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Who Are the Norm Makers? The Asian-African

Conference in Bandung and the Evolution of Norms

Article in Global Governance A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations · July 2014
DOI: 10.1163/19426720-02003006

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Global Governance 20 (2014), 405–417

SPECIAL SECTION

Who Are the Norm Makers?

The Asian-African Conference in Bandung
and the Evolution of Norms

Amitav Acharya

It is increasingly recognized that the literature on norms, like that of in-

ternational relations more generally, neglects or obscures the voices and
role of non-Western actors. Part of the reason has to do with its relatively
narrow conceptualization of agency: who are the norm makers and how
do they create and diffuse norms? This article, drawing on the author’s
previous work on the subject, calls for a broader understanding of what
norm making means and who should be considered as norm entrepre-
neurs. It then examines the debates and outcomes of the Asian-African
Conference in Bandung in 1955 to illustrate some if not all of the key
points about the normative agency of the developing countries in the con-
struction of the postwar security order. KEYWORDS: Bandung Conference,
nonintervention, disarmament, human rights, norms.

DUE TO LACK OF SPACE, I WILL LIST MY GENERAL THEORETICAL POINTS ONLY

briefly. First, norm making seldom involves a single source, but multiple
ideas and actors. Norms come from a variety of sources, involving a com-
plexity of actors, issues, and contexts. The linkages among them may not be
entirely obvious, and media reports and self-serving promotional action by
the norm entrepreneurs may create misperceptions about the origins of the
norm.
Second, while a good deal of research on norm making focuses on
activities at the global level by transnational civil society groups and major
international institutions, it is also important to look at other arenas, espe-
cially regional and interregional sites of dialogue. These have received less
attention in the existing literature on norms. The relationship between
global and regional norms and role of regions (especially outside of West-
ern Europe) as sites of global norm making remains undertheorized. Some
supposedly global norms can have regional origins, influences, and mani-
festations. One should not assume that regions merely adopt global norms
wholesale; it can also be the other way around. And what matters in norm
dynamics is not just the norm entrepreneur, whether it is an individual or a

405
406 Who Are the Norm Makers?

group like a nongovernmental organization, but also the local and regional
context from which they draw the norms. I have conceptualized this earlier
as “constitute localization.”1
Third, norm making is not a one-step or linear process; initially articu-
lated universal norms are not only subject to contestation, but also to resist-
ance and modification, whether at international or regional levels. In other
words, once articulated, norms do not remain static, and resistance and con-
testations do not end but persist. Such contestations often produce critical
feedback that could reshape the original norm in question. Contestations and
feedback are perennial features of norms.
Fourth, norm creation and propagation is not the prerogative of mate-
rially powerful states. Weak states can also create regional and global
norms. They may do so if they are excluded or marginalized from initial
global norm-making processes. They may also do so to protest against the
hypocrisy of powerful actors when they seem to violate the very norms
that they have helped to create and diffuse. Elsewhere, I have called this
process “norm subsidiarity.”2
Fifth, agency in norm dynamics can also take multiple forms, including
widening (extending to new issues, regions, and actors), deepening (adding
new injunctions and prohibitions), and thickening (reducing the scope for
exceptions and violations). Moreover, in considering agency, one should pay
attention not only to where and how norms originate, but also to where and
how they diffuse. The proposition of a new norm is important, but agency can
also lie in how the norm in question is being promoted and who is doing it.
Variations in the scope and interpretation of norms that are the product of the
localization or subsidiarity also constitute a form of agency.
Taken together, the interrelated and interactive processes of proposition,
localization, subsidiarity, and feedback offer a more complete picture of a
norm’s life cycle than models that focus substantially on the proposition, dif-
fusion, and internalization of norms in a more or less linear process led by
materially powerful states or globally prominent transnational civil society
groups. This broader framework, which I call “norm circulation,”3 allows
space for those who investigate norms to consider the role of weaker actors,
including regional actors, that may get involved in norm dynamics by relat-
ing to one or more of its different elements.
With these general observations, I examine normative debates and out-
comes of the Bandung Conference, focusing mainly on the relationship
between human rights and the norms of state sovereignty, especially nonin-
terference/nonintervention (I use these interchangeably, but would stick to
nonintervention). This relationship is one of the most contentious major
issues in post–World War II international relations. Conventional wisdom
casts these as polar opposites. What is more, it is seen as a core issue in the
 Amitav Acharya 407

