Writing Norms

Introduction

There has been a tremendous increase in norm research within constructivist scholarship about international relations. ¹ The explosion of scholarly work on norm diffusion and normative change has been paralleled by an increasing amount of critical commentary in this context. Critics within the constructivist field have pointed to the prevalence of static concepts of norms and the neglect of power dynamics in processes of normative change. ² In addition, studies inspired by more postmodernist perspectives have criticized the connection between power and truth and the lack of reflexivity in a field of study that claims to be genuinely normative. ³ As such, scholars have looked at the processes of forgetting that are part of the apparent success stories of normative change in constructivist research, ⁴ the role of social hierarchies in processes of norm diffusion and normalization, ⁵ and the lack of reflexivity in concepts such as socialization ⁶ or persuasion. ⁷

Despite more recent critical work on norms, we contend that the dominant narratives in mainstream constructivist norm research that normalize particular readings of global politics at the expense of others still prevail. Writing norms, in this respect, is not politically innocent but may be complicit in subtly influencing academic and even political practice. ⁸

Consequently, we seek to recover the normative ambiguity inherent in the processes of normative change for a more reflective practice of norm research. We argue that the way the norm language is currently used by constructivist norm research exercises a form of epistemological violence that seeks to minimize normative ambiguity. This way of writing norms may be problematic, however, as it may help to silence alternative stories about normative change. Therefore, we propose an alternative way of reading and writing norms that is reflective and takes account of the normative ambiguities inherent in the processes of normative change. We proceed in two steps.

First, inspired by Jacques Derrida’s work on deconstruction, ⁹ we treat “norms” as effects of differences and deferrals; they are constituted in a play of “différance” that both acknowledges and defers the differences inherent in norms. Deconstruction is not only a technique of thorough reading but also a critical endeavor to challenge the categories within which we think; that is, our language as a system of differences. It shows through a series of critical questions how a text relies on, sustains, and values structural dichotomies that enable its argument in the first place. Likewise, our key question is not, “What is a norm?” but “What does the text presuppose to speak of norms?” ¹⁰ This involves a double reading of a text’s presuppositions; while a first reading may invert the system of dichotomies that structure our thinking, a second move is necessary to “displace” and leave this system of thought. ¹¹ In our material, we find a specific normalizing practice that is constituted metaphorically in the form of a norm language that works to eliminate normative ambiguity.

In a second step, we suggest alternative ways of dealing with the ambiguity of difference that constructivist norm research tends to subdue. Supported by a precarious fiction of scientific objectivity, the apparently clear and unambiguous norm language inhibits a more open dialogue with alternative and especially non-Western normative orders. In order to recognize the political practice of doing norm research, we call for a culture of tolerance and an ethics of hospitality that do not seek to eliminate normative ambiguity but embrace it as a source of dialogue.

Reading the Norm Literature

The literature on norms and international relations rests on certain underpinnings that have implications for the way constructivist norm research is practiced. A deconstructive reading of all the norm literature is beyond the scope of this article, but following Derrida’s spirit of critical reading (but also limiting the scope of our findings), we concentrate on the meticulous deconstruction of one seminal text that we have identified as being of high relevance for the field. We have selected Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink’s contribution to the 1998 special issue of International Organization (IO): “International Organization at Fifty: Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics” edited by Peter Katzenstein, Robert Keohane, and Stephen Krasner as our point of intervention. ¹²

In “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” Finnemore and Sikkink present their reading of the state of the art in constructivist norm research. The article marked a first effort to consolidate the constructivist endeavor that started out in the late 1980s as a critique of rationalist approaches. ¹³ It tied in with previous constructivist work which argued that ideational factors matter in global politics and specified the causal mechanisms and processes by way of which norms, culture, and identity affect behavior. ¹⁴ Their essay helped to show that work on norm-based behavior ¹⁵ is relevant for explaining political change and is thus of prime importance for the constitution of constructivist research on norms as legitimate scholarship within the discipline.

