The United States maintains overseas military bases to deter aggression, fight wars, reinforce security alliances, and protect trade routes. Many American and host state officials consider these bases as key to national, regional, and global security. However, many citizens in host states imagine their security differently: they see these bases as undermining important values and they organize protests to demand changes in base policy. If these protests influence base policy, how do they do so, and with what consequences? When they fail to influence policy, what explains the failure? To answer these questions I examined thirteen protests from the Philippines (1947-1991), Okinawa, Japan (1950-1995), and South Korea (2000-2003).

Drawing from social psychology and international relations theory, I analyzed the impact of protesters' normative arguments on state decisions about base policy. Based on extensive archival research and interviews, I found that large protests and their normative arguments often led to policy change. I examined two mechanisms for policy change that focus on subjective interpretation of norms and domestic political processes: persuasion and compromise. In persuasion, policy-makers accept protesters' normative arguments and reevaluate base policy. Persuasion is more likely to happen when policy-makers have few preexisting beliefs that conflict with the normative arguments, and when policy-makers see the individuals or groups advancing the normative arguments as credible. Persuaded policy-makers change policy under a permissive domestic institutional environment. However, my research revealed that protesters' normative arguments rarely persuade policy-makers. More often norms have an indirect influence on policy-makers as the second mechanism, compromise, illustrates. Protest organizations' normative arguments gain widespread public support and lead to large-scale mobilizations that pressure policy-makers to change aspects of base policy. These concessions represent policy-makers' effort to respond to local grievances while maintaining the U.S. military presence and effectiveness.

My dissertation contributes to IR theory by demonstrating that protests influence security policy in most cases, contrary to traditional realist expectations. I also focus on subjective interpretation of norms, departing from the constructivist assumption that norms are commonly and properly understood. I specify persuasion's causal mechanism and show why normative persuasion is difficult.