Lost in translation: a critique of constructivist norm research

Lost in translation: a critique of constructivistnorm researchMatthias Hofferbertha and Christian WeberbaDepartment of Political Science and Geography, University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA Circle,San Antonio, TX 78249–0648 USA.E-mail: [email protected] of Political Science, International Politics, University of Hagen (FernUniversität in Hagen),Hagen, 58084 Germany.E-mail: [email protected]

In their attempt to explain change in international politics, an emerging group of scholarsin the 1990s emphasised the importance of ‘non-material factors’. Questions about thecreation, evolution, and impact of norms obtained a prominent place in their theorising. Castin a constructivist frame, this norm research promised to be a viable alternative to estab-lished approaches and while it has indeed broadened the perspective on state behaviour inInternational Relations, we argue that at the same time it entailed major conceptual andmethodological problems which have not yet been spelled out comprehensively. Mainly,the insight that norms are constantly renegotiated in social interaction has been lost in thetranslation of social-theoretical claims of early constructivism into empirical researchagendas. The ensuing research is best characterised as a cultural-determinist frameworkwhich is ultimately ill-equipped for the initial proposition of explaining change. We developthis critique by reconstructing the theoretical and methodological decisions of constructivistnorm research. We then propose to re-conceptualise the connection between norms andaction and suggest an interpretive methodology that allows delivering on the ambitiouspromise to explain processes of normative change in international politics. We illustrate thisclaim by reviewing constructivist norm research on ‘humanitarian interventions’ and byoutlining a relational-processualist perspective on this issue.Journal of International Relations and Development advance online publication,13 June 2014; doi:10.1057/jird.2014.1

Keywords: constructivism; international relations theory; norms

Introduction

During the 1990s, scholars of international relations rediscovered the importance of‘non-material factors’ and ‘ideational variables’ which had been virtually ignored byneorealist and neoliberal theories (Lapid and Kratochwil 1996; Katzenstein 1996a).1

Emphasising the significance of culture and identity for foreign and security policy, agroup of social constructivists translated the post-Cold War scientific interest inprocesses of change into questions about the role of norms, their creation, evolution

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and impact on actors. It seemed obvious to them that ‘norms mattered’ and that theneglect of normative dynamics was detrimental to the study of international politics(Katzenstein 1996b: 26ff ). For them, the focus on norms offered a way to overcomethe limitations of the ‘neo-neo debate’ and to develop an alternative to the rational-actor model that dominated the field (Klotz 1995: 13ff ). This alternative seemedparticularly promising since it allowed investigating important phenomena in interna-tional politics which had previously been ignored. Neither neorealists nor neoliberalinstitutionalists had much to say about, for example, the abolishment of apartheid inSouth Africa, the improvement of human rights legislation in Third World countries orthe evolution of rules of warfare (Klotz 1995; Finnemore 1996a; Risse et al. 1999).Apparently, norms could explain what rational interests could not. Thus, at least by itsown proponents, constructivist norm research was regarded as an ‘immense promisefor shaking up the International Relations (IR) research agenda and opening upexciting new avenues for inquiry’ (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998: 915).

And indeed, this new avenue of inquiry made for an impressive output. In less thanfive years, scholars interested in norms theorised the formation of state interests(Finnemore 1996b) and developed theoretical models on the creation and diffusion ofnorms (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) and the role of non-state actors in advocatingthem (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Price 1998). As the ensuing empirical works drew onthe same conceptual basis, they ‘contributed to the consolidation of an impressiveresearch programme’ (Wiener 2003: 262). This programme became a crucial part ofthe so-called constructivist turn in IR theory (Checkel 1998). By now, it has providedmany insightful empirical results and, above all, it has helped to broaden the scope ofwhat is recognised as a legitimate object of analysis in IR. However, while it has beena success story in many respects, we argue that constructivist norm research has alsoproduced collateral damage that has not yet been spelled out comprehensively.2 Ourmain contention is that crucial constructivist insights — that norms are negotiatedconstantly in social interaction and that they cannot be separated from the meaningsactors attach to them — has been lost in the attempt to translate broader socio-theoretical claims into neopositivist research designs that would, supposedly, enableconstructivists to challenge the established approaches. More specifically, we arguethat the commitment to a methodological framework that posits a unidirectionalcausal relationships between independent and dependent variables has led construc-tivist norm research to a categorical separation of norms and action and to atheorisation of their relation in a cultural-determinist way.

The time seems to be ripe for such a critical evaluation of constructivist normresearch in IR. At the ISA’s Annual Convention in 2010, Kathryn Sikkink, PeterKatzenstein and Martha Finnemore reflected upon their previous work at a round-table entitled ‘Explaining Change in International Relations’. Interestingly, Sikkinkherself contended that the ‘structural constructivism’ advanced in the 1990s hadproven to be too static for the explanation of dynamic processes. While it hadsucceeded in describing how norms diffuse, it had not provided satisfactory answers

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to the question of why actors comply with them; nor had it been able to explain hownew norms emerge. In this article, we want to advance this discussion by offering analternative perspective on the interrelation between norms and action and on how toinvestigate norms and their political implications. We proceed in five steps. First, westart with a brief description of early IR constructivism as the background againstwhich the later norm research was developed. In the second step, we reconstruct andcriticise the important theoretical and methodological features of constructivist normresearch. We illustrate this critique by discussing the two most prominent modelsof norm-based change in the third section. In the fourth section, we propose areconceptualisation of the connection between norms and action from a relational-processualist perspective and we outline its advantages vis à vis a cultural-deterministaccount. We argue that this alternative conceptualisation goes hand in hand with aninterpretive methodology that would allow fulfilling the ambitious promise to explainprocesses of normative change in international politics. We illustrate this claim bydiscussing two different avenues of inquiry into ‘humanitarian interventions’ in thefifth section before we conclude.

The emergence and split of constructivism in IR

The standard textbook account of IR in the 1980s featured neorealism and neoliberalinstitutionalism as the two dominant ‘paradigms’. While these two were stuck in theso-called neo-neo debate about the possibility of cooperation between states underanarchy (Baldwin 1993; Jervis 1999), a new school of thought emerged that was notclearly defined yet. Drawing on the English School as well as on a broader corpus ofphilosophical and sociological literature, a number of scholars refused to studyinternational politics from the dominant perspective, in which outcomes were tracedback to strategic interactions among rationally calculating states with differingmaterial capabilities. First labelled ‘interpretive analytics’ (Kratochwil and Ruggie1986: 766) or ‘reflectivist approaches’ (Keohane 1988: 389), this intellectual currentlater became known as ‘constructivism’ (Palan 2000: 586f; Adler 2002). Broadlyspeaking, early constructivists argued that world politics was socially constructed inthe sense that power constellations, rules, and institutions were not self-evidentconditions pushing states in a certain direction, but rather products of socialinteraction whose meaning could not be separated from the interpretations of theactors involved (Wendt 1992). Thus, instead of assuming an objective reality whoselaws had to be uncovered, constructivists claimed that actors shaped their realitycollectively. It was ‘a world of our making’ (Onuf 1989). In order to avoid the pitfallsof both structural determinism and reductionism, constructivism proposed toconceptualise agency and structure as being mutually constitutive (Wendt 1987:350ff; Dessler 1989: 451ff ). Among other things, this new perspective promised toprovide a better account for processes of normative change at the international level.