We selected the seminal text of Finnemore and Sikkink for two main reasons. First, the article attempts to position constructivist norm research within the discipline and to fix its identity and self-understanding. Published in the fiftieth anniversary issue of IO, it looks back on the first fifty years of the journal. The purpose of this issue was “to illuminate past pathways and to open vistas on future directions for research.” ¹⁶ The contributions are presented by the editors to be “the themes that have been most important to IO over the years” ¹⁷ and as exploring major lines of research in the field of international political economy broadly defined. The issue claims to display the state of the art of the discipline, and “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” shows that constructivist norm research as presented and carried out by Finnemore and Sikkink has been taken seriously in mainstream forms of research. Their contribution does not only picture and review the state of constructivist norm research both in IO and the broader literature but depict a programmatic article for future research on international relations.

Second, this article has made (and continues to make) a huge impact on scholarly research on international relations. Since the 1990s, constructivism developed an influential research program that came soon to be considered as taking a “middle ground” between rationalism and post-structuralism in this field. ¹⁸ Finnemore and Sikkink’s piece became a key text for this research. There is hardly a paper on norms and international relations that does not at least refer to it. A look at the Social Science Citation Index reveals that the article has been cited nearly a thousand times in peer-reviewed articles since its publication. Additionally, the article is among the most cited when the search criterion norms is entered. This is not surprising: the article gives a pointed overview about norm research in the discipline at the time and develops an argument about normative change with plenty of testable hypotheses. The norm “life cycle” metaphor became a widely cited heuristic for imagining normative change. It has inspired constructivist empirical studies on the so-called norm diffusion and influenced an important research program in this respect. ¹⁹

While their article represents probably one of the most influential texts in constructivist norm research, it has also attracted criticism from within its own field. Three interrelated points of critique stand out. A first set of criticisms revolve around the static concept of norms that is often used in constructivist norm research. Norms, it is argued, are conceptualized as “things” ²⁰ with a relatively stable content that could be transported from one place to another. Yet, this perspective underrates the ongoing practices of norm contestation through which social meanings are constantly produced and reproduced and which leaves static conceptions of norms highly problematic. ²¹

Second, it is claimed that the analytic focus of early constructivist norm research lies on the mere diffusion of international norms from the global to the local. ²² Normative change is thereby conceptualized as either norm adoption or norm rejection. ²³ This perspective underestimates the importance of local contexts in adoption processes and tends to underrate aspects of power. ²⁴ Thus, concepts of socialization, ²⁵ diffusion, ²⁶ or persuasion ²⁷ are insufficient to capture the exchanges taking place between international norms on the one hand and local beliefs and practices on the other.

A third criticism relates to the mixing of agent-centered and structuralist arguments. Constructivist explanations of normative change often remain actor centered; however, this necessarily implies a structuralist perspective as a new norm already has to exist as part of an existing ideational structure. ²⁸ This argument neglects the co-constitution of agent and structure ²⁹ and leaves the actual process of norm building theoretically bracketed. ³⁰

While these interventions by critics of constructivist norm research have been important, we notice that they refrain from challenging Finnemore and Sikkink’s epistemological frame of reference. This leaves their larger ontological argument about normative change in place. Therefore, we contend that we need to scrutinize the way Finnemore and Sikkink’s norm language helps to write reality into existence. Hence, it seems timely to challenge the supposed “foundations” of this research. In doing so, our point is not to take issue with Finnemore and Sikkink’s overall work on norms but to show through their seminal paper how normative foundations of norm research are produced and sustained.

We propose a Derridean reading of “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” in order to trace how the text relies on logocentric dichotomies—the metaphysics of presence that permeates Western scholarship ³¹ —that need to be frequently sustained by discursive moves of deferral, closure, and forgetting. Consequently, we paid particular attention to the authors’ metaphorical use of what they term norm language. ³² We contend that this metaphor is not simply a rhetorical move to highlight the need for conceptual clarity when it comes to norms; rather, it creates the illusion for a norm to appear as clearly definable and present.