Global North–Global South divide; the former are generally seen as the
champions of human rights while the latter are cast as champions of nonin-
tervention, which is invoked to gain immunity from Western criticism of
their human rights abuses. And because of this perception, the role of non-
Western countries in the creation of the human rights regime has remained
sidelined (for important exceptions, see Kathryn Sikkink’s article in this spe-
cial section).
Yet the above picture is simplistic and misleading, especially when it
comes to the construction of human rights and noninterference at the early
stages of the postwar international order. The countries of the South could
legitimately claim agency in developing and championing human rights
norms. There was no discernible contradiction between nonintervention and
human rights. A close reading of the Bandung Conference, using previously
unavailable primary sources—including the verbatim records of the Political
Committee4 where the leaders of the twenty-nine national delegations con-
gregated for five days—provides ample evidence of this.

The Significance of the Bandung Conference

The Asian-African Conference, which took place in Bandung from 18 to 24
April 1955, has been woefully neglected in the mainstream literature of
international relations. The conference was preceded by two Asian relations
conferences organized by India in New Delhi. With African participation,
the Bandung Conference was termed by Indonesia’s president Sukarno, with
his trademark hyperbole, as the “first intercontinental conference of
coloured peoples in the history of mankind.” What is beyond doubt is that
the conference was the most widely publicized gathering of the newly inde-
pendent countries. With twenty-nine countries participating (see Table 1),
the Bandung Conference saw more representation from the developing
world (Japan was the odd presence) than the San Francisco conference on
the UN Charter. It was the first international conference for Communist
China without the Soviet Union attending. It marked Japan’s first attempt to
reengage with Asia after the defeat of its imperial order. It was the first inter-
national meeting of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser after he had assumed
power in Egypt. Although neither Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah nor
Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito attended, the conference had a major influence on
the global Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).5 Six participating nations—the
People’s Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Turkey, and Saudi
Arabia—would become members of the Group of 20 (G-20), one of the
most important global forums to emerge in recent decades. (South Africa
under apartheid was not invited, but two delegates from the antiapartheid
African National Congress attended as observers.)
408 Who Are the Norm Makers?

Table 1 Participants at the Bandung Conference

Kingdom of Afghanistan Kingdom of Laos

Burma Lebanon
Kingdom of Cambodia Liberia
Ceylon Kingdom of Libya
People’s Republic of China Kingdom of Nepal
Cyprusa Pakistan
Republic of Egypt the Philippines
Ethiopian Empire Saudi Arabia
Gold Coastb Syrian Republic
India Sudan
Indonesia Thailand
Imperial State of Iran Turkey
Kingdom of Iraq Democratic Republic of Vietnam
Japan State of Vietnam
Jordan Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen
Notes: a. Cyprus, still under colonial rule, was represented by Makarios III who went on to
be the first president of the independent nation.
b. Represented not by Kwame Nkrumah but by three others, including a minister of state.

The major Western powers, including the United States, the United King-
dom, and France, viewed the conference with barely suppressed animosity.
Britain and Australia considered it “mischievous.”6 The British feared that the
conference would “discuss, inter alia, problems affecting national sovereignty,
racialism and colonialism, on all of which the conclusions reached are likely
to be embarrassing to us.”7 The French were “alarmed at the damage to the
western cause.”8 While US secretary of state John Foster Dulles publicly took
an attitude of “benevolent indifference,”9 the State Department was “seriously
concerned” about the “eventual implications and most interested to avoid
damaging effects this conference.”10 The United States worried that the con-
ference “will offer Communist China an excellent propaganda opportunity
before the representatives of countries not formally committed to either the
Free World or the Communist Bloc,” and that it might “enhance the Commu-
nist prestige in the area and weaken that of the West.”11 It expected “Com-
munist propagandists to utilize the fear of war as a means of isolating the
United States.”12 While remaining skeptical of its potential for success,
Britain and the United States mounted a major covert effort, the details of
which are yet to be fully published, initially to persuade pro-Western devel-
oping countries to boycott the meeting. When that seemed counterproductive,
they sought to manipulate the conference. With active support from the
United States, Britain provided “guidance” documents to all pro-Western
attendees including Turkey, Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines as well as
to some neutral ones like Ceylon. These documents, covering such topics as
“communist colonialism,” nuclear disarmament, and religious freedom in the
 Amitav Acharya 409

