ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to interrogate the vocabulary of international administration with a view to illuminating a particular normative dilemma that arises in consequence of internationally led exercises in state-building. However, before proceeding any further, I wish to clarify the way in which I mean to use the word ‘normative’ and the type of thought it implies. This chapter is not concerned with explaining particular norms, either in terms of what they ‘do’ or in terms of how they are in fact diffused and internalised. Norms do nothing of their own accord: men and women subscribe to norms, adequately or inadequately, in conducting their relations with other human beings.1 Similarly, this chapter is no more concerned with the formulation of policy, the coherence of which is validated by its correspondence with the precepts of a favoured theory. The engagement of normative thinking affords no place to the enthusiasm of advocacy masquerading as scholarship. Indeed, policy erected on nothing but the shifting sands of desirability, while useful in satisfying the demands of ideology or soothing the call of our conscience, tells us precious little about the conditions of right conduct in international life. In other words, normative thinking is concerned with evaluating the propriety of human conduct and the utterance in which it is intelligible.