Compared to writing, speaking has often been considered a somehow “more direct” way of communicating meaning. But writing norms contains a double meaning: on the one hand, there is the commonsensical notion of scholarly writing as the intended production of academic text. On the other, and this is the meaning that we are particularly interested in, there is Derrida’s notion of general writing of which “the system of speech, consciousness, meaning, presence, truth, etc. would be only an effect, and should be analysed as such.” ³³ Accordingly, our analysis of the norm language in “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” shows that norms cannot easily be placed, defined, situated, or diffused, at least without closure, deferral, and forgetting.

Our deconstruction illustrates how a constitutive outside is both deferred and differentiated in moves of différance; we provide an alternative reading of some of the stories that are going on in the text and that may destabilize its underlying logics. We suggest that the metaphor of a norm language contains within itself an ambiguity that ultimately cannot be resolved. Instead, we suggest that Finnemore and Sikkink’s metaphorical move seeks to establish an apparently stable ground by subduing ambiguity in constructivist norm research that enables them to carry out their argument on normative change in the first place.

Our first reading of the selected article analyzes the internal structure of the text. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” elaborates on two related main threads: first, it situates norm research within the discipline more generally and in relation to the rationalist research program in particular. Second, the text seeks to explain normative change in the field of international politics.

The first thread reviews constructivist norm research and locates norms within the discipline by opening up conversations with rationalist approaches. It does so by placing norms within a broader genealogy of the discipline. Finnemore and Sikkink specifically link the constructivist project to the prominent role that norms allegedly have assumed in the beginning of the study of international politics. They argue that normative issues have always been part of the discipline and hence present constructivist scholarship as a “return” to norms. While referring to the past, they also reflect on what future norm research might look like. The article proposes to work closer with the rationalist camp and to bridge the perceived gap between rational and ideational approaches to the analysis of international relations.

The second thread assigns norms a significant role in inducing political change. Finnemore and Sikkink ³⁴ ask four basic questions: “How do we know a norm when we see one? How do we know norms make a difference in politics? Where do norms come from? How do they change?” They approach these problems on definition, relevance, origin, and influence when presenting their widely cited norms life cycle model.

“International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” argues that norms, as ideational phenomena, can hardly be seen or measured since there is only indirect evidence of them. However, the text asserts that there is “general agreement” on how to define a norm: “it is a standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity.” ³⁵ The authors proceed to engage with the question of the origin of norms that figures prominently at the outset of the article. They lament the lack of theoretical work on “norm building” and link the origins of norms to “human agency, indeterminacy, chance occurrences, and favorable events.” ³⁶ Norms are said to “evolve in a patterned ‘life cycle’.” ³⁷ According to “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” many international norms began as domestic norms and become international through the activities of norm entrepreneurs, so that normative change itself is significantly dependent on the support of domestic movements up to a tipping point. From that point on, international and transnational influences are more important to bring about normative change. ³⁸ Working through the “filter of domestic structures and domestic norms,” ³⁹ it is the identity of states “as members of an international society” ⁴⁰ and their desire to find “legitimation, conformity, and esteem” ⁴¹ among their peers that accounts for compliance with norms.

These two main argumentative threads are based on certain presuppositions and omissions, which are necessary to make Finnemore and Sikkink’s argument work. In the next section, we show how their argument on norms and the norm language they use has important implications for constructivist norm research.

Speaking the Norm Language

In spite of the general agreement about what defines a norm, Finnemore and Sikkink contend that there are some issues that “still cause confusion and debate” ⁴² and that are in need of clarification. By offering clarity on such conceptual problems, the authors aim at opening up the debate on norms within the discipline. Yet, we argue that while opening spaces, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” needs to carry out certain moves of closure and deferral to deal with the inherent ambiguity that constructivist norm research appears to invite.