communist world, basically told them what positions they should take at the
conference with a view “to cause maximum embarrassment” to Communist
China and to prevent the emergence of an Afro-Asian bloc.13
But Western fears (indeed paranoia may seem more apt) that the Ban-
dung Conference would undermine universal norms proved unfounded. Par-
ticipants at the conference, whether supplied with Western guidance or not,
were pro–human rights, pro-universalism, and prodisarmament, and they saw
no contradiction between human rights and state sovereignty. If anything,
they saw the former (especially decolonization) as a necessary component of
the latter. In the discussion that follows, I elaborate on this claim.

Human Rights
“Human rights and self-determination” was the very first item on the agenda
of the Political Committee. The initial speaker on the subject, India’s prime
minister Jawaharlal Nehru, begun by observing: “We have no right to criti-
cize others for violating human rights if we ourselves do not observe them.”
He was referring to the issues of Palestine and racialism that had been placed
on the agenda and were expected to rally the participating nations. Nehru
argued that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) remained
unfulfilled: “We at present are not acting up to it in many ways.” Nehru also
viewed the continuance of colonialism as “a violation of the fundamental
human rights and a threat to the peace of the world.”
The head of the Lebanese delegation, Charles Malik, who had been the
rapporteur of the UDHR drafting committee, agreed with Nehru’s point about
noncompliance with the UDHR, but said that the noncompliance was expected
and “a time would come when the world would be able to live up to these
ideals.” Some participants, including India, argued that the meeting should not
discuss the UDHR specifically, but instead the general principles of human
rights, because not all participants at the Bandung Conference were members
of the UN and thus might not have studied the UDHR (a UN document) care-
fully. China, led by Premier Zhou Enlai and backed by India, held that it had
not had the time to study the UNDR, and that the Bandung Conference was
not a UN conference: “We should not ask those countries which are not yet
members of the U.N.O. to state their attitude on something of the United
Nations which has not yet been studied by them.” (At this point, Chinese
membership in the UN was held by the Taiwan-based Republic of China.)
But this position was opposed by several others, including Lebanon,
Turkey, and Iraq. Not only that those who were not yet members of the UN
had applied to join it, but a separate human rights declaration could become,
as Malik put it, “a competitor to the United Nations.” Malik argued that the
conference should simply endorse the UDHR: “If we are not to compete with
the United Nations, then since this document [UDHR] has been worked out
410 Who Are the Norm Makers?

over a period of three or four years and since every comma has been placed
with the utmost precision.” Otherwise, the conference “would be in a most
unfortunate process of setting up a competitor to the United Nations.” Nehru
firmly rejected the view that there was any competition with the UN: “All I
suggested was that we should not specifically tie ourselves up with this doc-
ument, but treat it as a basis for our consideration.” China made the same
point: “We have no direct connection with the United Nations. Of course, we
do not wish to have any rivalry with the United Nations.”
It was suggested, especially by Iran, that apart from the UDHR the com-
mittee should also endorse the principles of human rights in the UN Charter.
And Thailand, whose head delegate Prince Wan Waithayakon was also the
official rapporteur of the Political Committee, suggested that instead of using
the UDHR as a specific point of reference for human rights norms, the com-
mittee should support the general principles of human rights “such as set
forth” in the UDHR. A vote was avoided. In the end, the committee agreed on
compromise language: “The Asian-African Conference declares its full sup-
port of the fundamental principles of human rights as set forth in the Charter
of the United Nations, and takes note of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.”
The language that the committee “declares full support” for the UN Charter
principles on human rights, but “takes note of” the UDHR, was necessary for
achieving a compromise. A close reading of the Political Committee discus-
sions suggests that there was strong support for the principles of human rights
from all nations. Despite its initial support for China’s position on the UDHR,
Nehru expressed full support for human rights principles and went on to crit-
icize fellow participants for not observing them.

