Normalization Interventions in World Politics

ABSTRACT

International interventions are accompanied by different discursive frameworks. We argue that understanding the intricate, fluid, and effective interventions in global politics would benefit from exploring the discourse and practice of normalization. We identify three different types of normalization practices, those that aim: to impose a new normalcy on fragile states; to either restore or build a more resilient normalcy in disaster-affected states; and those that are prepared to accept an endogenous normalcy in suppressive states. The article aims to contribute to current debates by exposing how normalization is invoked interchangeably as a method, process, and outcome of interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• Normalization
• normalcy
• liberal interventionism
• resilience
• docility

Introduction

International actors have used multiple discursive frameworks for justifying interventions in world politics, from maintaining international peace and stability to enhancing resilience and promoting human rights and the protection of civilians. Among these frameworks, the discourse of normalcy and normalization has also been mobilized to justify interventions in societies affected by conflict or disaster but remains largely unexplored. From Timor-Leste to Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Georgia, we can find trace of the discourse of normalcy used interchangeably as a measure of peace, stability, and post-conflict reconstruction. For example, the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan explicitly linked its mandate to the ‘restoration of peace and normalcy in the country’ (UN Security Council 1994). The UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo explicitly endeavoured ‘to create conditions of normalcy’ (UN Security Council 1999, 23). Later, the European Union used the discourse of normalization and normalization-building in Kosovo and Georgia to describe the process and desired outcome of conflict resolution efforts (Visoka 2017). The purpose of the UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste was to assist the country to ‘return to normalcy’ and achieve ‘full institutional normalization’ through ‘security-sector reform, strengthening of the rule of law, democratic governance and socio-economic development’ (UN Security Council 2009). In other instances, such as Afghanistan, the discourse of normalcy has been used interchangeably as a measure of peace, stability, and post-conflict reconstruction. How can we make sense of these invocations of normalcy in the context of international interventions? How do different actors mobilize the discourse of normalcy and to what effect? Has normalization become another global rationale for framing and governing the practice of international intervention? What do normalization interventions tell us about the prospects and limits of creating normal states?

The concepts of normal, normalcy, and normalization reveal simultaneously the problematic and intermingled dynamics of sameness versus difference, homogeneity versus heterogeneity, order versus disorder, universalism versus pluralism, and values versus interests. Perhaps the most important feature of normalization is how it results in the abnormalization of certain subjects, practices, and social behaviour. While there is much written implicitly about normalcy and normalization in theory (for example, Foucault 2003; Misztal 2015; Cryle and Stephens 2017), there has been a lack of explicit research that explore discourses and practices of normalization in the Peace and Conflict Studies and other related disciplines. Existing accounts tend to approach normalcy as a desirable state of affairs linked to the concepts of peace, order, stability, and progress, and normalization as a gradual process of returning to an optimal condition of normalcy. Yet, we have a limited understanding of how normalcy as a discourse and normalization as interventionary practice is constructed and applied across different countries that are labelled as abnormal.

In this article, we approach intervention rationales by looking at normalization both as a discourse and practice. We explore how discourses and practices of normalization have emerged as an overarching rationale for optimizing international interventions in the transitional international order. We argue that normalization has become a fluid rationale as well as an ensemble of complex and optimized disciplinary technologies to transform what are labelled or perceived as abnormal states and societies into normal and docile states able to conform externally imposed regimes of norms, political institutions, and cultures of statehood that bring stability and avoid conflict. The underpinning logic is to maximize the effects of interventions and minimize resistance from local protagonists, as well as enhance the hierarchical power of states without bearing special responsibilities for the outcomes. We argue that discursive knowledge and practices of normalization go hand in hand with one another, constituting jointly a social reality and the grounds for determining the techniques and the scope of interventions. Such optimization of interventions takes place through the specific mobilization of normalization registers depending on the aims of the interveners and contexts at play: it can take place through imposing a certain regime of normalcy on particular societies; seeking to restore normalcy in another set of circumstances; or even accepting different versions of normalcy in specific contexts. Ultimately, exploring contemporary practices of interventions from the prism of normalization reveals that the true purpose of such interventions is not maintaining international order through creating capable states (sovereign and equal among their peers), but docile states that are easily transformed and responsive to external pressure.