In their subsection on definitions, Finnemore and Sikkink caution against the “danger” of using the norm language. ⁴³ This is peculiar: how can such a language be dangerous, especially if there is general agreement on the norm definition? More generally, what does speaking the norm language mean? In Saussurean semiology, language is a socially constructed system of signs that works through a meaningful relationship between the signified (a concept) and the signifier (a sound image). While the relation between the signifier and the signified is considered to be arbitrary, the signifier is linear and fixed. In a linguistic system, language becomes possible through the repeatability of the sign and the play of differences between signs and meanings. Jenny Edkins notes that linguistic terms are valued solely, thanks to their usage within the system that is generally accepted by the community, just like norms, as we are inclined to add, “Change takes place when there is a shift in the relationship between the signifier and the signified, and in fact language is described as being radically powerless to defend itself against the forces of change.” ⁴⁴ This seems to be the reason why “using the norm language” can be considered “dangerous”: it is susceptible to change. The language metaphor adheres to a specific logic of representation that permeates the whole text: it treats norms metaphorically as signs, as the constitutive parts of a language, in which norms can be represented to convey a message from A to B. But in practicing a language, one is always confronted with the inherent danger of being “confused,” ⁴⁵ so language must be used in a clear and generally accepted manner. In any case, it needs to avoid or at least try to minimize the inherent ambiguity that comes with practicing a language. In the text, we came across several such moves of clarification.

For example, Finnemore and Sikkink want to inquire how norms change. Yet instead of a diachronic argument that looks at historical transformations of norms, critical examples like slavery or sovereignty as instances of change within the normative order are deferred. Instead, the text distinguishes between a norm language and a language of institutions that must not be confused by the scholar. It is worth quoting this passage in detail.

There is general agreement on the definition of a norm as a standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity, but a number of related conceptual issues still cause confusion and debate. First, whereas constructivists in political science talk a language of norms, sociologists talk a language of “institutions” to refer to these same behavioral rules. Thus, elsewhere in this issue March and Olsen define “institution” as “a relatively stable collection of practices and rules defining appropriate behavior for specific groups of actors in specific situations.” One difference between “norm” and “institution” (in the sociological sense) is aggregation: the norm definition isolates single standards of behavior, whereas institutions emphasize the way in which behavioral rules are structured together and interrelate (a “collection of practices and rules”). The danger in using the norm language is that it can obscure distinct and interrelated elements of social institutions if not used carefully. For example, political scientists tend to slip into discussions of “sovereignty” or “slavery” as if they were norms, when in fact they are (or were) collections of norms and the mix of rules and practices that structure these institutions has varied significantly over time. Used carefully, however, norm language can help to steer scholars toward looking inside social institutions and considering the components of social institutions as well as the way these elements are renegotiated into new arrangements over time to create new patterns of politics. ⁴⁶

The problem of the representation of meaning in language figures prominently in the work of Jacques Derrida. For Derrida, however, language is inherently constituted by relations of difference and meaning changes over time in the play of differences and deferrals. ⁴⁸ Derrida shows how Western thought is structured in binary terms such as spoken/written, good/bad, presence/absence, or identity/difference. In this hierarchy of oppositions, an apparent presence of language is preferred over the absence of writing. Language is often considered to be more direct than writing, which seems to be addressed to an absent reader and thus only a second-order representation of what is more directly represented by language. ⁴⁹ Derrida turns his observation into a critique of what he terms Western metaphysics where the system of binary oppositions imposes a “violent hierarchy” between them. ⁵⁰

Our main interest in the remainder of this section is a critical reading of Finnemore and Sikkink’s norm language in order to uncover how it privileges presence over absence. For example, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” relies on dichotomies like good and bad norms, the international and the domestic, or the universal and the particular, in which the former is valued over the latter. Moreover, the text frequently asserts origins and foundations, claims universality, and supposes scholarly consensus. By way of such discursive moves, a stable ground is sought to be established that needs to be taken for granted for the main argument on normative change to function. But at the same time, this hierarchization exercises epistemological violence by subduing normative ambiguity and foreclosing alternative ways of reading.

