ABSTRACT
Whether we like it or not, there is no escaping the question of ontology. For, in order to explain how or why something occurs we must make metaphysical assumptions about the nature of social reality. This raises the question of the relation between structure and agency, a question or problem that returns with such regular insistence that it has led one scholar recently to refer to it as a dead horse that refuses to stay down. 1 Our uneasiness concerning the right approach to take regarding the structure-agency problem is the symptom of a stubborn sense that this problem is an ‘undecidable paradox’. 2 The perennial problem of structure and agency is one of whether or not the two aspects of social reality are irreducible to one another. According to Walter Carlsnaes, however, the problem lies not in accepting that structures and agents are dynamically related entities but rather in the fact that we lack a self-evident way to conceptualise these entities and their relationship. 3 While I do not pretend to have solved the structure–agency problem, I suggest that the critical realist argument applied in this chapter to the analysis of the international diffusion of women’s human rights norms offers a new and meaningful way to explain specific social change or durability in international relations. In particular, I suggest that the argument provides a useful way to analyse and explain variation in the extent to which international norms of sexual non-discrimination diffuse and affect state behaviour. By norms, I mean shared understandings of standards of behaviour held by a community of actors, in this case the international community. By diffusion, I mean the processes and mechanisms by which international norms diffuse and become incorporated in the domestic sphere. I begin by examining the limitations of existing explanations of international norms and then proceed to develop an alternative, critical realist, argument to examine and explain the way in which the interplay between various structures and agents conditions the diffusion and efficacy of international norms of sexual non-discrimination. I illustrate the usefulness of a critical realist approach to the diffusion of these norms through case studies of Germany and Japan. Finally, I discuss some of the implications the argument has for international relations theory and for those operating in the field.
