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Dominant narratives in Western media during the 1990s formation of the Responsibility to Protect

Safranchuk I.A.,

MGIMO University, Moscow, Russia, i.safranchuk@inno.mgimo.ru

elibrary_id: 697972 | ORCID: 0000-0003-2214-6628 | RESEARCHER_ID: O-3257-2017

Zhornist V.M. ,

MGIMO University, Moscow, Russia, verazharn@gmail.com

elibrary_id: 1107387 | ORCID: 0000-0001-7406-3192 | RESEARCHER_ID: ACC-4198-2022

Article received: 2024.10.02 18:42. Accepted: 2025.01.09 18:42


DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2025.02.08
EDN: TLCWHW

Rubric: Laboratory

For citation:

Safranchuk I.A., Zhornist V.M. Dominant narratives in Western media during the 1990s formation of the Responsibility to Protect. – Polis. Political Studies. 2025. No. 2. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2025.02.08. EDN: TLCWHW

The research is funded by the Russian Science Foundation, Project No. 22-18-00664. The authors express their gratitude to D.N. Chernov for methodological comments and advice on data analysis during the preparation of this article, and NA Svistunov and Kh.Kh. Nabiev for their contributions to the source analysis.

Abstract

The article examines the influence of narratives of armed intervention produced by international civil society on the formation of the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The article tests the hypothesis that the narratives of the most popular Western media in the 1990s were reflected in the later adopted concept of the R2P. The time span of the analyzed interventions covers the period of the R2P norm formation - the 1990s. The paper begins with an extensive analysis of the R2P concept. The analysis of the formation of the R2P concept highlights the key normative postulates of the concept, which, as shown in the article, were used to legitimize the armed interventions of Western countries in the 1990s. The article provides a detailed methodology for selecting, analyzing and evaluating sources of armed intervention narratives based on the International Military Intervention Correlates (IMIC) database. Based on the top 4 most covered interventions of the 1990s in the international media, the dominant narratives around the interventions in question (US and French intervention in the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, French intervention in Rwanda, US intervention in Haiti) are identified and analyzed. The article singles out three groups of narratives (the narrative of the necessity to defend human life, the narrative of support for democratic principles, the narrative of support for state's own/regional/international security) which later formed the basis of the R2P concept. It is noted that these narratives in the cases under consideration are used to legitimize intervention. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the so-called ‘humanitarian' narrative about the need to protect human lives.

Keywords

responsibility to protect concept, humanitarian interventions, cycle of norms, narratives, discourse, legitimation of intervention, Western media.

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