What are norms, and why do they matter for international relations? How do they help to guide and constitute state behaviour at the international level, as well as behaviour by other actors like international organisations and global civil society? And how do they constitute just and fair order? This book brings together a group of leading norm researchers who have been addressing this question over the better part of the past three decades. We argue that norm research today constitutes a subfield in the wider study of International Relations (IR), a subfield structured by three distinct and theoretical moves. The first creates an interest in ideas and social facts in IR. The second focuses on norm adaptation. The third sees an understanding of norms as processes. (p. 3) Notably, the moves are not sequentially conceived. Instead, we note, each move has generally occupied a particular time, and each follows approximately in sequence from the previous one, each move has also had significant overlaps and interconnections. The moves reflect this book’s pragmatic take on norm research as a dynamic subfield which has been advanced in a relational co-constitutive process with International Relations (IR). Our intention is to show how the field advanced based on distinct and mutually constitutive dynamics involving mutual learning rather than paradigmatic battles. While divides do exist, the book uses these moves to offer a theoretical ‘mosaic’ representing approaches that matter to undertaking research on norms from different angles and for distinct purposes.
Hence the three theoretical moves.
The first move focused on norms that are recognised as single standards of behaviour to members of a community with a given identity. Here, the structuring effect of norms on state behaviour has been key. The second move centres on the relevance of norms in processes of policy-making and their function in providing interpretative reference as policy and treaty norms in selected regimes. And the third move focuses on norms as carriers of often meaning-in-use that are in flux and have a role in the constitution of legitimate and just orders.
These three moves, we argue, culminate in what we identify as a norm interpretation-contestation framework. Arguments have been made that norm contestation undermines norms and is therefore a negative process. Instead, we argue that contestation is actor driven. It is the actors’ choices that determine whether a particular contestation affects a norm in a positive or a negative way. Hence, we argue that as a process norm contestation “is inherently neutral” (pg.4). Contestation is a norm generative process and it is through contestation that norms achieve widespread legitimacy. The interpretation-contestation framework demonstrates that contestation can possess three main forms. Reactive contestations occur when actors seek to object to norms, and which can, at the extreme, lead to norm violation. Proactive contestations occur when actors seek to engage with norms in order to improve them. Finally, interpretive contestations occur when actors possess different understandings of norms from those that are held by the wider international community.
This, is established in the introduction, which also offers a methodological and conceptual overview of norms research. 13 substantive chapters then apply this framework to offer cutting-edge insights into central themes of norm research and how they are addressed in today’s international relations.
Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch and Jennifer M. Dixon begin by arguing that norm content and norm strength need to be understood as distinct and constitutive elements in processes of norm development.
Anchalee Rüland and Jennifer Welsh use the cases of human rights in Southeast Asian states and the UN’s response to atrocity crimes to examine the nature of norm conflict. They proposes a five-fold typology of possible response strategies actors can use to manage the expectations and costs they face with either norm compliance or norm violation.
Andrea Liese focuses on the specific issue of norm collisions during crisis periods. Liese sees collisions as occurring when the behavioural prescriptions of two or more norms are incompatible with each other and sees crises – including the European refugee crisis and COVID-19 – as desterilising an extent balance or hierarchy between norms.
Audie Klotz genealogically examines disruptive episodes of interpretative contestations over racial equality and apartheid norms. She that such norm contestations have been treated silently by the field, that there is a norm against noticing, when opposition to apartheid actually played a crucial role in challenging domestic jurisdiction and supporting the development of international human rights norms.
Halima Akhrif and Simon Koschut examine the relationship between emotions (as moral value judgements) and norms through the prism of the Bush administration’s reaction to torture allegations to argue that emotional resonance – the ability of social norms to evoke and suggest emotional images, memories, and collective feelings – is crucial to the impact and enforcement of norms over time.
Susan Park examines how proactive contestations associated with the World Bank’s development of the international accountability norm has shaped not only how the bank understands its responsibilities but also the efforts of activists to hold the World Bank and other multilateral development banks to account.
Sassan Gholiagha and Mitja Sienknecht explore the relation between norms and responsibility and identify three configurations of responsible behaviour which are then illustrated through instances of responsible behaviour from diverse actors and different norms, including gender equality, anti-personnel landmines and armed non-state actors, and the NATO intervention in Kosovo.
Carla Winston argues that norms can be understood through the lens of complex systems theory. Looking at the rule of law, she finds contestations both provide information to actors and can trigger negative feedback loops – which die out – or positive feedback loops – which can undermine a norm.
Anette Stimmer explores the grey zone between empty words and purposive action to argue that by actions and justifications, the degree of commitment to international law can be identified as can the level of obligation that states feel.
Jakob v. H. Holtermann, Mikael Rask Madsen, and Nora Stappert find that IR and international law’s approach to norms research can be bridged by empirically examining interpretive contestations of legal validity among groups of legal professionals.
Jacqui True argues that networks play an integral role in processes of norm contestation and highlights the critical role that network structures can play in affecting the dynamism and diffusion of norms by examining the Women, Peace, and Security norm bundle including with respect to the response to COVID-19.
Cecilia Jacob uses the case of the accountability turn in the implementation of human protection norms, to argue that the concept of regulatory contestation illuminates the power dynamics that shape international order at a micro level.
Jason Ralph explores how norm research has generally eschewed a clear commitment to normative theory to its detriment from the perspective of European pragmatism. Such a commitment, he argues, would need a defence of certain norms against contestation.
In concluding, the book leaves the reader with the ongoing task of approaching the concept of norms from different angles. Research on norm contestation, we argue, shifts the analytical perspective and approaches the constitution of order(s) from the bottom-up. This is a critical transformation in light of increased contestations of the international liberal order, spurred by an interest in repairing that order’s parts to re-instate its stability. The book thereby offers a novel rationale casting light on the topical question of where theories allocate normative meaning, value, and change. With this book, we offer a new for better comprehending today’s crisis-driven contestations and their transformative effect on global order, thereby opening conceptual paths that take norm research in theory and in practice to the next level.
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