Matthias Hofferberth and Christian WeberLost in translation

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In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, constructivism succeeded in destabilising theprevious consensus that studies of international politics should be based on epistemo-logical realism, the rational-actor model and a positivist methodology (Fierke 2007:172f ). The exponents of established theories were challenged to justify their researchendeavours on a more fundamental level than before (e.g., Mearsheimer 1994: 37ff ).Nevertheless, strong reservations about the new approach remained. Constructivismwas confronted with the objection that while it might offer an interesting newperspective, it had yet to develop a clear research agenda and demonstrate its value inempirical studies. Probably the most prominent declaration of this scepticism wasRobert Keohane’s statement as President of the International Studies Association. Heargued that the established patterns of thought could only be challenged by engaging inempirical research and by establishing a clear research program:

Indeed, the greatest weakness of the reflective school lies not in deficiencies intheir critical arguments but in the lack of a clear reflective research program thatcould be employed by students of world politics. Waltzian neorealism has such aresearch program; so does neoliberal institutionalism, which has focused on theevolution and impact of international regimes. Until the reflective scholars orothers sympathetic to their arguments have delineated such a research programand shown in particular studies that it can illuminate important issues in worldpolitics, they will remain on the margins of the field, largely invisible to thepreponderance of empirical researchers, most of whom explicitly or implicitlyaccept one or another version of rationalistic premises. (Keohane 1988: 392)

His conception of a ‘research program’ presupposed an epistemological view in whichabstractly generated theoretical hypotheses can be tested against indisputable empiricalfacts. Accordingly, it rested on a methodological stance that demanded of scholars todevelop a ready-made programme that could be employed in studies of differentempirical phenomena, allowing a balanced comparison with the explanatory power ofother programmes. Keohane’s suggestion to develop a consistent research programmeexpressed the expectations of the discipline’s mainstream very aptly: These were theconditions that had to be fulfilled by constructivists to be granted the status of anestablished paradigm and to be seriously considered a contender in IR theory.

In hindsight, the seemingly benevolent request articulated by one of the keyrepresentatives of the discipline turned out to be a Trojan horse for constructivism.Ultimately, the concessions made to meet these expectations resulted in splitting theemergent constructivist current into two separate streams (Hopf 1998: 171; Wight2002: 40f ).3 There were those who belied the disciplining expectations and con-tinued to draw on philosophical arguments in order to theorise normative transforma-tions in international politics (Kratochwil 1989; Onuf 1989), discursive representa-tions in security policy (Klein 1990; Campbell 1992; Weldes et al. 1999) or theconstitution of collective identities (Neumann 1996, 1999). Conversely, constructi-vist norm researchers followed thoroughly the course that Keohane had outlined.


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Trying to operationalise complex socio-theoretical claims, they proposed a standarddefinition of norms, specified hypotheses and developed causal models that weresupposed to be applicable in empirical research across different issue areas. Equippedwith these theoretical and methodological tools, norm constructivists felt able to meetthe established approaches at eye level. In fact, their accounts of change could betested directly against materialist and rationalist explanations (Finnemore andSikkink 1998: 916f ). The ensuing publications gave this version of moderate socialconstructivism ‘for the first time […] a critical mass of research’ to supportempirically the claim that norms mattered (Checkel 1998: 347).

In their attempts to distinguish themselves from earlier, more theoretical works,constructivist norm researchers sought to demonstrate the applicability of theirarguments in extensive empirical studies.4 They demonstrated the significance ofnorms in fields previously dominated by realist theories such as national security(Jepperson et al. 1996; Katzenstein 1996b). Denouncing the overemphasis onmaterial aspects, Peter Katzenstein, for example, decided to challenge neorealismon its home turf. He offered a ‘norm-based explanation of the policies of the securityapparatuses in pre-war Japan’ (Katzenstein 1996b: 14). Similarly, Audie Klotz(1995: 13ff ) and Martha Finnemore (1996b: 5ff ) questioned the taken-for-granted-ness of state interests in rationalist theories. They argued that ‘national interests’ like‘the security of the state’ should not be treated as stable properties which could beposited in abstract definitions. Instead, research should investigate how state interestsand preferences were generated in processes of social interaction in the first place.Within these processes, norms were granted ‘crucial roles in defining identity andinterest, rather than simply functioning as a weak constraint on more fundamentalstrategic or economic interests’ (Klotz 1995: 9). Thus, analytically, norms tookprecedence over interests and preferences, both of which were considered to be‘malleable’ and dependent on the normative social environment (Finnemore 1996b:11ff ). These were all powerful arguments that cast doubt on central assumptions andcategories that had previously been treated as self-evident. While constructivist normresearch has thus broadened the perspective on state behaviour in IR, we will show inthe following section that it has not followed through on the insight that the meaningof norms is intersubjectively negotiated.

A theoretical and methodological critique of constructivist normresearch

More than a decade and several IO-publications later, constructivist norm researchtoday lies at the heart of what is considered to be exemplary ‘social-constructivist’research in IR. While materialist and rationalist theories are depicted as interest-based,constructivist theories are characterised as norm-based. Explanations of behaviour basedon a logic of consequentialism are contrasted with those that relate behaviour to a logic of


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appropriateness (Deitelhoff 2006: 14ff ). Norms are treated in a separate article in theHandbook of International Relations (Hurrell 2002) and differing norm conceptualisa-tions are used as a criterion to distinguish between rationalism and constructivism(Fearon and Wendt 2002: 61f ). The framework laid out by constructivist norm researchin the 1990s continues to be applied today.5 Empirical studies based on this frameworkare indeed still regarded as the ‘added value’ of constructivist research (Adler 2002:101f ). Unfortunately, as norm researchers engaged in the mainstream debate on how to‘explain behaviour’, they developed a cultural-determinist framework that is ratherill-equipped for the task of explaining change. Their commitment to a neopositivistmethodology had immediate consequences for their substantive theoretical propositions.The ensuing version of ‘structural constructivism’ is basically at odds with the claim thatnorms are created intersubjectively and, more generally, with the premise that agencyand structure are mutually constituted (cf. Wiener 2009: 179–80).

More precisely, two points are to be made here. First, working towards researchdesigns that isolate norms from other factors and specify their effects on behaviourhas had adverse effects on the conceptualisation of norms. The fact that they wouldhave to be held constant during the empirical analysis has led researchers to definenorms as fixed standards — a theoretical conceptualisation that contradicts thepremise that norms are negotiated in interaction. Accordingly, the norm researchliterature is steeped in a peculiar inconsistency: Although they introduce norms ascontingent social phenomena, sometimes emphasising explicitly that their meaning isintersubjectively constructed, the ensuing research designs and empirical studiespicture them as stable things with fixed and unequivocal content.

Second, the adjustment to the research design requirements of the field’s main-stream involved a particular theorisation of the relation between norms and action.Treating norms as ‘independent variables’ that account for state behaviour logicallyrequired a mechanistic model in which actors passively adapt to their culturalenvironment. Norms were conceived of as components of a given cultural structurewhich had specifiable ‘regulative effects’ on the ‘behaviour’ of individual actors(Finnemore 1996b: 22–25; Risse and Sikkink 1999: 2f ). In effect, norms — definedas ‘standards of appropriate behaviour’ — were treated as a structural forceconveying unambiguous prescriptions. Once a new norm had been incorporated intoa potentially world-wide ideational structure, it accounted for the adaptive behaviourof automaton-like actors almost as if they had been reprogrammed to follow thisnorm. Normative change was thus limited to the diffusion and eventual ‘internalisa-tion’ of norms. Accordingly, their mode of operation was illustrated in figures withunidirectional ‘causal pathways’ (Klotz 1995: 20; Jepperson et al. 1996: 52). Action,understood by early constructivists as ‘the concrete, meaning-oriented activity of anagent’, was basically reduced to ‘something that approaches stimulus-responsebehaviour’ (Goddard and Nexon 2005: 14). In consequence, normative change wasexplained by referring to the structure of the international system understood incultural terms (Finnemore 1996b: 14ff, but also Katzenstein 1996b: 27f ).


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To sum up, as a result of its dedication to a neopositivist research methodology,constructivist norm research is marked by a structuralist bias in the sense that itisolates norms as independent variables and relegates individual actors, most oftenstates, to the status of mere ‘throughputs’ for pressures which are located in thecultural structure of the international system (cf. Jackson 2003: 225, 231–33). Thisproposed framework has a lot in common with the structural functionalist explana-tion of coordinated behaviour advanced by Talcott Parsons (Joas and Knöbl 2009:20–94). The most problematic aspect of such a framework is that it theorises therelation between norms and action without taking the interpretive performances ofhuman actors into account (cf. Goddard and Nexon 2005: 37f; Joas and Knöbl 2009:132–49). Ambiguity in the meaning of norms and conflicts of interpretation areignored for the sake of specifying causal pathways and ensuring explanatoryparsimony (Wiener 2004: 200ff ). Such a unidirectional account of norm-basedaction is hardly compatible with the constructivist premise that social phenomena ingeneral, and social rules in particular, are created and transformed by interpretiveagents in open-ended processes of interaction.

