Under The Influence Of International Norms, Domestic Institutional Reform

International norms are the aggregation of rules that have binding power. When they are of quite enormous authoritativeness, international norms will form norm groups, which pose direct impact upon states' behavioral room and effects. In order to join norm groups and gain the membership, states have to make domestic institution reform, with the purpose of meeting the access requirements of norm groups. Facing the various interest appeals of social forces at home such as interest groups, governments need to launch social mobilization so as to introduce new norms and conceptions, and implement institutional reform. Utilizing the mass media, public opinion is molded to formulate the consensus of supporting the reform. To get into the norm groups as soon as possible, states usually take the membership as their diplomatic aims, leading to the fact that domestic reform pace falls far behind the standards of formal membership. Given this sort of problems, combining with the specific unreasonableness of international norms, states attempt to make modifications to international norms.Two indications serve to measure the authoritativeness of international norms: social proof and institutionalization level. Social proof refers to the amount and scale of individuals accepting and recognizing the norms, and the fairness of the norms. The larger the amount of individuals embracing the norms, the higher their degree of social proof, and also, the easier to generate attraction towards individuals that still refuse the norms. Institutionalization level concerns the clearness and preciseness of the rule content, the robustness of organizational structure and procedures, and the strictness of punishment mechanism targeting deviation behaviors.Individuals that have norm-based collective interactions and contacts constitute norm groups, with each one viewing itself as a part attributing to the group, which thereby accumulates Cohesiveness. To guarantee its continuity, groups deploy routine monitoring and assessment to maintain its members' compliance and attachment. Norm groups have internal homogenizing power, whose members share the same principles and values, and unitary behavioral features. Meanwhile, groups have the nature of outward expanding, which is grounded upon the authoritativeness of norms and the demonstration and promotion of formal members, and which influences the interest definition and behavioral room of outside states. The higher the authoritativeness, the less barriers formal members encounter when projecting norms.International norm groups constitute a huge norm network, with states being unable to stand the exclusion from this network. States pursue the membership of highly authoritative international norm groups, in order to widen its behavioral room and enhance its behavioral effects. Each norm group has the standards of membership and access threshold. The more authoritative norm groups have higher thresholds and more stringent verification concerning the willingness and capacity of new members to comply with the norms. To acquire the membership and live up to the demand of norm groups, states learn from the specific norm content and implement relevant institutional reform. States need to deploy social mobilization to remove the stumbling block in the way of reform and to gather adequate support for reforms, by bringing the goal of attaining the membership of norm groups into the list of states' prior affairs. Once the membership is gained, states have to confront the demand of implementing norms accompanying the formal status. But internal reforms can not be accomplished in a short time, hence states would come across lots of problems. States attempt to make international norms cover their own appeal and be more representative and universal. The authoritative norms have rigorous conditions for rule modifications. Therefore, change would happen, if there is any, only on the minor branches rules, rather than the core rules.The cases of China and Russia joining FATF show that the authoritative "40+9 Recommendations" of FATF has a direct influence upon the behavioral room and effects of both the states in the arena of international finance. China and Russia began to reverse their manner of behaving outside this norm group, and to recognize the value of the norms, with both of them changing the connotation of their national interests. Through international interchange in the field of finance, China and Russia started to give weight to anti-money laundering, and regard it as one of their urgent issues which should be dealt with in accordance with international trend. By mobilizing domestically and imitating and learning from the rules of "40+9 Recommendations", China and Russia launched enormous relevant reform and ultimately joined FATF. Although Russia implemented reform under the pressure of FATF and the United States, after a period of interaction, she tended to willingly make domestic institution reform according to FATF requirements, and obtained the acknowledgement of FATF and its members. Access into WTO had been the aim of China since the 1980s, and to gain the membership of WTO, China undertook tremendous reform at home, intellectual property rights being one of the components. The WTO agreement concerning intellectual property rights - TRIPs is the most authoritative intellectual property rights norms in the world. China's reform is basically developed in the light of TRIPs provisions. India and Brazil, as WTO members, are reforming internal institutions as well under the in-group supervision of TRIPs in order to maintain their membership. To deal with the problems of the deeper domestic reform and the pressure brought by the formal membership, developing states like India and Brazil seek to remold WTO intellectual property rights rules, which is well exemplified by the revision of TRIPs rules concerning public health.