Emerging international indigenous rights norms and ‘over-compliance’ in New Zealand and Canada

Abstract

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples now represents the minimum international standard on indigenous rights. A qualitative analysis of state responses to this emerging indigenous rights regime produces some curious results, including state compliance, non-compliance, under-compliance, partial compliance, and also a pattern of ‘over-compliance’ in indigenous rights. Over-compliance, a counter-intuitive behaviour in international relations, occurs when a state’s legal or policy behaviour exceeds its treaty or international normative commitments. New Zealand and Canada both demonstrate such a pattern of indigenous rights over-compliance. A comparative case study of these two over-compliant states demonstrates that over-compliance in indigenous rights occurs when several conditions develop and intersect to propel a state towards a state-centric model of reconciliation. The article argues that Canada and New Zealand are over-compliant in indigenous rights not because they are necessarily progressive in indigenous rights but because they are actually resisting the emerging indigenous rights discourse.