Ultimately, we argue that the intended liberating move of constructivist normresearch against the rationalist and materialist straightjacket has proven to be ratherhalf-hearted and has ultimately not provided much elbow room. Committed to aneopositivist methodology, the approach for studying norms proposed by socialconstructivists operationalised norms as variables in order to prove their regulativeeffects on the behaviour of states. In order to demonstrate that ‘norms matter’, researchon them has been ‘mainstreamed’ (Checkel 1998: 347). Constructivist norm researchconfined itself to adding new goals and motivations while holding on to a teleologicalconceptualisation of agency. It has stopped short of developing an alternative under-standing of action and a corresponding methodological approach that would allow usto account for both the ambiguity of norms and processes of normative transformation.Hence, much of the initial constructivist critique of positivism as an epistemologicallyflawed approach to the analysis of the social world can in fact also be applied toconstructivist norm research.6 We will flesh out this critique by discussing the twomost prominent models of norm dynamics: the ‘norm life cycle’ and the ‘spiral model’.

Illustrating the critique: two models of norm dynamics

The two most important theoretical models of norm dynamics within constructivistnorm research are the ‘norm life cycle’ proposed by Finnemore and Sikkink (1998:895ff ) and the ‘spiral model’ introduced by Risse and Sikkink (1999: 3ff). Thesemodels specify various stages in the development of a norm from its creation to itsfull-scale ‘internalisation’. However, the term ‘creation’ designating the first stage isalready somewhat misleading as neither model really deals with the question how anorm emerges in the first place, that is, from which social contexts it arises and in


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which discourses it is embedded. Instead, the existence of a norm is simply stated.Both models then assume individuals or groups of ‘norm entrepreneurs’ to pick upthese norms, champion them on a global scale and mobilise the support of power-ful states (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998: 896f; Risse and Sikkink 1999: 11ff ).Theoretically, not every norm reaches the stage where it obtains ‘prescriptive status’.It can get stuck in the middle if it does not attract enough backing. Thus, a ‘life cycle’and a ‘spiral’ can be completed or not. However, as soon as a norm reaches the‘tipping point’ of sufficient acceptance, there is no escape. Once successfullyestablished, it becomes a ‘system variable’ that determines the behaviour of politicalactors (Wiener 2003: 262). Its eventual ‘internalisation’ is only a matter of time as it‘cascades’ upon actors until all of them finally abide by the norm (Finnemore andSikkink 1998: 895).7

This brief summary shows that neither model deals with normative dynamics inthe sense of open-ended contention; rather, they are concerned with the diffusion ofnorm-compliant behaviour. Although the question of complying or not is normativeto some extent, neither model accounts for potential differences or alterations in howa norm is understood. Instead of conceptualising the process as open and contingentupon future interactions, both models merely describe the eventual imposition of apre-defined set of behavioural requirements on recipient countries. Internationalsocialisation is thus conceptualised as a one-way street that ultimately leads to fullcompliance. The only normative dynamic captured in these models is the one oftactical moves in a preordained course of events. The socialised agent is not equippedwith the capacity to act otherwise by interpreting the norm differently or byconvincing her socialisers to reconsider their position. In these models, such claimscould only be observed as obstacles to the eventual compliance; after all, the ‘goal ofsocialisation is for actors to internalize norms’ (Risse and Sikkink 1999: 11). Oncegovernments have ratified international treaties, the norms contained in them acquirean unambiguous, taken-for-granted quality, pushing state officials and other citizensinto ‘rule-consistent behaviour’ (Risse and Sikkink 1999: 20–22). Thus, changes inbehaviour are explained by reference to a normative structure that is successfullyimposed on passive agents.

The elegance of these models illustrated abundantly with empirical examplesmakes it easy to overlook how they press social interaction into a mechanical andunidirectional process. First of all, they do not allow for a shift in direction. What ifthose who are supposed to comply succeed in irritating the initial ‘norm entrepre-neurs’ or they even manage to convince them that their understanding of a norm isflawed? Such a development is certainly possible empirically — consider, forexample, the controversial debates about the legitimacy of ‘humanitarian interven-tions’. However, it is ruled out theoretically in both the ‘life cycle’ and the ‘spiralmodel’. Instead, they both focus on predetermined stages that norms pass through.They design a course of events that runs from A to B to C. Second, modifications andreinterpretations of the contents of a norm are not considered at all. What if the


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meaning of a norm changes in the process between its creation at one point in timeand its juridical implementation at another? The issue of diverging interpretations ofnorms is completely ignored. With such mechanistic and unidirectional models,constructivist norm research is not able to account for transformations of norms butonly for norm-consistent changes in behaviour (i.e. compliance). As a centralelement of social structure, ‘norms create patterns of behaviour in accordance withtheir prescriptions’ (Finnemore 1996b: 23). In short, this kind of research ends up asa structuralist explanation of why actors comply with norms.

Therefore, it is not surprising that constructivist norm research has embraced aspecific reading of the ‘logic of appropriateness’ to support their arguments(Finnemore and Sikkink 1998: 912). Derived from James March and Johan Olsen(1989: 21ff ), this norm-based logic of action has been picked up by constructivistnorm researchers as an alternative to the logic of consequences which is based onrationality and utility maximisation. As Sending (2002) convincingly demonstrates,the invocation of this logic by norm researchers (Finnemore 1996b; Checkel 1998;Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) results in a structural explanation of action. In theirreadings, the appropriateness of an action is determined apart from and prior to theaction itself. By separating norms from action and by essentialising both the normand the actor’s identity, constructivists were able to provide the missing micro-levelaccount to explain actions without referring them to rational calculations: Actorscomply with norms because these have been internalised. However, if one engageswith March and Olsen’s initial formulations, they seem to have a different actorimage in mind. As they understand organisations in a non-functional way, theyunderstand participants as being able to ‘arrive at an interpretation of what they aredoing and what they have done while in the process of doing’ (Cohen et al. 1972: 2).This more processual conceptualisation of agency assumes the ability of actors tofocus attention on, and thereby engage with, their respective normative context.Therefore, their often quoted syllogism of action — ‘What kind of situation is this?Who am I? How appropriate are different actions for me in this situation? Do what ismost appropriate’ (March and Olsen 1989: 23) — has to be read more openly thanconstructivist norm researchers have done thus far.8

Basically, March and Olsen do not neglect choice and they do not overemphasisethe determining effect of cultural structures and ‘given identities’. In their view,actors are by no means ‘norm dopes’ as situations always involve multiple roles,various appropriate actions as well as a dynamic institutional setting in which actionstake place. As such, the original version of the logic of appropriateness acknowl-edges and takes into consideration the indeterminacy of moral prescriptions and thesituational character of normative choices. Although notions of appropriateness helpan actor to choose between different options, these decisions are by no meansimagined as clear-cut and predictable reasoning in which unequivocal normsdetermine a certain behaviour. Instead, the logic of appropriateness as introduced byMarch and Olsen leaves more space for creative agency. They would maintain that


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the meaning of normative prescriptions has to be interpreted by actors in particularsituations (cf. March and Olsen 1989: 39ff ). The logic of appropriateness thus fitswell in the framework of constructivist norm research only because it was invoked ina very peculiar way. The possibility that actors reflect on norms was disregardedsince constructivist norm theorists needed a neat and simple alternative to rationalistexplanations of behaviour. In their reading, actors simply ‘internalise the roles andrules as scripts to which they conform, not out of conscious choice, but becausethey understand these behaviours to be appropriate’ (Finnemore 1996b: 29). Such areading of the logic of appropriateness basically equals a complete neglect of agencyat least in the sense as the ability to act differently than the normative contextsuggests. Accordingly, a framework that operates with the logic of appropriateness inthis fashion is not in a position to account for changes in normative structuresthemselves (Sending 2002: 461). In sum, the two models of norm dynamics alongwith their particular invocation of the logic of appropriateness illustrate how the earlyconstructivists’ challenge to materialist and rationalist approaches in IR hasultimately been translated into a cultural-determinist framework for explaining whystates comply with norms.9

