ABSTRACT
Is the international “power” of human rights and humanitarian norms effective? Almost 20 years after the elaboration of the “cascade model” of international norms diffusion and its refinement through the “spiral model” applied to human rights, we suggest a general reassessment of these constructivist theories. Our aim in this chapter is to show how optimistic and teleological these theories were in suggesting the vision of a universal self-sustained expansion of human rights and humanitarian norms. The world has changed since the end of the 1990s and has given much evidence that the global spread of human rights and humanitarian norms may encounter many shortcomings, double standards, regressions and resistance. Conversely, the resilience of the norm of sovereignty, as opposed to the diffusion of human rights and humanitarian norms, and the mobilization of non-Western states against the imposition of norms perceived as imposed by the West, seem to have been clearly underestimated.
