Description
This paper develops a theoretical-methodological framework for investigating institutional change in regional international societies and explicates the approach on the example of Latin American international society and contemporary Chinese foreign policy and Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) reaching Latin America. The related research project is concerned with the question whether China is indeed reconfiguring the normative fabric of global politics in specific world regions. It is thus about two things – Latin America, as a region and international society with its normative underpinnings since the regional turn to the left turn in the 2000s, and about the impact of the BRI and Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping on regional order. The framework presented in this paper adds to the diversification of primarily realist and liberal theoretical lenses found in BRI studies. It so by deploying the English School (ES) and its core concepts of international society, and primary, as less, and secondary institutions, as more formalised “norms, rules, and practices” (Schouenborg 2012,45) to analyse the BRI’s possible normative implications for regional orders. The proposed novel approach combines the ES’ turn towards institutional change with constructivist norm research – i.e. contestation of norms, and norm robustness, diffusion, and change – in the inquiry for institutional change. Or differently, in the analysis of Latin American statespersons’ and IGO officials’ discourse and practices regarding possible change of or in interpretations of primary institutions. The paper further discusses benefits of pairing discourse and content analysis with elite interviews to analyse all, macro, meso, and micro levels of discourse.