Norms and action from a relational-processualist perspective

Our reconstruction of constructivist norm research has shown that its conceptualisa-tion of norms resulted in a cultural-determinist framework which is rather ill-suited tothe purpose of explaining change. We contend that it was mainly the commitment toa neopositivist methodology that required such mechanistic theoretical models withsimple causal relationships. Accordingly, constructivist norm research started fromabstract theoretical assumptions, logically derived hypotheses from these assump-tions and then tested these hypotheses against empirical ‘facts’ as if they could beascertained and analysed unambiguously (Finnemore 1996b: 25ff ). Obviously, thisideal of science is based on the epistemological assumption that a social reality existsindependently of the researcher. Only if this separation is maintained, one canobserve reality objectively and subsume it under the categories of the scientist(Jackson 2011: 24–40). This adherence to a neopositivist methodology has ledconstructivist norm research to conceptualise the relation between norms and actionin a way that does not logically follow from its own theoretical arguments. If interestsare malleable and subject to continuous redefinition, as argued by norm constructi-vists, one would expect that the same applies to norms too. Still, norms weretheorised as structural givens with an unequivocal meaning. Instead of taking theintersubjectivity and malleability of social phenomena seriously, constructivist normresearchers treated norms as fixed entities existing independently of actors and theirinterpretations. If they are not mere prisoners of material circumstances and if realityis what they make of it, one has to conceive of them as being equipped with the


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capacity to interpret their surroundings and to choose different courses of action.In contrast, norm constructivism ultimately reduced agency to the question ofwhether a static norm had already been internalised or not.

In the terminology of a ‘relational sociology’ outlined by Mustafa Emirbayer(1997) and picked up in IR by Jackson and Nexon (1999), constructivist normresearch in the 1990s drew on a ‘substantialist’ understanding of social phenomena.Such an understanding presupposes the existence of fixed units with a specifiablesubstance that distinguishes them from other units. Substantialist theories ‘presumethat entities precede interaction, or that entities are already entities before theyenter into social relations with other entities’ (Jackson and Nexon 1999: 293).In constructivist norm research, states have the choice either to reject or embrace agiven norm but not to (re)define its meaning. As Jackson and Nexon (1999: 294) noteaccurately, such an account contains only the ‘illusion of agency’ since it is not theactors themselves who do something but rather the ‘variables — attributes of entities— which do the acting’. The ‘actor’ is merely the location where compliance or non-compliance takes place (Blumer 1969: 127ff ). In other words, changes in behaviourare not endogenous to the actors and their interpretations but rather induced externallyby norms, which supposedly exist independently of them. These norms, in turn, at leastin the above-mentioned unidirectional models, are not amenable to change themselves;they are treated as isolated stable things whose existence is taken for granted; they arethe real actors as they change the purported agents’ ‘behaviour’, understood as anadaptation to external forces (Herborth 2004: 62).

From a relationalist perspective — the methodological counterpart to substantial-ism — the relation between norms and action is more complex. Just as actors are notseen as static units with fixed dispositions, norms are not thought of as stable thingswith unambiguous meaning. Rather, actors are involved in ongoing processes ofsignification in a social reality that is conceived of as ‘brimming with indeterminacy’and ‘pregnant with possibilities, waiting to be completed and rationalized’ (Shalin1986: 10). From this perspective, we propose to conceptualise norms as points oforientation and reference. In what we conceive of as a sequence of inherentlyconnected acts, norms are related to agency in two ways. Firstly, by drawing onnorms, actors are able to make sense of indeterminate situations with which they areconstantly confronted. As conscious and familiar manifestations of often uncon-scious, deep-seated beliefs and patterns of interpretation, agents refer to norms forguidance. Needless to say, in all but the most routinised situations, agents can— andat the same time have to — choose from a variety of different and often conflictingnorms and relate them creatively to the situation at hand. Secondly, in the process ofreferring to norms in a particular context, actors not merely invoke them as they are,but reinterpret their meaning. While every reference to a norm, whether it beaffirmative or critical, acknowledges and in this sense strengthens the existence of thenorm, these references together have significant implications for its content becausethey offer particular readings. By virtue of being referred to, norms are constantly in


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the making; they are neither ‘internalised’ by agents nor do they have a particularmeaning independent of varying interpretations and references.10

In terms of theory of action, this conceptualisation of norms is based on (1) thesociality of agency and (2) the situated creativity of action. While sociality impliesthat agency is structured by norms, creativity emphasises the structuring effect ofaction on norms. Taken together, we rely on a theory of action which is neitherstructuralist nor voluntaristic; therefore, it can conceptualise adequately the dynamicrelation between norms and action. As to the sociality of agency, from a relationalistperspective, there is no such thing as an atomistic actor. Authors like Hans Joas andMustafa Emirbayer would contend that actors can only be conceived of in relation toother actors and their social expectations. In fact, actors can consider themselves as‘actors’ that are able to interact with their environment only on the basis of theirsociality. It is their entanglement in intersubjectively constituted webs of meaningwhich allows them to make sense of experiences and enables them to assess andchoose between different courses of action (Joas 1996: 184ff ). While particularbeliefs and calculations of interest are an integral part of this process, they are notindividual properties of agents; rather, they are constituted ‘coterminously withincontexts’, involving relations with others (Emirbayer and Mische 1998: 967).Consequently, we insist to take seriously the claim that agents are entangled in websof meaning. While these webs of meaning have been conceptualised differently,either as routinised ‘patterns of interpretation’ (Oevermann 2001) or as widelyestablished ‘rhetorical commonplaces’ (Jackson 2006a), we are primarily interestedin their relation to agency. Through their actions, human beings bring abstractconcepts, semantic distinctions, and everyday theories to the situation at hand, whichenables them to make sense of their perceptions and experiences. Obviously, whileproviding guidance, these fairly routinised structures of meaning do not existindependently of the actors and their interpretive performances. It is the agentsthemselves who create and reproduce them in the process of acting. Therefore, wepropose to think of these structures as a diverse and ambiguous reservoir of collectivebeliefs and world views which, even if they apparently persist over astonishinglylong periods of time, are subject to gradual transformation.

In a given situation, agents engage in action by drawing on specific combinationsof beliefs and world views to make sense of the situation. By advancing differentinterpretations, they actualise different meanings. Therefore, due to the simple factthat multiple actors perform their own situational actualisations, transformations ofstructures of meaning are the rule, not the exception.11 These transformations oftengo unnoticed, just like the gradual changes in persons that one meets every day. Infact, the cumulative results of gradual modifications may only become apparent inextraordinary situations in which they come to light quite clearly. What then mightappear as a drastic and/or sudden change has usually been in the making for quitesome time. The important point here is that, while guiding action, the meaning ofnorms is constructed intersubjectively in contingent processes in which the agents


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themselves are actively involved. It follows that norms are neither stable norindependent of the actors, steering them into a certain behaviour. Rather, as points oforientation and reference, actors draw on and resort to norms to legitimise theiractions.

Considering the situated creativity of action, our conceptualisation of agency isquite different from the ‘norm guided behaviour’ that constructivist norm researchhas put forth. Owing to the indeterminate nature of social phenomena, action always‘involves defining that which is as yet undefined, rather than simply making a differentselection from a reservoir of situation components that are either already defined orhave no need of definition’ (Joas 1996: 133). How actors assess and define situations athand, which interpretations they choose and how they incorporate them into action byascribing (potentially new) meaning to it depends on their imagination and inventive-ness. While situated in intersubjective structures of meaning, agency basically impliesthe ability to construct novel readings. A situation might be structured in the sense thatthere is a horizon of socially accepted and therefore available sets of interpretations.Which of these interpretations are actualised though and how precisely actors‘ “define” each other’s actions’ (Blumer 1969: 19) depends on their creativity. Thus,it is only because of situated creativity that we can sustain our agency in unfamiliarsituations as each act brings forth a release of further activities. In this sense, situatedcreativity can be considered the necessary complement to sociality with which ‘wesurprise ourselves by our own action’ (Mead 1967 [1934]: 174).

