Punishing childhoods: contradictions in children’s rights and global governance

The article considers efforts to eradicate corporal punishment as an aspect of the global governance of childhood and raises problems relevant to global governance more broadly. The article analyses contradictions in children’s rights advocacy between its universal human rights norms and implicit relativist development model. Children’s rights research is influenced by social constructivist theories, which highlight the history of childhood and childhood norms. Earlier social constructivist studies identified the concept of childhood underpinning the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as a Western construction based on Western historical experiences, which excluded the experiences of childhood in developing countries. More recent social constructivist approaches emphasise how childhood norms are constructed and therefore can be reconstructed. The article outlines problems with attempts to globalise childhood norms without globalising material development. The article discusses the softening of discipline norms in Western societies historically. It indicates problems with children’s rights advocacy seeking to eradicate the corporal punishment of children globally without globalising the material conditions, which underpin the post-industrial ideal of childhood embodied in the CRC

The neo-normative turn in theorising the EU's international presence

Introduced by Ian Manners in an article published in 2002, the idea of 'normative power Europe' has been very widely debated by scholars in the fields of European studies and international relations. This article marks the first decade of scholarship on normative power Europe through a critical engagement with the concept, its influence and the wider normative turn within the literature on the European Union's role beyond its borders. The article reviews the strands of literature that have drawn on the concept of normative power and outlines the contours of the international debate on the concept. It provides an assessment of the impact of normative power and its application through the variety of ways it has been used via engagement, reaction and counter-reaction. © The Author(s) 2013