Although there has been extensive research on fragile and failed states, our engagement with this specific area is crucial approaching international interventions from the view of disciplinary normalization efforts. The discourse and practices of normalization renders interventions more acceptable while still remaining selective, uneven, and discorded in how they are deployed, received, and judged. First, we demonstrate how imposed normalcy through peacebuilding and statebuilding represents one of the most intrusive forms of disciplining conflict-affected societies, creating new political orders and taming their illiberal monstrosity. Second, in exploring instances for restoring normalcy, we focus on a number of contemporary examples of interventions to address disaster and other humanitarian emergencies. The conditions underpinning disasters and other humanitarian crises have come to be seen as incorrigible and thus subject to containment and management rather than to profound correction and transformation. The narrative of resilience is mobilized to normalize a permanent state of crisis and instability where the affected subjects should learn to live vulnerably and cope with anticipated and permanent crises. Finally, we explore how a strand of states who are widely labelled as suppressive and authoritarian towards their own populations continue to be accepted as normal regardless of such perceived abnormal features. We find that although suppressive states possess the conditions of the previous two types of state labelling, they are spared normalization interventions due to an interplay of the politics of alliances and strategic engagement within multilateral organizations.

By looking at the varieties of normalization discourses and practices, we seek to contribute to existing debates by exposing the fluid and optimized nature of contemporary interventions where the discourse of normalization is invoked interchangeably as a method, process, and outcome of interventions, ranging from peacemaking, peacekeeping, stabilization missions, and peacebuilding, to resilience-building, and human rights protection. The discourse of the normal and normalcy is gradually replacing references to peace, order, and stability, which could represent a reduction of expectations vis-à-vis affected societies as well as a realization of the limits of interventionism, and could serve as a tactical withdrawal from special responsibilities. Ultimately, this highlights some of the contemporary analytics of power, in particular the efforts of dominant states to create a society of docile states who are passive yet productive, as well as disciplined, and open to external examination, regulation, punitive measures, transformation, and norm-taking. More broadly, normalization interventions are symptomatic of the transitional international order, where there is uneven application of international norms to adjust to the shifting power balance and diffusion of international normative and institutional structures (Newman 2009).

This article is divided in four sections. In the first section, we underline how our understanding of normalization contributes directly to international relations debates by putting the spotlight on normalization discourse and practices most often than not overlook in the discipline. In the following three sections, we discuss the three iterations of normalization discourses and practices. As such, the second section analyses imposing normalcy practices in conflict-affected states, especially through liberal interventionism. The third section zeroes in on restoring normalcy practices, especially in disaster-prone states looking for stability and resilience, whilst the fourth section analyses accepting normalcy practices in suppressive and authoritarian states. Finally, we conclude by discussing how focusing on normalization and the docility of states intervened upon may open up new analytical avenues for International Relations scholars.

Making sense of normalization interventions

International interventions are a centrepiece of contemporary world order. Dominant states and international organizations exercise their sovereignty and justify their international standing predominantly through intervening in other states’ internal affairs to promote, impose, or enforce certain norms and practices, or shape the socio-political and economic condition of targeted state. In scholarly debates interventions are compartmentalized and studied as part of either disciplinary theme or policy area (see Fierke 2005). For example, diplomatic studies focus on diplomatic and peacemaking interventions; development studies focus on humanitarian and socio-economic interventions; and peace and conflict studies focus on peacebuilding and statebuilding interventions. Yet, what foregrounds all these forms of intervention is a will to either impose, restore, or sustain a specific order of normalcy, which takes place through a process of normalization with certain norms, standards, and principles for governing states and behaving as societies.

