ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the research design of the book, in particular the “spiral model.” But emphasizing the contribution of international norms to identity formation is to suggest a “fair-weather” model of norm-induced domestic change whereby power, political struggles, and instrumental interests of actors are somehow absent from the story. When the principled position in favor of democracy was adopted by the Reagan administration, most interpreted it as a vehicle for aggressive foreign policy against leftist regimes, such as the USSR, Nicaragua, and Cuba. The process by which principled ideas held by individuals become norms in the sense of collective understandings about appropriate behavior which then lead to changes in identities, interests, behavior is conceptualized in this book as a process of socialization. The logic of discursive behavior and of processes of argumentation, persuasion rather than instrumental bargaining, exchange of fixed interests prevails when actors develop collective understandings that form part of their identities and lead them to determine their interests.
