CMES Seminar: The Authoritarian Afterlives of International Liberal Norms: Jordan and the UN Youth, Peace and Security Agenda in Comparative Perspective

When authoritarian regimes adopt liberal international norms—such as anti-corruption standards, human rights treaties, or youth/gender inclusion agendas—they often do so to secure international legitimacy or strategic benefits. But norm adoption can trigger domestic contestation, as regimes are held accountable to the very norms they endorse globally. Under what conditions can regimes contain such domestic contestation while maintaining compliance with international norms? 

Using a most similar systems design, I examine variation in outcomes across three cases of norm adoption and subsequent domestic contestation in Jordan, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan. I examine why Jordan managed to contain domestic blowback while sustaining international legitimacy, whereas Azerbaijan responded with repression and ultimately norm abandonment, and Uzbekistan with norm concession. 

Using process tracing, I argue regimes’ ability to manage the domestic afterlives of international norm compliance depends on their capacity for institutional conversion: the redeployment of emergent liberal institutions in ways that preserve control while retaining the outward appearance of compliance. This study contributes to understanding how international norms are domesticated and contested in authoritarian settings. It does so by bridging two previously siloed literatures—norm diffusion and norm instrumentalization—theorizing norm compliance as a dynamic field of institutional adaptation.  

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