The concept of the normal, the state of normalcy, and the process of normalization – albeit not recognized sufficiently as such ­  – is central to making sense of contemporary interventions in world politics. In global affairs, normalization discourses and practices are encoded within a wider web of formal and informal institutions, norms, rules, policies, and discourses that concern mainly peace, security, and development. Normalcy as perceived as a desirable state of affairs linked to the concepts of peace, order, stability, and progress, and normalization as a gradual process of returning to an optimal condition of normalcy. As such, when the international order is stable and operating according to a fixed set of principles and rules agreed by most, the configuration of world politics is understood as being ‘normal’ or at least operating in a normal way. Any deviation to that perceived norm triggers reactions which involve labelling other states and actors as abnormal. This understanding of normalcy legitimizes various disciplinary and punitive measures, ranging from derogatory labelling to various forms of interventions, such as stigmatization, subjugation, examination, and subordination. Michel Foucault’s seminal work shows that normalization represents one of the most complex and advanced techniques of governmentality of all aspects of life without requiring the use of coercive power and punishment. Thus, normalization interventions do not apply military and coercive methods (although these have been used in some specific circumstances); rather, the process works through a complex technology of incentives and conditions, and through hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, examination, and supervision, which make local societies dependent and docile towards external forces (see Foucault 2003; 2007; Joseph 2012; Duffield 2001; Richmond 2010; Chandler and Richmond 2015).

We can observe that contemporary international interventions are linked to a will to normalize other states, which is based on the assumption that in order for an international rules-based society to emerge and operate under certain common norms, regulations, and institutions, states have a responsibility to engage in normalizing other states – and sometimes themselves – and to ensure that perceived anomalies, deviancies, and misconduct are handled through various technologies of power and disciplinary mechanisms. Thus, we argue that to understand the technologies of normalization, we must focus on the discourses that define the normal, exceptional, and abnormal, as well as trace different discursive regimes that make normalization interventions possible. All normalization interventions are informed by a discourse of intelligibility which seeks to enable a set of actions that make imposing, restoring, or accepting normalcy as conceivable and justifiable. Existing scholarship on international norms, order, and statehood tends to take as a starting point the perspective of liberal states, and from that positionality examine how the rest of the world fares vis-à-vis liberal norms, values, and principles (see Finnemore 2003). The figure of the normal state in world politics is predominantly the (Western) welfare state with democratic and functioning institutions of governance, constituting the yardstick by which to measure all other forms of abnormality in world politics. Once states fall outside the perceived realm of normalcy, they are considered as abnormal and thus subjected to intervention and regulation. Abnormal states are not seen as legitimate states, and thus are not treated as equals in world politics. They are subject to different disciplinary interventions to contain, and when possible, transform the conditions of normalcy with the ultimate goal of building a decent society sufficient to coexist with other (liberal) societies. However, this is highly problematic since normalcy is context-specific, fluid, and contingent to spatial–temporal entanglements. As Ian Hacking (1990: 160) shows, normalcy ‘is like determinism, both timeless and dated, an idea that in some sense has been with us always, but which can in a moment adopt a completely new form of life.’ What is normal is a result of what people consider as such; it is a derivative of social interactions and discursive productions, and thus prone to change over time.

