ABSTRACT
Reframed as “targeted killing,” state-sponsored assassination is moving toward normalization. I maintain that this development can only be understood in the context of long-standing frictions between meta-norms. The regulation of assassination as an instrument of foreign policy is a normative amalgam that is connected to both state sovereignty and liberal thought. Those discursive links structure both the evolution of the norm and its transformation, as they can be invoked by actors in order to reinterpret and reshape it. As I argue, the prevalent “norm erosion” perspective fails to grasp such incremental processes in that it tends to limit its analytical view to single, narrowly defined norms and overemphasizes external shocks. I thus stress the need for a more comprehensive account of normative change that highlights the surrounding meta-norms that are able to connect single norms to their larger position within the international order.
