ABSTRACT
The study of norms occupies an important place in the recent literature on international relations (IR).2 While norm scholars have highlighted a variety of actors, processes and outcomes concerning norm creation and diffusion in world politics, the latter has not received adequate attention in the literature on the international relations of the Third World. Constructivism, the principal theoretical perspective on norms, initially paid little attention to variations between global and regional norms, and especially to the “ideational role of non-Western regional institutions.”3 While there are now a growing number of country-and-region-specific studies (especially of Western Europe) of norms,4 few offer a general framework for the Third World or a comparative framework for Third World regions. As a result, the question whether normative action and rule-making takes on a specific quality in Third World states remains under-theorized. Thus the questions: Why and how do Third World states and regions create new rules of the game to regulate relationships among them and with the outside world?
