Abstract
This chapter focuses on the normativity premise as the first of three thinking tools. It begins by raising a question about the normativity of norms. It notes that while diverse interpretations of norms facilitate a novel and important empirical angle on the role of norms in international relations, their impact remains to be explored more systematically with regard to the normative underpinnings of global governance. It then recalls how the concept of contestation in International Relations theories emerged through critical engagement with the compliance literature, especially by research inspired by the constructivist turn in international relations theories. The argument is developed with reference to the three segments on the cycle of contestation as well as the three stages of norm implementation.
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Notes
- 1.
For the question of how norms ‘work’ compare Kratochwil (1982: 686).
- 2.
For epistemological standpoints and their relevance for analytical perspectives that allow for critical investigations into political science and later international relations, compare the feminist literature in the 1980s and 1990s, especially Sandra Harding (1986) as well as Joan Wallach Scott (1988), and for IR, especially Weber (1994), Whitworth (1989) and Zalewski (1996).
- 3.
This argument draws on Melucci’s critical account of the ‘ontologisation of social movements’ (1988) and on Giddens’ concept of ‘structuration’ (1979).
- 4.
I thank Jim Tully for suggesting the cyclic approach to the three dimensions of normative meaning-in-use.
- 5.
For these two essentially different takes on academic research compare Cox (1983).
- 6.
For recent contributions see Deitelhoff and Zimmermann (2013), Müller and Wunderlich (2013); for early critical constructivists see the work of Fritz Kratochwil, Jutta Weldes, Jennifer Milliken, Anna Leander and Chris Reus-Smit.
- 7.
See for example Hooghe and Marks (1996), Jachtenfuchs (1997), Jachtenfuchs et al. (1996), Jachtenfuchs and Kohler-Koch (1996), Kohler-Koch (1995), Marks et al. (1996), Scharpf (1997), Slaughter (2004) and Zürn (2000).
- 8.
Some theorists without direct links to international relations theories do however seek to bring in contestations about normativity. For example, Seyla Benhabib’s “jurisgenerative” approach to cosmopolitan norms of global governance includes “sites of contestation” where citizens interact within a federal context, see Benhabib (2007: 32).
- 9.
Compare Harald Koh’s reference to the observation of an international lawyer, which noted that, “almost all norms are followed by states almost all of the time” (see Henkin 1979: 47, cited by Koh 1997: 2599, and Koh 2006, see also Checkel 1998).
- 10.
This has been picked up, recently by critical norms research in international relations that note that, “contestation can even generate normative power on its own”, see Deitelhoff and Zimmermann (2013: 8).
- 11.
Compare Duvall and Chowdhury’s critical assessment of that practice concept, Duvall and Chowdhury (2011: 337), see also Bially Mattern (2011: 70–72).
- 12.
For this ontological understanding of practice as competent performance, see Adler and Pouliot (2011).
- 13.
Compare Erskine’s distinction between “consequentialism” and “deontology” as two types of ethical reasoning in normative international relations theory (2013: 44–46).
- 14.
For the latter, compare Brunnée and Toope (2010a), as well as Deitelhoff and Zimmermann (2013), Kratochwil (1989) and Wiener (2008).
- 15.
For an excellent example of how to do this with MAXQDA, see Hofius (2014).
- 16.
See Kant (1984), for a different and somewhat misleading interpretation of the principle see Benhabib (2006), and critically Waldron (2006) in the same volume.
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Wiener, A. (2014). The Normativity Premise: The Normative Power of Contestation. In: A Theory of Contestation. SpringerBriefs in Political Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-55235-9_2
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