Creativity also implies that goals are not a foregone conclusion to which means areadjusted accordingly. Goals can be quite diffuse and even contradictory at thebeginning of a sequence of action, fleshed out and specified only gradually or evenretrospectively, as in the case of ex post rationalisation. If these goals refer toabstractly formulated norms, agents need to construe readings of how these normsapply to their particular circumstances (Joas and Knöbl 2009: 514–19). This selectionand actualisation constitute creative performances by the actor as it is played out inconcrete situations that are themselves ‘ever changing and thus always subject tore-evaluation and reconstruction of the part of the reflective intelligence’ (Emirbayerand Mische 1998: 967f ). To be sure, actors develop certain routines to ease processesof constant reflection and evaluation. However, no two situations are exactly thesame so that new and diverging interpretations have to be developed in the light ofnew problems. It is precisely through these attempts to make sense of unfamiliarsituations and the ensuing conflicts of interpretation that structures of meaning andunderstandings of a particular norm are transformed gradually.12 Furthermore, thereis always a chance that established norms are completely called into question. This isparticularly true in situations in which routinised ways of understanding do not helpto make sense of a problem at hand. In such ‘problematic situations’, actors are inneed of developing new beliefs to guide and (re)stabilise actions. Situations ofthis kind can be conceptualised as crises in which doubt prevails and whichrequire the invention of a creative solution (Wagner et al. 2006: 14–19; Hellmann


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2009: 639–40, 2010: 149–50). Thus, situated creativity also refers to the ability ofagents to cope with crises, for example by (re)interpreting existing norms or choosingdifferent ones for reference. Accordingly, action is understood as indeterminate andnon-teleological. Agents deal with norms and reinvent them just like they adapt theirgoals and plans of how to realise them (Joas 1996: 160ff ). In sum, human actiondistinguishes itself from mere instinct-driven behaviour precisely because of itsinvolvement in socially fabricated structures of meaning. Agents are equipped withthe capacity to evaluate new contexts reflectively and to creatively update and changetheir views. Norms are an important component of these processes of reflection,evaluation and change.

Having discussed the social embeddedness of human agency in structures ofmeaning as well as the situated creativity of action, we are now in a position tooutline in more detail our non-teleological and open-ended understanding of therelation between norms and action. In the process of acting, norms lend themselves tobe used for orientation because, as ‘should-phrases’, they articulate social expecta-tions in relation to which the agent can position herself, relate them tentatively to theproblem at hand, interpret them in a particular way and weigh them against othernorms. In this sense, norms form an integral part of the available cultural reservoir onwhich actors draw when they justify their actions. They are explicit prescriptionswhich rest on beliefs and worldviews that remain implicit most of the time. However,the fact that norms borrow from patterns of interpretation should not mislead us toconclude that these patterns are fixed and that they somehow emit infallibleinstructions that actors follow in some kind of blind obedience. The crucial pointthat norm constructivists have overlooked consistently due to their neglect of agencyis that the meaning of norms, their propositional content, is continuously recon-structed and gradually modified in particular contexts. The meaning of a normremains ambiguous — it is not fixed beyond a temporary ‘determination of theindeterminate’ (Shalin 1986: 12f ).13

To complicate things further, the social contexts in which decisions have to bemade and justified are generally complex and uncertain ones. There is no easy way ofascertaining the relation between a particular norm and a particular action. A militaryintervention in a foreign country, for example, is often legitimised simultaneouslywith different goals such as stopping human rights violations, restoring peace andstability in the region, or overthrowing a despotic regime. Although actors refer tonorms in one way or another, they often invoke several of them at the same time. As aconsequence, it is far more problematic to determine which of these norms hasguided a particular action than constructivist norm research suggests. Moreover, inaddition to their ambiguity and simultaneity, normative commitments are likely tochange over time. Commitments to norms are constantly put to the test in newcontexts that agents have to make sense of. Although they draw on norms fororientation and guidance, the acceptance of a particular reading of a norm remainstemporary and open for amendment. This temporal acceptance, in turn, is likely to be


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re-examined when new situations and problems arise which leave agents clueless asto how to act. Precisely because they are formulated explicitly, norms lendthemselves better to such re-evaluations than the unreflected worldviews on whichthey rest. Against this background, the gradual transformation of normative commit-ments appears to be the rule rather than the exception; at least if we conceive ofagents as reasoning and communicating subjects who are pressed constantly to makedecisions in uncertain situations and justify these decisions to themselves and others(Oevermann 2002: 12f; Oevermann 2008: 23ff ).

All these arguments speak against models with causal pathways running straightfrom normative structures to actors, pushing them into specifiable behaviours via themechanism of norm internalisation. We would contend that such models omit morethan they illuminate. Dynamic processes of normative transformation can be graspedmore fruitfully by acknowledging that norms structure the realm of possible actionsand, at the same time, are being structured by the agents’ sense-making activities.14

The fact that norms structure action is accounted for by the embeddedness of humanagency in webs of meaning. In turn, the structuredness of norms through action istaken into consideration by the notion that agents grapple interpretively with theirsurroundings and come up with slight modifications or novel readings of normativepropositions all the time. In sum, rethinking the relation between norms and actionfrom a relational-processualist perspective (1) increases the analytical specificity ofresearch questions and methodologies; (2) allows us to conceive of norm success,norm failure and norm change; and (3) enables us to account for the contingency ofthese processes.

Firstly, in terms of analytical specificity, a conceptualisation of social norms aspoints of orientation and reference for action can be distinguished from aconceptualisation of legal norms as explicit instructions of a formalised and codifiednature.15 The former evades the image of a fixed and clear-cut standard because itimplies that the social construction of a norm is never concluded in the form of anunequivocal and non-controversial standard. In contrast, the latter might be morecompatible with the definition of norms as ‘standards of behaviour’. However, evenlegal norms are constantly subject to interpretation as disputing parties make theircases. In this sense, more analytical specificity with regard to the actual researchinterest would help to prevent unnecessary misunderstandings. A more carefuldistinction between different conceptualisations of norms would contribute to aclarification of positions which represent ‘not necessarily competing views on how tostudy the role of norms’ (Wiener 2003: 253).16 Following this distinction, there are atleast two different kinds of questions that can be asked concerning the role of normsin international relations. Each of these questions originates in different researchinterests and implies different methodological consequences. On the one hand, normresearch that is committed to a neopositivist methodology might be useful foranalysing compliance or non-compliance to formalised legal norms. This would bethe case in legal studies whose purpose is to determine whether a legal norm is


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applicable to a particular case and in judging whether it has been breached. On theother hand, social scientists interested in explaining the conditions and effects ofindividual and collective agents’ practices should take the claim seriously that normsas ‘collective social facts’ remain open to modifications in processes of meaning-ascription. Understood in such a way, they can no longer be squeezed into a variable-model. Instead, analysing particular references to norms allows us to reconstructpatterns of interpretation and thus make latent structures of meaning explicit(Oevermann 2000: 64ff ).

Secondly, as norms and their effects depend on permanent reproduction throughsocial interaction, this perspective allows us to take into account the ‘success’ ofparticular norms, their failure, as well as the gradual transformations of their meaning.Although not explicitly discussed by Finnemore and Sikkink (1998) or Risse et al.(1999) in theoretical terms, there is no guaranteed happy ending for norm life cycles,nor does each norm spiral succeed. Even widely shared norms may be challenged ontheir normative grounds or simply ‘erode’ if not reaffirmed continuously (Rosert andSchirmbeck 2007: 284f ). To put it differently, the social construction of a norm doesnot end with its official transcription into a legal code, nor can the behavioural impactof norms be guaranteed by successful ‘norm internalisation’. In fact, although a normmight be shared and accepted widely, we argue that there is no such thing as completenorm internalisation. If we take seriously the claim that norms, by definition, areconstructed intersubjectively in communication between actors, then norms cannot beisolated and ‘internalised’ individually, nor can their normative content ever be fixed ina final sense. Actors might internalise habits and routines of behaviour implied by anorm, but not the norm itself. In the end, emphasising the possibility of norminternalisation and focusing on norm success apparently owes more to a certainfunctionalist optimism inherent in a liberal version of constructivism rather than to asound conceptual analysis. Normative change might as well occur in directions notwished for (Checkel 1998: 339).17

Thirdly, and most importantly, the interesting question then is how normativechange is best conceived of and how it can be analysed most fruitfully. It seemspromising to us to look at the interpretations, reasons and justifications that agentsoffer for their actions and to investigate how they change. Thus, instead of taking anestablished and legally fixed rule and measure the degree of its compliance, studies ofnormative transformations should focus on the meanings that creative agents ascribeto their actions in specific situations, how they refer to norms to legitimise theseactions, and how previous interpretations of norms are modified in these commu-nicative processes. If we take the constructivist aspiration to explain processes ofnormative change seriously, in our view, this also requires a re-orientation towards aninterpretive methodology. Research projects concerned with normative change thusneed not define the presumed content of a particular norm in advance but could ratherstart with the premise that its meaning and its practical implications are a matter ofcontention among the observed agents. Drawing on interpretive methodology they


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would then analyse the invocations of particular norms in order to reconstruct thelatent structures of meaning which underlie them.

