Contestation ‘all the way down’? The grammar of contestation in norm research

Abstract

The meaning of norms is empirically contested. Supposing an inherent instability of norm meaning, contestation, therefore, represents a fundamental conceptual challenge to the mainstream view on norms as shared understandings. By offering a grammatical reading of Antje Wiener’s approach to contestation, we examine how norm research addresses this challenge to its theoretical core assumption. We argue that the grammar of Wiener’s approach, despite its reflexive starting point, ultimately reintroduces an understanding of norms as facts and leads to a normative ‘politics of reality’. This effectively turns contestation into a disruption of the ‘normal’ state of norms. Demonstrating the challenges of theorising norms with rather than against contestation, the article concludes that norm research has yet to find ways to account for contestation ‘all the way down’ in order to sustain norms as a productive analytical concept in IR.

Multi-stakeholder initiatives, policy learning and institutionalization: the surprising failure of open government in Norway

“…This description recalls social constructivist attention to how the appropriateness of global norms are debated in national contexts (Checkel, 1997;Müller, 2004;Niemann & Schillinger, 2017), as well as recent scholarship on the translation and localization of norms Zwingel, 2012), and suggests that insights from each field might contribute to better understanding the ways in which national contextual factors influence the uptake of global norms by national actors.…”

“…According to this view, political elites are the "gatekeepers" who determine the political appropriateness of global norms, and whether they are institutionalized and empowered in national contexts (Checkel, 1997, p. 576). While a handful of studies have explored these dynamics in specific country contexts Niemann & Schillinger, 2017;, the majority of scholarship on global norm promotion has emphasized interactions between governments (Steinberg, 2003;Terman & Voeten, 2017;Towns & Rumelili, 2017), and little attention has been given to defining the domestic mechanisms through which global norms are adopted into national policy.…”

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“…This optimistic reading has come in for criticism on several counts (Niemann and Schillinger 2017). Importantly, ambiguity is not simply a collective misunderstanding that can be resolved through dialogue.…”

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