Despite these paradoxes, the international normalizing order functions based on the premise that normalcy is associated with stability, peace, and order, whereas abnormalcy is associated with war, violence, and disorder (Clark 1989, 22–23). Normalcy is seen as healthy condition for the world, whereas abnormalcy is analogous to disease. The progressive and interventionary character of the international normalizing society imposes a value judgement, considering abnormalcy and the body politic it inflicted on as curable and return to the previous or new condition of health. War and abnormalcy are considered as unnatural and subject to intervention and cure. This cure involves diagnosing and undertaking remedial actions to restore or achieve normalcy again. In particular, Western states that are normalized through disciplinary technologies in most of the cases are intolerant to difference, and the perceived other is often associated with the abnormal. It is also deeply enshrined within the politics of self-care that normalized societies ‘care’ for other as well. This ‘care for others’ is part of disciplinary mechanisms for widening the zones of normality, of sameness, and thus reducing risks of uncertainty and threats coming from other forms of thinking, being, and acting. It is this complex intolerance which foregrounds the will to normalize others. The majority of the time,, normalizing interventions aim to impose specific liberal and Western meanings of normalcy. They seek global control through extending democracy, human rights, and liberal economy and converting them from region-specific regimes into universally applicable ones. Beyond the West, there are also numerous other states located throughout the world who also project their own vision of normalcy in their interactions with other nations, which sometimes complement and challenge the Western visions of normalcy.

While all states are implicated in normalization interventions in one form or another, in this article we focus on three categories of states – failed, disaster-prone, and suppressive – which are most common ‘receivers’ to normalization interventions. The proceeding discussion illustrates how contemporary normalization interventions are characterized by the deployment of optimal disciplinary technologies for reconfiguring other states along three trajectories. First, mirroring the self through imposing normalcy in fragile states. Imposing a new normalcy over failed states aims to socially transform and turn them into well-behaved actors in world politics though peacebuilding, statebuilding, and social reconstruction interventions. This represents some of the most intrusive forms of disciplining political subjectivities and creating new political orders. Second, other interventions consist of balancing the self and the other through restoring normalcy in disaster-prone states. Disaster-prone states and societies are seen as incorrigible which at best should be assisted by restoring normalcy, which aims to stabilize or improve resilience capabilities whilst bringing back normalcy or bouncing forward to a more sustainable normal through disaster management assistance. Finally, the third category covers normalization interventions in suppressive and authoritarian states that are engaged in serious human rights abuses and political violence. The purpose of such interventions is to retain normalcy and engage in superficial reforms and changes through confessionary politics, and ad hoc international investigations. Thus, normalization interventions empower certain states with the authority to police the behaviour of other states and ensure that they act in accordance with a set of mutually agreed norms.

Imposing normalcy in conflict-affected states

Conflict-affected states have become a major site for international intervention and subject to external normalization. The scale of social and political destruction that violent conflicts bring to polities and societies has become a basis upon which the international reputation and standing of states as well as their ability to exercise their sovereignty is re-evaluated by other dominant states and international bodies. States such as Somalia and Afghanistan are labelled as failed or fragile and thus seen as abnormalwho contravene and breach the laws, rules, and norms governing the international community. Failed states are often discredited and ranked at the bottom of the hierarchical labelling of states in world politics. These states are often distinguished from, or compared to, normal states, indicating an overarching assumption that conflict affected states are less normal or abnormal (Del Castillo 2008). Conflict is described as a ‘collapse of the normal order’ (Holmqvist 2014, 129). State failure is seen here as an illness that needs to be cured, ‘sick patients that can be revived’, (Kraxberger 2007, 1055), or altogether a ‘degenerative disease’ (Lyons and Samatar 1995, 1). State fragility and failure represent the most extreme perceived form of abnormalcy in world politics that needs to be disciplined and controlled through politico-judicial methods, including military interventions, deployment of peacekeeping, international administration, and other assistance and reconstruction missions.

The main body of knowledge and domain of interventionary practices which demonstrates the technology of imposing normalcy is liberal interventionism implemented through a framework for peacebuilding and statebuilding (see Richmond and Visoka 2021). Peacebuilding and statebuilding are comprised of a wide range of interventionary components, such as imposing and incentivizing rules, norms, and conditions to govern post-conflict transitions in the areas of elections, institution-building, security sector reform, economic reconstruction, the promotion of civil society, the rule of law and justice, reconciliation, and transitional justice (Chandler and Sisk 2013). Through peacebuilding and statebuilding activities, the international community seeks to create the institutionalized and legal conditions for governing, disciplining, and normalizing the local population. The imposition of a new normalcy in conflict-affected societies is facilitated through a wide array of interventions that share elements of interim rule through transitional administration, delegated rule through controlling national elites and the peace-supporting behaviour, and proxy rule through civil society organizations and self-disciplining local groups.

