In their attempt to explain change in international politics, an emerging group of scholars in the 1990s emphasised the importance of 'non-material factors'. Questions about the creation, evolution, and impact of norms obtained a prominent place in their theorising. Cast in a constructivist frame, this norm research promised to be a viable alternative to established approaches and while it has indeed broadened the perspective on state behaviour in International Relations, we argue that at the same time it entailed major conceptual and methodological problems which have not yet been spelled out comprehensively. Mainly, the insight that norms are constantly renegotiated in social interaction has been lost in the translation of social-theoretical claims of early constructivism into empirical research agendas. The ensuing research is best characterised as a cultural-determinist framework which is ultimately ill-equipped for the initial proposition of explaining change. We develop this critique by reconstructing the theoretical and methodological decisions of constructivist norm research. We then propose to re-conceptualise the connection between norms and action and suggest an interpretive methodology that allows delivering on the ambitious promise to explain processes of normative change in international politics. We illustrate this claim by reviewing constructivist norm research on 'humanitarian interventions' and by outlining a relational-processualist perspective on this issue.

Ever since global governance was introduced to the discipline of International Relations (IR), it has been criticised for its conceptual vagueness and ambiguity. In fact, how to even speak and think global governance – whether as a mere description of world politics, as a theoretical perspective to explain it, or as a normative notion to be realised through global policy – remains unclear. The article argues that this confusion exists not because of a lack of debate but rather because of the multiple understandings of global governance that are continuously advanced and implicitly reproduced within these debates. These different, partially overlapping and partially contradicting understandings constitute global governance as a ‘floating signifier’. It is argued that precisely because of this, global governance has obtained its ‘celebrity status’ within and beyond IR. Advancing a singular definition of global governance thus appears to be an arbitrary exercise as well as unnecessary disciplining. Rather than reducing global governance to a singular meaning, the debate in and of global governance would benefit from more self-reflected awareness as to when and how different concepts and understandings of it are invoked. To provide a framework for this, the article structures the different meanings of global governance by offering a taxonomy of different global governance applications.

The intellectual engagement with multinational enterprises in International Relations has found a new home within the narratives of global governance and corporate social responsibility. Both narratives seem to agree that the role of business has changed as state capacities to provide governance assumingly have diminished and, based on broader social and political responsibilities, enterprises began to participate more actively in the provision of collective goods. Increased participation alone, however, does not reveal how corporate actors define and make sense of their responsibilities and their roles within global governance. In fact, focusing on corporate responsibilities and corporate governance contributions does not consider enterprises as actors in their own right who actively interpret and respond to changes in their normative environments. To fill this gap, the article proposes a framework that conceptualizes corporate agency as inherently social and creative. This framework, which can be applied to different contexts, is illustrated by reconstructing interpretative frames and self-understandings advanced by Shell in response to its crisis in Nigeria during the 1990s. Based on this reconstruction, Shell failed to develop and communicate a clear understanding of its social responsibilities, and its overall integration into global governance is likely to remain an ambiguous process in which uncertainty and indeterminacy prevail.

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