Friction, not erosion: Assassination norms at the fault line between sovereignty and liberal values

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Targeted killing
• assassination
• norms
• norm erosion
• sovereignty
• international order

Acknowledgements

For invaluable comments and suggestions during the various stages of this article, I am indebted to Lora Anne Viola, Alison Brysk, Christian Lammert, Markus Kienscherf, Justus Dreyling, David Remmert, Sophie Spieler, Curd Knüpfer, my colleagues at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, as well as the two anonymous reviewers. I further wish to thank Martin Senn and Jodok Troy for the opportunity to contribute to this special issue. Earlier versions of this article have been presented at the International Studies Association Joint Conference on Human Rights, June 16–18, 2014, Istanbul, Turkey, and at the 56th International Studies Association Annual Convention, February 18–21, 2015, New Orleans, LA.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Mathias Großklaus is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. His research interests include norm dynamics in international politics, security discourses, and local responses to transnational human rights promotion. In his dissertation, he traces the normative history of “targeted killing” as a foreign policy instrument. His recent publications include articles “Appropriation and the dualism of human rights: understanding the contradictory impact of gender norms in Nigeria” in Third World Quarterly (2015), and “Political steering: How the EU employs power in its neighbourhood policy towards Morocco,” co-authored with David Remmert, in Mediterranean Politics (2016).

Notes

1. See Towns (2012) who points out that the hierarchic leader–laggard differentiation is indeed essential to the operation of liberal human rights norms in transnational policy diffusion.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was generously funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal and State Governments.