Introduction

International norms are at the core of discussions on international order and justice, law, power and the power of law, which have taken centre stage in debates among scholars and practitioners of both international law and international relations. Norms have received much public and research interest in the dynamic context of the post-Cold War years. International norms are neither an end in themselves, nor a beginning of norm compliance, they are an integral part of the flow of politics, aimed at meeting instrumental needs and addressing normative concerns. It is thus essential to develop a better understanding of the nature and evolution of this key element of global policy-making. Analysts have been trying to make sense of the development, presence, relevance and power of norms, because they do not fit comfortably within existing perceptions of the global system. Theorists have approached the question of norms from many angles and as a result, explanations and descriptions abound. There has been little agreement, however, on an analytical framework to address the question of the origin of norms and the source of their power to shape state behaviour. Researchers have not yet agreed on a way to conceptualise international norms. This study seeks a more structured understanding of the process of norm building and of the participating actors, which would provide the basis for an improved insight into norm compliance. What forces help individual ideas develop into international legal rules or non-legal norms that bind states across the world? What are the necessary conditions that turn a normative campaign into an integral part of our constructions of appropriate behaviour? Who determines which moral principles will grow to become a behavioural norm and which ones will be discarded? Why are some norms questioned and challenged while others are not? The answers to these questions provide the basis for understanding norm development in a broader context. Building a better understanding of norm development requires the combination of insights from the fields of international law and international

relations, from the sociology of scientific knowledge, and social constructivism. Each of these fields has explored normative processes from different viewpoints, generating an abundance of material that needs to be incorporated into a more comprehensive study of norm formation. The existing research on international norms has tended to be confined to separate fields and, even though much effort has been put into framing norm building processes, evaluating compliance, and the role of non-state actors, these insights have not been framed in a way that can be used more broadly. Taking advantage of the findings of theoretical discussions and empirical analysis, this study proposes to address these weaknesses by adjusting some of the underlying assumptions and to consolidate a theoretical model of normative development, which is valid for a wider range of norms. For the purposes of studying norm evolution, norms are divided into two categories – security norms and non-security norms. Security norms are narrowly defined and refer to issues directly affecting national security – such as arms control, access to strategic resources, conflict and security. These norms need to be studied separately, because negotiations of security norms are distorted by power relations between states, by considerations of sovereignty and national security. Normative concerns do not necessarily affect this field and technical knowledge is selectively favoured. The field of non-security norms is broad, including issues of human rights, trade, development, environmental protection, governance of resources, etc. Developments in these fields may be seen as affecting national security indirectly, but as the case studies further demonstrate, international agreements on non-security concerns are not concluded for strategic security reasons. The main concern of this nature continues to be the threat and use of military force. The development and spread of nonsecurity norms is counterintuitive to the notion of states as rational, unitary actors, preoccupied with security and the maximisation of national interests. It is in these fields that traditional theories of international relations have found it hardest to explain cooperative state action, as it falls outside the immediate realm of national security. These norms emerge despite state politics, and not because of them, reflecting cooperation patterns that are more difficult to explain and justify in national security terms. This study focuses on the patterns of development of non-security norms and argues that these norms evolve in a similar fashion. Most models of norm evolution have described norm building, but have not sought to understand and theorise the factors influencing state behaviour in the process, nor indeed have they hypothesised how and why states agree to construct new behavioural norms. Two main questions arise as a result. What are the key shortcomings of current approaches to the study of norm building? How can these be overcome? The next two sections deal

with these questions in turn. I argue that current knowledge of norm development suffers from three main shortcomings and they relate to our conceptualisation of the process of norm development, to our assumptions about the nature of norms, and to the disconnectedness of existing knowledge of norm creation. I propose to address these shortcomings by bringing together insights from two literatures – social constructivism and the sociology of knowledge. Three key concerns need to be revisited for an improved theoretical model of norm construction to be devised. First, theoretical insights and empirical research from both fields will be engaged to provide the basis to re-construct social processes as dynamic and openended. Second, special attention will be paid to the concept of ‘closure’, which has remained understudied in the field of international politics. Closures are important social moments indicating that consensus has been reached on a given issue. They propel normative ideas forward in the process of norm building. The third concern that this study addresses is the conceptualisation of actors in the global system. Previous studies have defined actors too narrowly and have put them in categories that have restricted our understanding of the role that they play in normative development. These assumptions have also limited the scope of studies into the types of power that they use and the logic of their behaviour.