The justificatory framework for liberal interventionism – namely the will to normalize failed states – takes place through a thin line of respecting and breaching well-defined principles and norms of international society. State sovereignty is no longer measured in terms of non-interference; it is conceived to be lacking, thus in need to be strengthened through externally-led capacity-building programmes. State weakness is utilized not only as an opportunity for foreign intervention and thus exploitation, imposition, and subordination, but as a responsibility for the betterment, transformation, and empowerment of fragile states (Gheciu and Welsh 2009, 126). As Branch (2011, 31) shows, interventions are framed as necessary to alleviate suffering and promote the right to aid, health, shelter, and ultimately to life; to promote human rights, justice, and democracy; and to promote the right to peace. The discourse of failed states posits two anomalies in conflict-affected societies: the incapacity of the state to govern, and the broken social relations among the groups in conflict. As a remedy, statebuilding and peacebuilding as a discourse and policy of intervention took hold and became central to the work of the UN and other international organizations and a foreign policy priority of many Western states. Interventions by nature seek to reconfigure local identities, norms, institutions, and practices and seek to ‘bring about outcomes that would otherwise not have occurred’ (Reus-Smit 2013, 1065). Through peacebuilding and statebuilding activities, the international community seeks to create the institutionalized and legal conditions for governing, disciplining, and normalizing local population. Ultimately, the adoption of international norms, materialized through legal enactment and implementation of norms, is seen as the main objective of peacebuilding and statebuilding interventions (Groß 2015, 315).

Seen from the perspective of normalization, one of the major functions of international statebuilding is to create a platform for imposing a new order of normalcy which takes place through engineering a new political, institutional, and security system, which in the long run remains both dependent to external forces and serves as an enforcer of local normalization (Visoka and Lemay-Hébert 2022). From Afghanistan to Kosovo and Iraq, international statebuilders have invoked the discourse of normalcy as the desired objective of their interventions. Focusing on the normalization discourse, statebuilding is perceived less as a military occupation and more as a global endeavour, protecting the political interests of dominant states. In order to create ‘normal’ societies, international interveners first need to construct a capable state. Seeking to build a capable state represents, as Timothy Edmunds and Ana Juncos illustrate, a ‘form of governance insofar as it aspires to constitute particular kinds of subjects through dominant discourses and imaginations about what a ‘capable state’ is or should be’ (Edmunds and Juncos 2020, 5). So, capacity building is directly linked with the political project of imposing on local societies what a normal state should look like and how it should act. The Weberian form of statehood is particularly promoted, concentrating on security provision through a focus on the exclusive monopoly over the use of force and other institutional capacity-building objectives (Edmunds and Juncos 2020, 9). This capacity building takes the form of enhancing liberal subjects with knowledge, skills, and normative values to carry on the implementation and enforcement of liberal norms at the local level, enabling further responsibilization and self-normalization. The primary technique for creating responsible subjects consists of deploying administrative and supervisory mechanisms. For example, the UN’s main goal in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Timor-Leste was to build new state institutions and impose new constitutions, norms, rules, and practices through populating these post-conflict societies with a large number of international experts who would set an example and promote western and democratic norms (Arato 2009; Gheciu 2005).