Nonintervention/Noninterference
The issue of nonintervention emerged as a central issue of contention at the
Bandung Conference, but there was no hint of anyone using nonintervention
to mask human rights abuses at home. Instead, sovereignty and noninterven-
tion were invoked to criticize: (1) foreign interference causing domestic sta-
bility in countries, (2) communist colonialism, and (3) membership in US-
organized military pacts.
Burma urged the participants to “declare that their relations between
themselves, and their approach to other nations of the world, shall be governed
by complete respect for national sovereignty and integrity of other nations.
They will not intervene or interfere in the territory or the internal affairs of
each other or of other nations, and will totally refrain from acts or threats of
aggression.” Burma’s proposal had to do with the presence of Nationalist Chi-
nese (Kuomintang) troops in Burma, after they had been driven out of main-
land China by the communists. These troops were accused of creating a state
within a state and engaging in “infiltration and subversion.”
 Amitav Acharya 411

The view of communist colonialism was presented by Ceylonese prime

minister John Kotelawala, and shared by Iraq, Turkey, and the Philippines, all
of whom had been supplied with British “guidance” on the subject. In a
speech to the Political Committee, he referred to “those satellite states under
Communist domination in Central and Eastern Europe,” and asked that “if we
are in opposition to colonialism, should it not be our duty to openly declare
opposition to Soviet colonialism as much as to Western imperialism?”
Kotelawala’s ire had been induced by his failure to convince China to stop
giving assistance to communists in Ceylon. Chinese support for communist
movements in many Asian countries was criticized, notwithstanding Zhou
Enlai’s attempt, with Indian support, to get the conference to endorse the
“five principles of peaceful co-existence,” Principle 3 of which stipulated
“mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.”
The interpretation of nonintervention was also broadened at the Ban-
dung Conference. In a speech before the conference, Nehru equated nonin-
terference (which he used interchangeably with nonintervention) with out-
right aggression: “Interference can be of two kinds. There is the
interference of active aggression, which may be a military invasion or other
kinds of aggression and there is the other type of interference—it might be
called internal interference.”14 At the conference on 22 April, Nehru recog-
nized several forms of intervention: (1) pressure from great powers on other
states to change their vote on West Irian in the UN; (2) subversion and infil-
tration; and (3) interference in the political, social, and economic affairs of
another country. As he put it, “we should emphasize that one country
should not interfere in the internal affairs, be it political, social or eco-
nomic, affairs of another country.”
And nonintervention was given a regional context. Along with Indonesia
and Burma, Nehru saw intervention not just as a matter of one country inter-
fering in the domestic affairs of another, but also of interference by an outside
power in a region’s affairs. In particular, Nehru’s notion of intervention
extended to an injunction against pressure on Asian and African countries to
participate in military blocs. In this case, his specific target was the Southeast
Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), organized by the United States with the
membership of the United Kingdom, Australia, France, New Zealand, Pak-
istan, and the Philippines.
At a preparatory meeting among the Bandung Conference’s five spon-
sors (i.e., India, Indonesia, Ceylon, Pakistan, and Burma) in Bogor, Nehru
pointed out how SEATO brought about “quite a new conception” because,
unlike North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “members of this organization
are not only responsible for their own defense but also for that of areas they
may designate outside of it if they so agree, this would mean creating a new
form of spheres of influence.” Nehru contrasted it with the 1954 Geneva
Agreement on Indo-China, which had stipulated that “no outside interfer-
ence will be allowed in Indo-China.”15 While listening to the Political
412 Who Are the Norm Makers?

