Office Hours: How (Critical) Norm Research Can Regain Its Voice

Engelkamp, Stephan; Glaab, Katharina; Renner, Judith

doi:10.1515/wpsr-2014-0002

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…While much of the early research was been positivist in nature, critical constructivists, and others have joined the conversation in important ways. These non-positivist and post-positivist scholars have pointed out the limitations of a static view of norms (Krook & True, 2012), criticized the over-focus on Western liberal norms (Heller & Kahl, 2013) and the marginalization of non-Western norms (Engelkamp, Glaab, & Renner, 2014), and implicit delegitimizing of local voices in the norm diffusion process (Acharya, 2004). As a result, the field has progressed and expanded, with a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of how norms arise, are contested, and influence elite thinking and decision-making.…”

Section: Norms As An Analytical Framework In International Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nuclear norms in global governance: A progressive research agenda

Rublee

Cohen

2018

Contemporary Security Policy

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We argue that the framework of norms has generated a progressive research agenda in the field of global nuclear politics, providing important insights that traditional realist and materialist analyses ignore or dismiss. These insights are not on the margins of nuclear politics; rather, they answer central questions about nuclear non-use, possession, and the nonproliferation regime at large. These findings are not a fluke; instead, they stem from the powerful analytical framework of norms, which provides complexes of linked propositions about actor expectations and behavior in global nuclear politics. This article examines three of those propositions: the importance of the logic of appropriateness, the role of norm contestation, and the changes brought about by norm entrepreneurs. Finally, we identify other norms-related ideas that can further illuminate the dire policy crises facing global nuclear governance, as well as specific areas of nuclear politics that would benefit from norms-related scrutiny.Contemporary global nuclear politics face serious strains and major challenges. At the heart of those challenges are contesting normative claims about the legitimate exercise of state power, the (un)importance of treaty obligations, and even what "security" and "stability" mean. Without rejecting the utility of some realist, materialist, or quantitative analyses in untangling issues related to nuclear politics, we assert-in defiance of traditional wisdom-that ideas about appropriate conduct as well as justice and fairness are central to those challenges.In this introductory article to the special issue, we argue that the use of norms in understanding global nuclear governance provides a progressive, productive, and fast-growing research agenda to understand contemporary global nuclear politics, yielding an "overarching analytical framework that

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Section: Norms As An Analytical Framework In International Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nuclear norms in global governance: A progressive research agenda

Rublee

Cohen

2018

Contemporary Security Policy

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“…Emphasising the benefits of adding more critical and poststructuralist views on norms, these contributions challenge the mainstream understanding of norms by reviewing the role of language, postcolonial legacies or epistemological foundations of mainstream constructivist norm research. 49 By explicitly questioning the focus of current norm research, these approaches offer great potential to reconceptualise norms and to address the challenges posed to norm theory by contestation.…”

Section: Holger Niemann and Henrik Schillingermentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Niemann

Schillinger

2016

Rev. Int. Stud.

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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.

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“…136 From this perspective, emancipation is not a standard against which to measure practices of contestation or an existing order, but the result of practicing critique itself. Also, approaches pursuing the reconstruction of critical voices, 137 for example in postcolonial and feminist research, aim at this type of critique: by closely listening to marginalised or dissenting voices, we can emancipate ourselves, change Western/patriarchal subjectivity and unlearn privileges. 138 With a view to the study of contestation, this, however, also implies that it is not only the existing order and its ideological underpinnings that are to be deconstructed but also the very practices of contestation as well as our own attempts at analysing both the former and the latter.…”

Section: Banyans and Battle Scenes: Ways Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Banyans and battle scenes: Liberal norms, contestation, and the limits of critique

Wolff¹,

Zimmermann²

2015

Rev. Int. Stud.

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In studying the global spread and implementation of liberal norms, scholars have moved from linear notions of norm diffusion and promotion to an emphasis on norm contestation. Contestation by the supposed beneficiaries and addressees has taken centre stage in both research on the norms that underpin global governance and in studies on democracy promotion and liberal peacebuilding. While the impetus of this scholarship is normative – to overcome the taken-for-granted nature of liberal norms – the concept of contestation itself is mainly used with an analytical interest. Yet, as we show in this article, contestation also comes with – oftentimes implicit – normative connotations. Focusing on the seminal work of Milja Kurki, Oliver Richmond, Antje Wiener, and Amitav Acharya, we reconstruct these normative connotations. It turns out that the normative take on contestation is fairly conventional in all four approaches. Contestation is largely seen as a means to enable dialogue, as illustrated by Acharya’s metaphor of the Banyan tree. Fundamental conflicts over liberal norms (‘battle scenes’) are either not considered or seen as normatively undesirable. As a way forward, we propose a typology that enables scholars to empirically analyse contestation in its different expressions and suggest two strategies to normatively assess practices of contestation.

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Office Hours: How (Critical) Norm Research Can Regain Its Voice

Cited by 12 publications

References 54 publications

Nuclear norms in global governance: A progressive research agenda

Nuclear norms in global governance: A progressive research agenda

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

Between Banyans and battle scenes: Liberal norms, contestation, and the limits of critique

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