Prior to a full-scale normalization process, the establishment of a security infrastructure was considered fundamental for ensuring the consolidation of state institutions as well as social and economic recovery (Neild 2001, 22). Imposing normalcy in conflict-affected societies takes place also through monitoring activities to ensure that the targeted subjects are encouraged to normalize themselves whilst being supervised by an external body. Monitoring represents a complex and non-coercive technology of normalization which entails a dose of disciplinary power but mostly performs power through hierarchical observation and judgmental presence. For instance, the mandate of the European Union Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM) was to ‘monitor, analyse and report on the situation pertaining to the normalisation process of civil governance, focusing on rule of law, effective law enforcement structures and adequate public order’ (Council of the European Union 2008, 27). The promotion of the rule of law also features prominently as a core technique of imposing normalcy. The rule of law is ‘a vehicle of disciplinary power, it is the means through which a uniformity of objectives and norms is efficiently normalized and transmitted’ (Humphreys 2010, 105). The rule of law as a field of intervention aims to achieve the maximum effect of normalization. By seeking legal coherence and fair and impartial enforcement of the law, interventions make sure that everyone in society is subject to normalization. For example, the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) tried to strengthen the rule of law by monitoring law enforcement agencies and courts and passing on new skills and knowledge; EULEX advised Kosovar agencies on how to internalize and perform the rule of law norms, while at the same time retaining some executive and correctional powers to enforce disciplinary power (Visoka 2017).

In the international transitional order, normalcy orders are not only imposed from the top-down through statebuilding, but also from the bottom-up through peacebuilding and social reconstruction. As argued by Paris (1997, 56), ‘peacebuilding is in effect an enormous experiment in social engineering – an experiment that involves transplanting Western models of social, political, and economic organization into war-shattered states in order to control civil conflict: in other words, pacification through political and economic liberalization.’ Another remedy for a broken society is social reconstruction, which is seen as ‘reactive, restorative and preventive … directed towards individuals, towards the rehabilitation of communities and towards the rebuilding of civil society’ (Elliott 2003, 259). The main technology for imposing normalcy from the bottom-up and through everyday normalization is the development of an active civil society encompassing non-governmental organizations, media, and other think-tanks which are guided by Western values and dependent on donor funding. Normalization interventions are seen as plausible only when they are intermingled with the everyday practices and routines (Brewer et al. 2018). Youth programmes, peace education, and media campaigns are intended to reach out and discipline the wide population with new norms and values that should guide societal conduct. For example, in Kosovo, Western donors have used civil society groups and think-tanks as instruments for imposing norms on the rule of law through examination, reporting, and monitoring of the performance of the government and compliance of the wider society. Such bottom-up interventions turn civil society into citizen police who observe and report on the compliance of the norms related to the rule of law. Thus, everyday peacebuilding has emerged as one of the most intimate forms of normalization interventions, which places citizens on the driver’s seat of peace and recovery (see Brewer et al. 2018).

The imposition of a new order of normalcy through total political and social re-engineering in most of the cases does not achieve its desired goals. The evidence across statebuilding cases shows that external efforts for imposing normalcy rarely realize their declared goals. However, contrary to the general assumption, failure of normalization efforts becomes a rationale for justifying protracted interventions and displacing the responsibility for failure to the local context (see Bargués-Pedreny 2018). Thus, normalization as a discursive framework for justifying interventions is not entirely motivated by a desire to expand liberal peace in the world. Rather, it is symptomatic of how the international order is structured. There is an expectation that states at the top of the international order hold specific responsibilities and thus should intervene abroad to preserve the balance of power, contain, and limit wars, and enforce international norms (Macmillan 2013, 1045). By the very process of abnormalizing other states, the Western states’ ontological security is re-enforced, and the existing order is legitimized as being effective, democratic, and prosperous. Through the discourse of the responsibilization of states, the international interveners normalize further their hierarchically dominant roles and reproduce their international status, power, and self-conferred privileges. The need to normalize other states gives meaning to the international community and multilateral frameworks as spaces for exercising power and controlling conduct in world politics. Imposing normalcy over conflict-affected societies is also aimed at local consumption; it indirectly serves the purpose of reproducing normalized orders in Western societies by reminding Western citizens of the benefits of living in peaceful and rules-based social and political orders. These dynamics cast doubt about whether the will to normalize in fragile states is nothing but a will to intervene and advance power-ridden interests in world politics. Or, as Jonathan Joseph shows, ‘the aim of international organizations might be less the regulation of populations as the application of governmentality to states’ (Joseph 2009, 413). Discorded governmentality rather than normalization seems to be the optimal outcome of interventions in fragile states (see Bargués-Pedreny 2020).