Committee’s deliberations on 22 April 1955, Nehru jotted: “Intervention =

Interference = Europe’s conflicts and rivalries.”
But it would be misleading to present the construction of nonintervention
at the Bandung Conference as an entirely strategic move aimed against the
communist powers or the West. Nonintervention was also seen as a positive
universal norm, and as a defense against neocolonialism and a way of defin-
ing the relations among the newly independent countries. Indonesia made this
clear when it included it as part of the framework of “co-existence” among
nations and cited the example of Latin American norms: “Indeed the very
meaning of peace among nations is coexistence. When we have co-existence
among nations, we have firstly non-violation of one another’s territory; sec-
ondly, non-interference in one another’s internal affairs; thirdly, nonaggres-
sion, and political equality and mutual security.” According to the Indonesian
delegate, the principles could be found in the Convention of Rights of Mon-
tevideo, September 1933; in the Ideal Protocol Relating to Non-Intervention,
of Buenos Aires, 23 December 1936; in the Bogotá Charter adopted by the
Organization of Miniature States in 1948; and in the United Nations Charter
and the Draft Declaration of the Rights and Duties of States acknowledged by
the United Nations. Such examples cited by Indonesia are consistent with the
idea of norm subsidiarity, which, as I have explained elsewhere, could
involve regionally constructed norms traveling to other regions and acquiring
a more global significance.
Nonintervention was affirmed in Principle 4 of the ten principles con-
tained in the Final Communiqué of the Bandung Conference that stipulated
“abstention from intervention or interference in the internal affairs of another
country.” Compare this with the relevant UN Charter principle, Article 2(7),
which reads: “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the
United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the
domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such
matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not
prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.”16
The controversy over military pacts was settled at Bandung in the form
of Principles 5 and 6. Principle 5 urged “respect for right of each nation to
defend itself singly or collectively, in conformity with the Charter of the
United Nations.” Principle 6(a) on the other hand called for “abstention from
the use of arrangements of collective defense to serve the particular interests
of any of the big powers.” While some in the West hailed Principle 5 as a vic-
tory for SEATO, others and the subsequent record saw it as a fatal blow to
SEATO’s efforts to strengthen its legitimacy by expanding Asian participa-
tion in the alliance.
Thus, the Bandung Conference not only affirmed, but also widened and
thickened, the norm of nonintervention—a clear example of norm sub-
sidiarity. And it did so without any challenge to the salience human rights.
 Amitav Acharya 413

Universalism
With nine of the countries represented at the Bandung Conference yet to be
members of the UN and yet to be asked to endorse the UHDR, the conference
was a key test of the norm of universalism. Aside from the UDHR issue, the
UN also came in for criticism for its lack of action in cases involving self-
determination in Palestine, West Irian, and North Africa. Seeking to end
Dutch rule over West Irian (the Dutch had retained the territory even after
Indonesia gained independence in 1949), Indonesia initially wanted to mod-
ify the principle of “self determination of peoples” to “self-determination of
peoples and nations,” but failed to gather support. But more controversy
erupted over a Syrian-initiated resolution supporting the Indonesian position
that criticized the UN’s failure to resolve the West Irian issue. The draft res-
olution read: “The Asian-African Conference in the context of its express atti-
tude on the abolition of colonialism supports the relevant agreement between
Indonesia and Holland and regrets that the General Assembly of the United
Nations has failed to assist the parties in reaching a peaceful settlement of the
problem.” The word “regrets” caused much debate. Turkey objected to the
mention of “regrets” because it risked damaging “the United Nations which
is the unique international organization to which we all owe our independ-
ence and existence.” China supported “regrets” as “very appropriate” and
called it “mild”: “If we cannot put in even such a sentence to call the atten-
tion of the United Nations to a certain matter, then in our view it is not in line
with the spirit of this Conference.” Syria responded to Turkey by saying its
resolution did not carry any condemnation of the UN, but referred to the
“fact” of UN’s failure to settle the issue. India too believed that there was no
condemnation of the UN implied. Instead, Nehru clarified, the failure of the
UN to act was due to the “attitude of the Great Powers,” principally the
United States, the United Kingdom, and France who prevented the UN from
ending Dutch rule over West Irian.
In opposing “regrets,” three arguments were heard. Iraq called for con-
sistency (why criticize the UN over West Irian and not over the Palestinian
issue?). Lebanon opposed “regrets” because it would set a “dangerous”
precedent. Since some UN members supported the resolution, blaming the
whole organization would not be proper. Distinction should be made between
the UN and the great powers. Pakistan argued against “regrets” on the ground
that “it is the United Nations that can help a peaceful settlement of the dis-
pute.” Afghanistan worried that “any harm to the United Nations in itself can
lead to the weakening of the United Nations and the faith that the people of
the world should have in that organization to which we are deeply attached
for the preservation of peace.” In the end, the resolution that was adopted
contained the conference’s “earnest hope that the United Nations will assist
the parties concerned in finding a peaceful solution to the dispute” over West
Irian. Moreover, the conference strongly expressed that “membership in the
414 Who Are the Norm Makers?

United Nations should be universal” and called on the UN Security Council

to admit those Bandung participants that were not yet members of the UN.
In sum, universalism won the day. The Bandung Conference did not seri-
ously consider creating a permanent organization of Asian and African
nations. Compared to the more regionally minded Latin American countries,
regionalism in Asia and Africa did not emerge as a serious alternative to uni-
versalism. The UN emerged stronger from the conference.

