ABSTRACT
This chapter follows up on the editors’ leading question of why the world is so difficult to govern. More specifically, and inviting students of international relations (IR) theory to review their tools, Bjola and Kornprobst ask how we may explain the difficulties world society experiences in addressing global problems (see Introduction, p. 1). As explanans for the global problem the editors distinguish between “heterogeneity of global identities and interests,” the “magnitude and interconnectedness of global issues” and the “lack of imagination required for moving the agenda of global governance beyond familiar situations” (ibid.). With a view to exploring an answer to why the world is so difficult to govern, I engage with the issue of familiarity. It is by far the fuzziest of the range of causal explanations suggested by the editors, and has therefore remained relatively unexplored by the governance literature. However, I hold that it offers access to a better understanding of how norms work, especially in cases of norm clash, in international encounters.1