Such a methodological approach enables scholars to take on an attitude towardsnorms that differs from the attitude assumed by the agents they observe. As we said,for political practitioners, norms are points of orientation and reference that allowthem to make sense of a situation and to legitimise their actions. Researchers on theother hand can interpret these references and justifications from a position ofanalytical distance. Although from the perspective of the agent the norm might havebeen what motivated him or her subjectively to act, for the social scientist, aparticular reference to a norm is only the point of access for a reconstruction of thepatterns of interpretation that have been actualised in this articulation (Oevermannet al. 1987, see also Franke 2010: 56–62; Herborth 2010, 2011). Instead of taking acertain interpretation of a norm for granted, researchers therefore have to interpret theinterpretations of actors (Guzzini 2000: 160ff ). From an analytical perspective,norms are ‘cultural resources’ invoked by actors in particular situations (cf. Jackson2006b). What social scientists explain then is not whether or not a norm has beeneffective but how it is advanced in struggles of signification and to what effects.18

In this sense, invocations of norms serve as access points for interpretive analysis.In the remainder of this article, we want to illustrate this point by discussing how‘humanitarian interventions’ have been explained by Martha Finnemore as one of themajor representatives of constructivist norm research. We will hint at the problemsher twin commitments to neopositivism and a structuralist theory of action entail.We show how the issue could be tackled more fruitfully from a relationalist-processualist perspective drawing on an interpretive methodology.

Illustrating the argument: studying ‘humanitarian interventions’

As outlined above, one of the main arguments advanced by norm constructivists isthat states act not only upon rational interests that correspond to particular materialconditions, but also upon ideas and beliefs, specified as norms which actors have‘internalised’. In Martha Finnemore’s (1996c, 2003) account of ‘humanitarianinterventions’, human equality is such a norm. Although Finnemore insinuates thatshe makes a ‘constitutive’ argument, namely, that the dissemination of equality normshas enabled politicians to make humanitarian claims, her aim is to causally explain whypatterns of intervention have changed, or, in her own words, ‘Why, then, do statesintervene?’ (Finnemore 2003: 53). She answers this question by identifying a change inthe ‘purpose’ that motivates states to intervene militarily in other countries. Character-istically for the line of argumentation that we reconstructed and criticised above,Finnemore relates changes in intervention behaviour to new humanitarian goals which,in turn, are explained with reference to a changed coherent normative structure.She argues that ‘new patterns of humanitarian intervention’ can be attributed to a


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‘collectively shared standard of appropriate behaviour’ applying to ‘internationalsociety’ as a whole. The new standard then accounts for ‘the purpose of intervention’(Finnemore 2003: 15). In other words, norms as fixed entities are conceptually placedahead of the goals and means of states. They fulfil the function of explaining wherethe ‘purpose of intervention’ ultimately comes from.

In effect, the chapter dedicated to ‘humanitarian interventions’ does not actuallyanalyse how notions of legitimate purposes have transformed in particular cases ofmilitary intervention. Instead, Finnemore simply asserts that the new purpose is toprotect foreign nationals from state repression and suggests that it can be credited tothe dissemination of equality norms by decolonisation and anti-slavery movements inthe 20th century resulting in the recognition of non-whites and non-Christians asequal human beings (ibid.: 71–83). Although she dedicates some pages to thisdevelopment, the macro-process of norm diffusion remains external to her ownempirical investigation. So, ultimately, because of her conceptual and methodologi-cal commitments, what Finnemore characterises as an ‘inductive’ approach in factturns out to be a deductive procedure. The proposition about the actual source ofchanges is not a conclusion that comes out of an engagement with the empiricalmaterial. Rather, it is a hypothesis she had posited already in her previous article(Finnemore 1996c: 154–55), derived from a cultural-determinist norm theory thatexplains ‘humanitarian intervention’ with reference to equality as a ‘system-levelvariable’ that ‘shapes the interests’ of states, namely, the interest in ‘saving strangers’— to use the phrase coined by Nicholas Wheeler (2000).

Now, apart from the inconsistencies in her methodological vocabulary and thesimplistic causal chain— which, one could argue, is an unavoidable side-effect of allmacro-explanations19 — does this account omit something crucial and does itmisrepresent historical events in important ways? If Finnemore’s modest claims thatshe merely wanted to develop some preliminary hypotheses (Finnemore 2003: 7) aretaken seriously, she has certainly succeeded. The hypothesis that ‘humanitarianinterventions’ can be ascribed to an enhanced identification of Europeans and NorthAmericans with ‘strangers’ who are neither white nor Christian is plausible enough tobe followed up in further studies. But if her book is read as an elaboration andconfirmation of this claim, it falls short in two regards. First, it misrepresents theemergence of ‘humanitarian interventions’ as a consensual and conclusive historicaldevelopment. Second, the book does not actually investigate and explain the processesof change but rather identifies differences between supposedly stable periods ofhistory. We will elaborate briefly on these two shortcomings and discuss how arelational-processualist approach would be suited to remedy these problems.

First, infused with an implicit faith in progress, Finnemore's account offers anoverly stylised and affirmative narrative in which the actually existing disagreementsover the legitimacy of ‘humanitarian interventions’ are brushed aside. At best, they arenoticed in passing as debates within states (Finnemore 2003: 2–3) or they appear astransitional phenomena which would later give way to consensus. From the very


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beginning of the book, she refers to ‘international society’ as the entity in which sharednorms are located. In doing so, she translates the theoretical observation that norms areintersubjective phenomena into the empirical claim that there has to be some kind ofshared normative consensus in international society. Accordingly, ‘humanitarianintervention’ practices are depicted as the result of a harmonious progression of sharednormative understandings in international society, a perspective in which it becomesvery difficult to see frictions or instances of hegemonic imposition.

This bias towards consensus is all the more peculiar, and ultimately misleading, asthe legitimacy of ‘humanitarian interventions’ is arguably one of the mostcontentious issues in world politics. A relational-processualist approach, whichdoes not explain intervention practices with reference to successfully establishedand internalised norms, but instead analyses the claims politicians make to justifythem, is able to account for conflicts of interpretation both between factions withinindividual states and between groups of states. As Lene Hansen (2006) shows forthe case of Bosnia, at least three different positions on intervention competed withone another in Western foreign policy debates. Only one of them, the ‘humanitar-ian responsibility discourse’, prescribed military action of NATO member states onbehalf of innocent civilians. According to Hansen, then, the intervention in Bosniawas not the result of a macro-historical progression of humanitarian norms, butrather the result of a case-specific victory of humanitarian discourse over others.The fact that this discourse became the dominant way of interpreting the events inBosnia was a contingent historical development that depended upon contentiousstruggles of signification (ibid.: 95–147).

Similar careful analyses of conflicts over the right representation of the situationand the adequate political response could be carried out for other instances of‘humanitarian’ interventions, for example, the war in Kosovo, the recent interventionin Libya as well as the debates about intervening in Syria. Alongside the closerattention to dissenting positions (e.g., Shi and Shen 2002), we contend that arelational-processualist account allows understanding intervention practices as theresult of struggles between different political actors for hegemony of one set ofinterpretations over another. One would not take the officially proclaimed purpose ofthe intervention, brought forward by those who have prevailed in political struggles,to be the consensual purpose of ‘international society’ as a whole. In a nutshell,instead of searching for an alleged consensuses on moral purpose, one would focuson conflicts of interpretation.