Nuclear Disarmament
Nehru, who had in 1954 offered “the first proposal for a legal instrument to
put an end to nuclear testing,”17 drew special attention at the Bandung Con-
ference to the “enormous danger” posed by the thermonuclear testing. But
Indian norm entrepreneurship was thwarted by the Western powers, the
United States and the United Kingdom acting through their allies in Bandung,
Turkey, Pakistan, and Lebanon.18 Instead, the latter linked any ban on nuclear
and thermonuclear weapons to a general disarmament program, which was an
unrealistic goal. A secret US State Department assessment of the conference
perversely considered its “linking of the question of banning nuclear weapons
to the broader question of universal disarmament, and its reference to the
need for international controls” as an outcome that was “thought by the
Americans to favor the West.”19 Nehru was more successful in getting the
conference to pass a resolution for creating programs to “keep a continuous
watch on radio-activity” by creating “a chain of stations [that] should be
established running right across Asia from Africa and the Middle Eastern
countries to Australia and New Zealand and to Japan.” The program did not,
however, materialize.

Conclusion
The Bandung Conference strengthens the case for adopting the broader
framework of norm circulation that I outlined at the outset of this article. In
terms of norm creation (proposition), the conference saw the initial articula-
tion of nonalignment and anti–nuclear testing norms. In terms of localization,
the debate over Cold War military pacts like the SEATO constituted a cogni-
tive prior for Asia, Africa, and the Middle East because it shaped the princi-
ples of the NAM and the security norms in Asian regionalism. The confer-
ence offers an especially powerful account of norm subsidiarity—when weak
states resort to normative action because of a sense of marginalization from
global norm making (in this case from the UN and the UDHR) and to protest
the hypocrisy of great powers violating established global norms. The latter
was evident in the debate over human rights and self-determination that was
being ignored or violated by the Western powers. We also see different forms
 Amitav Acharya 415

of normative agency, including the widening of universalism; after the criti-

cism of the UN’s inaction in West Irian and North Africa, the conference not
only ended up endorsing the UN, but also calling for the expansion of its
membership to make it a truly universal organization. There was the thick-
ening of the nonintervention norm in the criticism of communist colonialism
as well as of collective defense pacts as a form of intervention. The linking of
human rights with self-determination and of nonintervention with abstention
from Cold War pacts had a positive effect on global human rights and sover-
eignty norms respectively, and this feedback can be considered as an example
of the norm circulation dynamics described earlier in this article.
The absence of any perceived contradiction between human rights and
nonintervention was especially interesting and important. The advocacy of
nonintervention at the Bandung Conference was to preserve stability within
countries and regions against perceived neocolonialism and great-power
rivalry, not to justify domestic human rights abuses. The main proponent of
nonintervention at the conference, Nehru, was also a committed champion of
democracy and the severest critic of the poor record of human rights of other
conference participants. At no point in the conference does one see a coun-
try invoking nonintervention for the sake of domestic regime security.
The Bandung Conference, despite being cast as an antiuniversalist,
anti-Western gathering, was in reality a major postwar site for the articula-
tion and advancement of the norms of human rights and universal organi-
zation. Its normative agency was acknowledged in a British memo on the
conference that noted the irony of Asian states asking the West to declare
support of “human rights as set forth in the UN Charter” and to “link dis-
armament with the prohibiting of the production, experimentation, and use
of nuclear weapons.”20
While norms related to anticolonialism, nonintervention, universal col-
lective security, and human rights predated it, the Bandung Conference
sought to enhance their legitimacy, rather than undermine them as feared by
the West. This to me was integral to norm making in the evolution of the post-
war global security architecture. I challenge the view that the non-Western
countries often act as norm takers and norm wreckers, rather than as norm
makers. At the conference, they played a more positive and proactive role as
norm makers in relation to anticolonialism, self-determination, human rights,
and nonintervention than the major Western powers that sought to manipulate
and thwart the conference. The conference also shows that one should not for-
get the role of powerful states as norm wreckers. It is worth speculating that,
if the Western powers had played a more constructive role, the North-South
polarization that challenges the universal normative architecture of global
governance might have been avoided or even moderated. The North-South
conflict that developed after the Bandung Conference was heavily influenced
not only by the Cold War but also by the Western resistance to the political
416 Who Are the Norm Makers?

aspirations of the newly independent countries for equality and political

autonomy, rather than by any intrinsic rejection of emerging norms of human
rights, respect for the UN, and disarmament by the South.