Restoring normalcy in disaster-prone states

States associated with disasters and emergencies are also subject to normalization interventions. As opposed to conflict-affected societies, interventions in disaster-affected states tend to invoke a different variant of normalization discourse which is implemented through a different set of practices. Disaster-affected states are associated with catastrophic events, for which external assistance is required to provide humanitarian relief and build the resilience of the affected populations. As noted by the the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2015, 3) ‘protracted is the new normal’, referring to the longevity of humanitarian crises and highlighting the international incapacity (or reluctance) to end protracted crises. It envisages crisis management and structural, institutional, and political adjustments within the state and society to enhance resilience, transformation, and social change. In other words, it calls for the establishment of complex governance and self-reliance systems for societies to correct themselves. Operating in a complex environment does not mean the end of intervention; actually, an understanding of the complex environment in which one operate enables new forms of interventions, moving away from top-down liberal interventionism.

In this framework of international engagement, normalcy of disaster-affected societies is understood as either a return to pre-event social, political, and economic conditions, through local and international perceptions of what constitutes ‘stability’ or the previous normal state, or the establishment of a new normal configuration. In both instances, normalization discourses accept complexity, reiterative failures, and permanence of crises, which requires resilience, situational adaptation, and constant transformation. Complexity is thus understood in two different ways, associated with specific understandings of what restoring normalcy means, and shaping concomitant interventions. Building on a narrow interpretation of complexity theory, a disaster is seen as destabilizing the status quo and actors aim to revert back to this previous equilibrium. As such, in its first iteration, restoring normalcy is perceived as bouncing back to a previous equilibrium, to the situation that prevailed before a disaster, or a conflict occurred. It is about linking stability with resilience, ‘a system is deemed stable if and only if the variables all return to the initial equilibrium following their being perturbed from it’ (Pimm 1984, 322). As argued by Koslowski and Longstaff (2015, 7) ‘probably the most comprehensive development of the idea of resilience frames the concept as a return to normalcy,’ and ‘one of the most common desires heard after a disaster is to ‘return to normalcy’’ (Phillips 2009, 21).

In the second, deeper iteration of complexity theory, understood as ‘general complexity theory’, disasters or conflicts produce large-scale departures from the past, leading to radical changes. The second iteration of restoring normalcy practices is about bouncing forward to a ‘new normal,’ presumed to be more stable and resilient for future shocks, rather than bouncing back to an old, imperfect equilibrium. We will discuss each iteration and its associated restoring normalcy practices in turn. First, the understanding of restoring normalcy practices as bouncing back is integral to the stabilization discussion. Stabilization as a concept and pathway to restoring normalcy is believed to have entered the lexicon of interventions with the establishment in January 1996 of the NATO Stabilization Force for Bosnia and Herzegovina, with similar ambitions and practices later migrated to United Nations (UN) operations, for instance in Haiti in 2004 (De Coning 2018). For example, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and the US Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) define stabilization as ‘ending or preventing the recurrence of violent conflict and creating the conditions for normal economic activity and nonviolent politics’ (USIP 2009, Appendix E, 11‒232). The definition clearly connects the stated goal of ending violent conflict – restoring peace – with normalcy discourse through the aim of creating the conditions for normal economic activity and non-violent politics (Martin 2016).

