International norms, American foreign policy and African famine: A comparative study of United States humanitarian policy in Nigeria/Biafra, Ethiopia, and Somalia

This study explores the ways an international norm prescribing that states have a moral obligation to provide assistance to countries suffering from famine has shaped American foreign policy. This is accomplished through the detailed study of US humanitarian policy toward three African countries experiencing famine: Nigeria/Biafra (1967-1970), Ethiopia (1982-1986), and Somalia (1991-1993).;The international famine relief norm affected American foreign policy through moral pressure placed on the executive branch by "norm entrepreneurs" in the US Congress, non-governmental and international organizations, the media, and the American public. Policymakers responded to this pressure because it had the ability to damage the reputation of the administration and the United States. Reputational damage inflicted by norm entrepreneurs raised the social costs of norm violation and compelled policymakers to take moral concerns into consideration when formulating American foreign policy toward Nigeria/Biafra, Ethiopia, and Somalia.;Norm entrepreneurs alone, however, cannot, and do not, determine US behavior. Their influence is circumscribed by US security and economic interests, the power structure of the international system, and the actions of non-governmental and international organizations. Detailed study of the policy process in each case elucidates the ways each of these factors affected policymakers' responses to the demands of norm entrepreneurs and helps to account for the highly divergent policy outcomes among the three cases. Failure to examine how norm entrepreneurs' pressure interacts with these three variables can exaggerate their power to shape US policy.;The dissertation contributes to the international norms literature by identifying problems associated with treating norm compliance and violation as objective phenomena and suggests that compliance is better understood as a socially-constructed concept. By highlighting the ways policymakers factor social and moral concerns into their preference calculations, it adds to the growing constructivist literature which challenges neorealist accounts of international politics which only focus on material aspects of state interest formation. Yet, by specifying an array of variables exogenous to norms which have the ability to circumscribe their influence, the study offers a more nuanced rendition of the empirical process by which international norms shape state behavior than constructivists have tended to provide.