Notes
Amitav Acharya is the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) chair in transnational challenges and governance, chair of the Associa-
tion of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Studies Center at American University,
and president of the International Studies Association.
1. Amitav Acharya, “How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localiza-
tion and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism,” International Organization 58,
no. 2 (Spring 2004): 239–275; Amitav Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter? Agency and
Power in Asian Regionalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009).
2. Amitav Acharya, “Norm Subsidiarity and Regional Orders: Sovereignty,
Regionalism and Rule Making in the Third World,” International Studies Quarterly
55, no. 1 (2011): 95–123.
3. For further elaboration, see Amitav Acharya, “The R2P and Norm Diffusion:
Towards a Framework of Norm Circulation,” Global Responsibility to Protect 5, no.
4 (2013): 466–479.
4. Unless otherwise cited, all quotes in this article are drawn from the Verbatim
and Summary Records of the Political Committee of the Bandung Conference, which
remain unpublished.
5. Amitav Acharya, “50th Anniversary of the Bandung Conference: Myths and
Realities,” The Straits Times, 20 April 2005, p. 21.
6. UK High Commissioner, Ceylon, to Commonwealth Relations Office, 18 Jan-
uary 1955, D2231/60, FO 371/116976 (London: National Archives, Public Records
Office).
7. F. S. Tomlinson, Foreign Office, London, Minute, “Position Regarding Afro-
Asian Conference,” 12 January 1955, D2231/47, FO 371/116976 (London: National
Archives, Public Records Office).
8. Alexander Symon, UK High Commissioner, Karachi, to W. E. Clark, Com-
monwealth Relations Office, London, 22 March 1955, D2231/158, FO 371/116979
(London: National Archives, Public Records Office).
9. Washington Post, 6 May 1955. This article can be found in D2231/235, FO
371/116980 (London: National Archives, Public Records Office).
10. “The Secretary of State to Certain Diplomatic and Consular Offices,” Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, vol. 12: East Asia and the Pacific (Wash-
ington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1987), pp. 1084–1085.
11. British Embassy, Tokyo, “Extract from the United States Intelligence Report
No. 4448 of 6/1/55,” 17 January 1955, D2231/85, FO 371/116977 (London: National
Archives, Public Records Office).
12. “Memorandum from the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern
Affairs (Sebald) to the Secretary of State,” Foreign Relations of the United States,
1955–1957, vol. 2: China (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1989),
p. 508.
13. Amitav Acharya, “Lessons of Bandung, Then and Now,” Financial Times, 21
April 2005, p. 18.
14. Jawaharlal Nehru, “Implications of Military Alliances,” in H. Y. Sharada
Prasad and Ravinder Kumar, eds., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 28 (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 324.
 Amitav Acharya 417

15. Conference of the Prime Ministers of the Five Colombo Countries, Bogor,
28–29 December 1954, Minutes of Meetings and Documents of the Conference, 2nd
Session, p. 6; “Southeast Asian Prime Minister’s Conference: Minutes of Meetings
and Documents of Conference,” Colombo, April 1954.
16. For further discussion, see Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter? pp. 54–59, 71–74.
17. “Happy Birthday CTBT,” Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization,
www.ctbto.org/press-centre/highlights/2012/happy-birthday-ctbt/, accessed 29 Novem-
ber 2013. Under vastly different circumstances, India conducted nuclear tests in 1998
and has not signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
18. J. E. Cable, Foreign Office, London, “Afro-Asian Conference,” 2 March 1955,
D2231/123, FO 371/116978 (London: National Archives, Public Records Office).
19. The State Department assessment was cited in a dispatch by the New Zealand
embassy in Washington, DC, to Wellington, New Zealand. G. R. Laking, to Secretary
of External Affairs, Wellington, “Asian-African Conference,” 5 May 1955,
D2231/349, FO 371/116984 (London: National Archives, Public Records Office).
20. British Embassy, Washington, to Foreign Office, London, US Department of
State Intelligence Report No. 6903, “Results of the Bandung Conference: A Prelimi-
nary Analysis,” 27 April 1955, D2231/373, FO 371/116986 (London: National
Archives, Public Records Office).

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