Writing Norms

Our reading of “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” has identified some points where the argument on normative change relies on presuppositions that privilege Western norms at the expense of alternative norm sets. In various parts of the text, a generalized outside or other is invoked as a supplement to constitute what is already present in the essence of norms. First, we found that the text tends to conceptualize international (read: Western) norms in a way that they appear as intrinsically good. The difficulty in this move lies in assuming (and valuing) a supposed presence of a prescribed identity that is based on a shared assessment about good norms. The text does not put the ambiguous, changing, and conflicting character of norms into question. Instead, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” constructs a binary and evaluative difference between good and bad norms to define and stabilize a particular meaning of norms. By assuming a universal value of norms, the authors give particular priority to Western norms and tend to downplay their more problematic, ambiguous contexts. The text takes the uniqueness of particular contexts as mere anomalies in contrast to what is presented as the universal normality of the Western world. In order to render their argument possible, the text needs to defer foundational questions that ultimately elude empirical research. It conducts moves of closure and constructs differences between good and bad or universal and particular. But “the opposition relies on an illusion.” ⁸⁷ The seemingly foundational presence of good and universal norms is a product of differences themselves. After all, both the intersubjective and the evaluative dimensions of norms are inescapable. ⁸⁸

For constructivist norm research, as reviewed and practiced by Finnemore and Sikkink in this text, bad or particular norms are paradoxically needed to be used as supplements for constructing the norm as essentially good and universal. They are deferred as unnecessary but at the same time also essentially necessary to constitute liberal norms from their outside and to complement them in what is missing. Thinking metaphorically of norms in terms of a norm language glosses over these differences and leaves a supposed binary hierarchy in place. Interestingly, the examined text itself seems to work as a supplement for norm research ⁸⁹ : its attempts to clarify the question of origins and definitions of norms aim at offering a distinctively critical contribution to norm research on international relations. By inviting interdisciplinary insights from neighboring disciplines, the text seems to help illuminate a discipline’s blind spots. By consequently deferring the problematic questions linked to colonialism or imperialism in norm research, the text stabilizes an always already present and complete picture of norms.

And yet, supplementary moves of closure like the story of the Balinese theatre-state contain within themselves the potential of their own reversal. As our reading of this comparison illustrates, what was presented as a mere derivate of the universal international norm turned out as a parallel claim for universality that was not enunciated. Moreover, the colonial violence that was part of the story in Bali was not part of the quotation. In retrospect, comparing the supposed rationality of modern sovereignty with some local, possibly exotic theatre-state works to normalize a particular reading of normative change as a simple diffusion of norms from the international to the domestic. Taking this perspective as a mere descriptive claim is highly problematic. It is in this sense that constructivist norm research depoliticizes the politics of norms as it obscures its own normative biases.

This problematique may have even wider repercussions for constructivist norm research that goes beyond “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change”: following Finnemore and Sikkink, we argue that “[p]rofessions often serve as powerful and pervasive agents working to internalise norms among their members. Professional training does more than simply transfer technical knowledge; it actively socialises people to value certain things above others.” ⁹⁰ Accordingly, and again paraphrasing “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” as constructivist norm research on international relations has become more and more professionalized, we should expect to see this research increasingly reflecting its own normative biases. ⁹¹ Our point here is that the scientific way to describe, understand, explain, categorize, or evaluate international, especially non-Western phenomena, actors, structures, or processes seems to contain always already certain values and a specific normality that is not at all acknowledged as such. Our reading of “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” illustrates how their normalization is supported discursively by a metaphor of speaking a norm language.

Yet language is not simply a tool to express ideas about reality; rather, according to Derrida, ⁹² the act of speaking is always already embedded in a preexisting structure of differences. This is also important for norm research, as the process of naming produces things rather than “attaching labels to objects that are already there.” ⁹³

What do these findings imply for norm researchers? We suggest that norm scholars begin writing norms in a more reflective way that tolerates and even embraces normative ambiguity. What could such an alternative practice of writing norms look like and what kind of questions become imaginable from this perspective? First of all, it would be a critical practice of questioning taken-for-granted assumptions. Richard Ashley, for instance, proposes to consider what modern discourses of politics necessarily exclude: exclusions within the argument that may be regarded as foundational, since these are the sorts of questions that must be endlessly deferred for the argument to function. In short, “it is to render problematic and political what must be taken to be unproblematic and beyond politics [… ].” ⁹⁴ This point was also recognized by Katzenstein, Keohane, and Krasner in their introduction to the IO special issue:

