.

The book's central argument is that Japan adopted the Refugee Convention, the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Ottawa Convention (to ban land mines) on the basis of its quest for legitimacy as a world economic power and a developed democracy. By accepting the duties and obligations associated with such status, political leaders can then form a national identity for Japan as a member of international society. In other words, these norms matter because they promise to enhance Japan's international legitimacy. Flowers asserts that Japan "views these actions as necessary to create a more favorable identity through which it will gain increased legitimacy" (p. 14). Domestic advocates assist in norm adoption with their role of socializing Japan into the international community. After Japan adopts an international norm, a certain level of activity by domestic advocates is necessary to maintain at least a moderate level of compliance. All of this intellectual exercise intends to show how international norms and international law affect domestic policy change. This is because in Japan, Flowers reminds us, "treaties supersede domestic law but are subordinate to the constitution. This means that each time Japan adopts a treaty, there is an attempt to revise the relevant body of domestic law to reflect the commitments included in the treaty" (p. 106).

One of the main strengths of the book is Flowers's original theory in international relations that goes beyond a simple foreign pressure (gaiatsu) explanation. Into this modified gaiatsu theory, she aptly incorporates a national identity component. In her own words, "foreign pressure is effective in Japan insofar as it includes identity pressures that serve to socialize Japan into international society" (p. 36). In all three of her selected cases, she finds that political leaders consistently consider the reshaping of Japan's identity as an economic power and a developed democracy when deciding to adopt international norms. They hope that norm adoption in these areas will lead to an enhancement of Japan's international legitimacy. I find Flowers's theoretical framework on international norm adoption and compliance to be powerful—as all powerful theory should be—because of its applicability to other areas, such as human trafficking.

Some observers believe that Japan passed the 2004 National Action Plan to combat human trafficking as a result of gaiatsu, particularly after the U.S. State Department placed Japan in Tier 2, Watch List, in its...