The second major shortcoming of Finnemore’s approach is that it does not put herin a position to actually investigate and to explain the processes of change but merelyto identify differences between strikingly stable periods of history. The actual processthat explains these differences appears only as a hypothetical mechanism. As shecompares the patterns of interventions in the post-Cold War era with those of the 19thcentury, the major differences— the expanded focus on who deserves protection andon the requirement to act multilaterally — are explained with the assumption of


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successfully completed norm life cycles, that is, with the anchoring of norms in thecultural structure of international society. By contrast, a theoretically informedanalysis situated in a relationalist-processualist approach would trace changes inintervention practices back to a trajectory of conflicting interpretations of humani-tarian crises as problematic situations. An account of ‘humanitarian interventions’could reveal that the post-Cold war situation of the early 1990s was interpreted bymembers of North American and European political elites as a triumph of ‘theWest’ and the ‘end of history’ and that it was largely in this perspective that civilwars in Europe and Africa were construed as virtually untimely phenomena. Thus,they could only be grasped in a very diffuse way as representing something new(e.g., Kaldor 1999; Heupel and Zangl 2004), an interpretation that is by no meansmandatory. The temporary pervasiveness of the narrative that ‘new’ wars have tobe countered by ‘humanitarian interventions’ would be treated as a contingentdevelopment in need of explanation and it would not be read as evidence for theassumption that a new ‘moral purpose’ had established itself in ‘internationalsociety’. One part of such an explanation could be that a transatlantic pattern ofinterpreting the post-Cold War situation included a self-conception of ‘the West’ asa morally superior community of values that could not tolerate massive humanrights violations, sometimes combined with the claim that due to its advanced stagein human history, the responsibility of instituting order in other parts of the worldresided with European and North American states.20

In other words, the researcher’s task would not be to explain hypothetical shiftsfrom one period to another, but rather to reconstruct open-ended processes ofcontending interpretations with their respective policy prescriptions. Scholars couldanalyse the debates that have taken place since the 1990s about whether or notmilitary interventions are a legitimate reaction to civil wars and the suffering ofcivilians that they entail. More specifically, they could interpret references to andinvocations of normative commitments that either sustain this political practice orcontradict and delegitimise it. By analysing these references, one could reconstructhow the practice of ‘humanitarian intervention’ was ascribed with different meaningsduring the 1990s in particular contexts that had to be explained. The processes ofnormative transformation in this area of world politics would thus be reconstructed asthe contingent trajectory of conflicts of interpretation, ranging from Somalia, Bosniaand Kosovo to Libya and Syria. Of course, this would be a very ambitious project. Ifdone properly, however, it would be in a better position to explain the contentiousand still inconclusive creation of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine as theprovisional compromise between the (largely Western) tendency to privilege humanrights concerns on the one hand and the (largely Chinese and Russian) defence ofstate sovereignty on the other hand (cf. Doyle 2013; Heinze and Steele 2013).An interpretive analysis along these lines would thus consist of a nuancedexamination of long-term normative transformations instead of settling for broadhypotheses about conceivable mechanisms.


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With this excursion into an analysis of ‘humanitarian interventions’ we hope tohave shown that our proposed re-conceptualisation of the relation between norms andaction as well as the accompanying interpretive methodology would tell us whatphenomena one could look at and how to look at them. Scholars following this line ofthought would be much more alert to dissent and contradictions than those who workwithin a cultural-determinist framework. Especially when actors try to justify theconsolidation of previously loosely defined norms into legal rules or concreteobligations, one can expect a highly contested struggle over competing interpreta-tions. To reconstruct these struggles in international politics seems to be an importantand worthwhile research endeavour which, in our view, distinguishes a relational-processualist methodology from the structuralist perspective of the present construc-tivist norm research.

Conclusions

In his review article entitled ‘The Constructivist Turn in International RelationTheory’, Jeffrey Checkel (1998) critically assessed constructivist norm research.Although he stated that better research designs and specifications of key terms as wellas the further development of middle-range theories were still needed — changesthat he considered ‘easy fixes’ — in his view, constructivism had for the first timereached a critical mass and was in a position to confront mainstream IR withempirical results. Being in that position, the crucial question for him was ‘whatkind of constructivism do we want’ (Checkel 1998: 347). Constructivist normresearch answered this question by translating loosely defined constructivist tenetsinto a more coherent research program. Being somewhat critical towards thisdevelopment, he nevertheless embraced the notion of creating a coherent researchprogram and maintained that the empirical contributions outweighed the (meta-)theoretical concerns that this translation brought with it. In fact, for Checkel, theconstructivist norm researchers’ ‘emphasis on dialogue and causal analysissuggests a fairly standard concern with building a rigorous and coherent body ofresearch that speaks to and plays off other literatures within IR’ (Checkel 1998:348). Fifteen years later, with the wisdom of hindsight, we can identify the majorproblems of creating this particular research programme and, at the same time,attempt to outline a different kind of constructivist norm analysis that we regard asa fruitful alternative for the inquiry of change in international politics.

The first aim of this paper was therefore to appreciate and critically evaluate theconstructivist norm research of the 1990s. Our assessment of this literature hasshown how a new research agenda has been successfully established within thedisciplinary mainstream. Norm research is now one of the major reference points ofIR constructivism. In handbooks and introductions, constructivism can be sum-marised neatly in contrast to other paradigms: While realist theories focus on power,


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institutionalist theories on interdependence, and neoliberal theories on preferences, itis constructivist theories that look at norms to explain the behaviour of actors ininternational relations (e.g., Zangl and Zürn 2003: 140ff ). Our reconstruction ofconstructivist norm research, however, has also shown that, by establishing itself asa research programme, constructivist norm research has subscribed to and in factfully embraced the mainstreaming force of widely shared neopositivist ideals ofscience. In this context, constructivist norm research started from abstracttheoretical assumptions, derived logical hypotheses from these assumptions andthen tested these hypotheses against empirical ‘facts’ as if they could be ascertainedunambiguously (Finnemore 1996b: 25ff ). Starting from these premises, normswere conceptualised as ‘standards of appropriate behaviour’ and treated as anindependent variable to explain political outcomes (Finnemore 1996b: 22–25;Risse and Sikkink 1999: 2f ). Thanks to such neat research designs, the effects ofnorms on the behaviour of states could be specified in advance. Interestingly,although early constructivists stated that the effects of norms ‘on human action[are] not adequately captured in probabilistic statements about future conduct’(Kratochwil 1989: 100ff ), this is exactly what the later norm research has done. Incomparison with early constructivist social-theoretical works on rules and norms,we argue that by ‘going mainstream’, constructivist norm research in the 1990smerely added a ‘cultural’ variable to the already established ‘material’ ones. Thus,the constructivist critique of neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism remainedlimited to ontological assumptions about actors’ goals and motivations. ‘Unable toshake the positivist orthodoxy because it never really understood it’ (Wight 2002:40f ), constructivist norm research stopped short of developing a theoretically andmethodologically consistent alternative because the ensuing research designssolidified a cultural-determinist perspective on the relation between norms andaction.

Given these limitations of constructivist norm research, the second aim of thispaper was to re-conceptualise the relation between norms and action and to spell outhow such a re-conceptualisation can be translated into a methodological approachthat allows us to explore processes of normative transformation more productively.While we do not claim that a relational-processualist perspective on norms and actionis ‘more true’ than other approaches (cf. Jackson and Nexon 1999: 292), we believethat conceptualising norms as socially produced and therefore ever-changing is bettersuited to asking and answering questions about normative change. If one is interestedin this subject — and we believe that constructivist norm research has been — itseems useful to us to abandon the notion of norms as regulative ‘standards ofbehaviour’ and instead to reconstruct contingent trajectories of conflicts of inter-pretation through the careful analysis of normative references that creative agentsgive when they justify their actions. Many well-developed methods for putting thiskind of interpretive research into practice are readily available in present IR. Theedited volume of Yanow and Schwartz-Shea (2006) provides an overview of a broad


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variety of such methods while their book on interpretive methodology and researchdesign elaborates the social-theoretical premises as well as the practical implicationsfor research (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow 2012).21 In IR particularly, the works ofPatrick Jackson (2006a), Lene Hansen (2006) and Janice Bially Mattern (2005),among others, have demonstrated the fruitfulness of interpretive methodology incomprehensive empirical studies. We think this would be a promising avenue forconstructivist norm research as well.