Postmodernists insist that there is no firm foundation for any knowledge. Since there is no position from which to pass scientific or ethical judgments, postmodernist analysis is restricted to the task of unmasking the power relations that are concealed in all knowledge claims, including their own, and all forms of communicative rationality. Through a close analysis of language, postmodernism points our attention to the inherent instability of all symbolic and political orders. Since subjects only understand the world through language, and control of language implies power linguistic presentations are always open to cognitive and political processes of destabilization. Postmodernist analysis seeks out these sources of potential instability. It is interested in decentering established discourse, including its own, by paying attention to what is marginal or silent. ⁹⁵

For norm research, an alternative way of writing norms could question and inquire about processes of change within norms, query their apparently unambiguous character and their inextricable association with supposedly fixed identities. This would entail asking what happens if the presumed presence turns out to be impossible to maintain. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” does not account for the possibility of normative change within, and this neglect of historicity of norms comes at the cost of closures and deferrals. Yet, forgetting is not necessarily the only option: Diez, for instance, accounts for this temporal aspect and observes that Europe’s identity constitutes a self that is at the same time its own other. ⁹⁹ Rather than neglecting history and memory, he argues that Europe’s own past constitutes an important part of the discursive construction of its self. Ascribing slavery or imperialism, for instance, not to an absent past that works as supplement to a present without any consequences for its normative order, but recognizing it as always already present may enable to transcend the boundaries, exclusions, and differences of norms themselves. Obviously, postcolonial perspectives might be a good starting point for such an endeavor. ¹⁰⁰

We have found that the need for eliminating normative ambiguity is a foundational presupposition for constructivist norm research. Yet, there may be other possibilities to deal with ambiguity. In his alternative history of Islam, the Arabist Thomas Bauer ¹⁰¹ gives us an idea how disparate and even contending meanings of norms may coexist in parallel. For example, for hundreds of years, Islamic societies practiced what Bauer terms a “culture of ambiguity,” which permitted various religious communities to coexist. The plurality of contending legal and religious norms was not only acknowledged but openly embraced. Writers celebrated ambiguity as an important topic in various genres, such as political treatises, interpretations of holy texts but also in poetry. Universal validity was not aspired, as the parallel existence of different ways of reading (“Lesarten”) was always taken for granted. Without fixed truth claims, societies lived in a culture of ambiguity that made them more tolerant against contending interpretations of norms. Accordingly, the aim was not to abolish normative ambiguity but to tame it. This way of dealing with ambiguity was only brought to an end, as Bauer shows convincingly, after Islamic societies encountered Western notions of modernity that demanded an unambiguous truth. ¹⁰²

What can norm research learn from this alternative way of coping with ambiguity? We acknowledge that there is an inherent undecidability when it comes to theorizing norms or processes of normative change: writing about norms is always political, and in a way it always carries out certain closures. ¹⁰³ However, to presuppose closure in order to establish the dominance of one truth claim over others forecloses the possibility of accepting normative ambiguity from the outset. Finnemore and Sikkink’s metaphor of the norm language draws on a foundational identity from which norms ultimately derive. In a binary hierarchy, difference is necessary to construct identity’s other. A precarious fiction normalizes this move in order to subdue the ambiguity that is part of this process.

In embracing ambiguity, one would proceed from the other direction and accept that the language of norms always depends on different ways of reading. While “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change” needs difference for constructing an identity from which norms can originate, a culture of ambiguity does not aspire identity in the first place but contends itself with accepting difference. To be able not only to tolerate difference but embrace ambiguity joyfully, one may follow an ethics of hospitality. In this respect, we affirm Roxanne Doty’s suggestion that we “transcend” the supposed universality of norms by looking for nonessentialist practices such as in the idea of hospitality in the work of Derrida. ¹⁰⁴ Radically translated into practices, this perspective may open a way to see oneself through the other as “a moral response that is consistent with the antiessentialist sensibility of human responsibility and human subjectivity articulated by Jacques Derrida in his writings on ethics.” ¹⁰⁵ By recognizing the other as presence and not only as a supplement and questioning foundational assumptions that enable us to “speak” of norms might be a first step to think about the implications of writing norms as a political practice. This way norm scholarship may seek to establish dialogue within a culture of normative ambiguity instead of normalizing difference.