‘Liberal Multiculturalism’ and the Limits of International Law CHRISTINE BELL Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland Introduction Kymlicka’s book tells a story of international law. It tells of how international legal developments in the area of minority rights and indigenous peoples and racial minorities constitute a process of ‘global diffusion of the political discourse of multiculturalism’ embedded in legal and quasi-legal norms (pp. 3–4, his emphasis). Kymlicka’s main conclusions are directed at the future of international law. He suggests that an attempt at targeting specialist norms to the distinct needs of different minority groups – indigenous peoples, national minorities and other minorities – has been retreated from in a move back to generalized norms that do little to promote liberal multicultural- ism. He tentatively argues for a revision of international law towards a more systematic attempt to target norms. In the spirit of engagement, this response questions Kymlicka’s understanding of inter- national law’s means of production and therefore his evaluation of its potential role in underwriting liberal multiculturalism. To do this, I briefly tell a different story of where the international norms he refers to came from, and of what their limits are. An Alternative Story of International Legal Developments Where Kymlicka sees a process of diffusion of a political discourse of liberal multicultural- ism codified in law, I see diffusion of a set of techniques of conflict management developed in response to violent conflict. I see international law as having to grapple with competing self-determination claims made through appeal to its existing norms. From this perspective, the legal instruments in the area of minority and indigenous peoples’ rights appear not as an attempt to diffuse the practices of countries such as Canada, France and the USA, but as an attempt to rework a self-determination norm that stood charged with accelerating rather than decelerating conflict. This reworking was a product of reconciling the political struggles of the marginalized with solutions that states could accept. Ethnopolitics, Vol. 6, No. 4, 599–602, November 2007 Correspondence Address: Christine Bell, Transitional Justice Institute, Magee Campus, University of Ulster, Ulster, BT48-7JL, Northern Ireland. Email: c.bell@ulster.ac.uk 1744-9057 Print/1744-9065 Online/07/040599–4 # 2007 The Editor of Ethnopolitics DOI: 10.1080/17449050701659896