Notes

1 Our interest in norms emerged in a graduate seminar offered by Tanja Brühl at Goethe UniversityFrankfurt. Our critical examination of the methodological aspects of this literature has taken shape inconversations with Benjamin Herborth. We would also like to thank the discussant Jonathan Acuff aswell as the participants of the ISA Annual Convention 2012 panel on Contemporary Debates inInternational Relations Theory and the anonymous JIRD reviewers for their helpful comments andcriticism.

2 For earlier critical examinations of particular aspects of constructivist norm research, see Sending(2002) on the logic of appropriateness, Herborth (2004) on Wendt’s conceptualisation of the agency-structure issue, Wiener (2003, 2004, 2009) on the intricacies of norm compliance and contestation aswell as Rosert and Schirmbeck (2007) and Panke and Petersohn (2012) on norm erosion.

3 Until today, constructivist approaches in IR are divided into critical or hard constructivism on the onehand and conventional or soft constructivism on the other hand (Fierke 2007: 172ff ).

4 Martha Finnemore (1996a: 32), for example, addressed this directly by noting that Wendt, Dessler,Kratochwil, Ruggie, Onuf, ‘and other early proponents of these sociological approaches’ had beenrepeatedly ‘criticized for not demonstrating empirical applications’.

5 See, among others, Risse et al. (2013), Gillies (2010), Kelley (2008), Percy (2007).6 The relevance of Friedrich Kratochwil and John Ruggie’s formulation of the internal inconsistenciesof the mid-1980s regime theory remains undiminished here. Like regime theory then, constructivistnorm research today suffers from an unproductive ‘tension between its ontological posture and itsprevailing epistemological practices’ (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986: 774). Consider the followingparagraph in particular: ‘[J]ust as epistemology has to match ontology, so too does the explanatorymodel have to be compatible with the basic nature of the particular scientific enterprise at hand. Theimpact of norms within international regimes is not a passive process, which can be ascertainedanalogously to that of Newtonian laws governing the collision of two bodies. Hence, the commonpractice of treating norms as “variables” — be they independent, dependent, intervening, or otherwise— should be severely curtailed. […] Precisely because state behaviour within regimes is interpretedby other states, the rationales and justifications for behaviour which are proffered, together with pleasfor understanding or admissions of guilt, as well as the responsiveness to such reasoning on the part ofother states, all are absolutely critical component parts of any explanation involving the efficacy ofnorms’ (ibid.: 768)

7 Note that Finnemore and Sikkink refer to Cass Sunstein here. Although partially critical of game-theoretical models, Sunstein clearly draws his insights from behavioural economics and thusconceptualises norms in a very narrow, almost exclusively regulative way (Sunstein 1997: 32ff ).

8 We thank the editors of JIRD for pointing this argument out to us.9 Thus, the critique that Axel Honneth has levelled against the conceptualisation of culture in earlycritical theory can be applied equally to constructivist norm research: It has failed to demonstrate ‘thatsocialized subjects are not simply passively subjected to an anonymous steering process but, rather,


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actively participate with their own interpretative performances in the complex process of socialintegration’ (Honneth 1987: 355).

10 This argument obviously draws on the ideas from the tradition of American Pragmatism where realityis constantly in flux and beliefs, understood as ‘rules for action’, are questioned and put to the test inindeterminate situations of crisis, leaving the actor in doubt (Hellmann 2009: 638–41, 2010: 146–49;Roos 2010: 56–59).

11 This conception of structures of meaning is different from the conceptualisation of stablepolitical cultures or unequivocal normative structures that prevail in norm research literature. For acritique of such static conceptualisations in the constructivist research of foreign policy, see Wagneret al. (2006: 3–19).

12 This view on the processuality of action is, to some extent, compatible with March and Olsen’sunderstanding of preference formation. They reject the ‘idea that preferences are produced andchanged by a process that is exogenous to the processes of choice’ (March and Olsen 1984: 739–42).Instead, they maintain that realising action and generating preferences take place at the same time in ananalysis of a particular situation. This allows them to theorise situations in which preferences remainuncertain. However, in contrast to the conceptualisation we are offering here, they put less emphasison creativity, arguing that norms can be ‘activated’ selectively to guide behaviour.

13 For example, the unspecified notion of protecting civilians from massive state violence has to berelated to the concrete instance in which it is invoked as a norm. Agents need to explain at what stagestate violence is deemed unacceptable, what they understand by ‘protection’, and who bears theresponsibility to ensure it. Obviously, there are different — and probably contentious — answers tothese questions, so that quite different actions can be inferred from and legitimised through referencesto one and the same normative idea.

14 Wiener (2003: 297) captures this ‘dual quality of norms’ by arguing that norms ‘are constructedthrough social interaction on the one hand, and have a constitutive impact on behaviour, on the other’.

15 This distinction resonates with the distinction between constitutive and regulative norms that goesback to John Searle (among others, see Onuf 1989: 50–51; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998: 891).

16 Note in this context how many different phenomena in IR are referred to as norms. Racial equality andthe abolishment of apartheid (Klotz 1995), women’s rights and suffrage (Finnemore and Sikkink1998), the abolishment of land mines (Price 1998), human rights per se (Risse et al. 1999),international election monitoring (Kelley 2008), corporate social engagement (Flohr et al. 2010), toname but a few, have all been described and discussed as norms. Given that some of these phenomenacould be characterised — perhaps more accurately — as sets of practices or nets of interconnectednorms, it is often difficult to discern precisely which norm is actually being investigated.

17 To elaborate on this argument, the norms chosen for analysis by constructivist norm research were all‘good’ norms whose diffusion and eventual implementation was considered desirable from a liberalWestern perspective. In this vein, for example, it was ‘desirable’ for most IR scholars in the 1990s thatstates ‘internalise’ human rights norms and comply with them. Constructivist norm research has beendeeply influenced by the political agenda to demonstrate that ‘normative progress’ is possible and thatmaterial interests and power politics can be transcended if norms are anchored in the cultural structureof international relations (Barkin 2003: 334f; Jackson and Nexon 2004).

18 As regards research on ‘the West’, Jackson (2010) suggests that there is a difference between, on theone hand, a substantialist approach that takes for granted what ‘the West’ is and then investigates whatit does and, on the other hand, a relationalist-processualist approach that interprets references to ‘theWest’ as moves in legitimation struggles. Equally, there is a difference between a substantialistapproach that takes the meaning of norms for granted and then explores what they do and arelationalist-processualist approach that analyses and interprets references to norms as moves inlegitimation struggles.

19 An example proving the opposite would be Theda Skocpol’s (1979) book on the causes of socialrevolutions. For a general discussion of this question, see Tilly (1984).


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20 An example of this pattern of thought is Tony Blair’s speech on the ‘doctrine of internationalcommunity’, which is in large part a justification for the ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Kosovo(Lindhof 2013).

21 The same logic of inquiry and commitment to interpreting meaning is advanced by Cecilia Lynch(2014) in her most recent book on the interpretive tradition of studying international politics.

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About the Authors

Matthias Hofferberth is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University ofTexas at San Antonio. His research and teaching interests lie in the fields ofglobalisation, global governance, and private actors with a particular focus onmultinational enterprises. His recent publications include ‘Global Companies asSocial Actors: Constructing Private Business in Global Governance’ (2013), in JohnMikler, ed., The Handbook of Global Companies, 351–70, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers (with Tanja Brühl), and ‘The Binding Dynamics of Non-Binding Governance Arrangements: The Voluntary Principles on Security andHuman Rights and the Cases of BP and Chevron’, Business and Politics 13(4), 2011.

Christian Weber is Teaching Assistant at the University of Hagen. His research andteaching interests lie in the fields of foreign policy analysis, especially German andAmerican foreign policy and International Relations, in particular US-China relationsand studies on ‘the West’. His recent publications are: ‘Dissident Foreign Policy andthe (Re-)Production of International Orders’, in Wolfgang Wagner, Werner Wouterand Michal Onderco, eds., Theorizing Deviance in International Relations, 105–31,Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 (with Daniel Jacobi and Gunther Hellmann), and‘The West: A Securitizing Community?’, Journal of International Relations andDevelopment, advance online publication, 3 May, 2013 (with Gunther Hellmann,Benjamin Herborth, and Gabi Schlag).


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Lost in translation: a critique of constructivist norm research

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