In the second iteration of restoring normalcy practices, about bouncing forward to a ‘new normal,’ the semantics used are more proactive, including the ‘building back better’ discussion which emerged after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. This discussion tends to be associated with debates around the true potential of disasters. For scholars associated with the specific strand of sociology known as the ‘sociology of disaster,’ ‘the central meaning of disaster is social disruption’ (Rodríguez, Quarantelli, and Dynes 2007, xiii). This social disruption can lead to positive change in fine. There is no return to a pre-disaster state, the ‘normal society’ might simply not exist anymore. A new system will emerge from the ruins and continuity will be found between the old and emergent systems. For example, Sarah Khasalamwa (2009:, 73) notes in the context of post-recovery Sri Lanka that ‘post-crisis recovery should not be merely a return to the status quo ante but an attainment of a ‘new normalcy’.’ Again, there are echoes of ‘new normal’ practices in the stabilization literature. Interestingly the US Joint Forces Command (2010, I-1) argues that normalization ‘does not equate to returning to the status quo, or conditions that existed prior to the conflict, particularly if these contributed to the conflict’. It asserts equally that ‘the long-term goal of economic normalization is to contribute to societal stability’ (USJFC 2010, I-3). This connects with the UK’s definition, where the long-term goal of stabilization is ‘structural stability’, defined as ‘political systems which are representative and legitimate, capable of managing conflict and change peacefully, and societies in which human rights and rule of law are respected, basic needs are met, security established and opportunities for social and economic development are open to all’ (UK Government 2011, 5).

The technology of restoring normalcy entails a general withdrawal of responsibility for previous failures to impose normalcy – as discussed in the previous section – as well as a new tactical interventionism, which seeks to impose normalcy through building resiliency and self-sufficiency. The international efforts to restore normalcy represent a renewed rationale to govern risks and vulnerabilities at their source and suspend any modernist fallacy about progress or stability. In this context, restoring normalcy is generally considered successful if it entails a return to dismal pre-conflict levels or if it manages to stabilize the country enough to enable an exit strategy (Visoka and Lemay-Hébert 2022). Even in instances of transformative and intrusive ‘new normalcy-building’ practices, what we generally see is the same old normalcy template creeping back. Restoring normalcy fits neatly with the growing emergence of ‘cut-and-run’ stabilization missions, with declining international actors’ confidence in their ability to influence events on the ground, as well as their increasing reluctance to accept responsibility for perceived failures of transformative international stabilization efforts. The concept of stability’s modest ambitions, and its lower degree of normativity, makes it a popular concept for international actors, mirroring the concept of resilience (Bachmann 2014, 122–123). As such, stability becomes a matter of balance between politically desirable objectives and empirical realities, which makes it fit neatly within the restored normalcy framework (Hills 2011, 2). Interventions for either restoring the old normalcy or building a new one end up becoming technologies of containment rather than of profound transformation and betterment.

Accepting normalcy in suppressive states

The third category of normalization interventions covered in this article concerns states which are mostly accepted as being normal, although are also known to be suppressive of their populations and rely on authoritarian governance practices, which can be found both in the Western and non-Western parts of the world. In this sub-category of normalization interventions, we show that while many states might experience state failure-like symptoms because they are part of a particular geopolitical and security alliance and have geographical, military, and economic strength, they are deemed as normal regardless of their human rights record or suppressive policies. In world politics, it has become a norm that for a state to be considered normal and acceptable they must promote and protect human rights of their citizens. Human rights abuses are widely practiced among states, and over time it has come to be seen as an unacceptable and abnormal practice, subject to international and national condemnation (Baehr and Castermans-Holleman 2004). However, contemporary state practices show that a large number of states are implicated in human rights abuses – albeit in different degrees – yet they often try to pretend to be defenders of human rights while also covering up or justifying such abuses on exceptional grounds. These states are predominantly exempt from significant external intervention due to strategic alliances and politics of friendship. Dominant states within alliances and families of states tend to take the pastoral roles in normalizing states implicated in human rights abuses.

As a result, when compared to the first two sets of discursive practices we've looked at so far, accepting normalcy involves distinct discursive practices. When normalcy was being imposed, society as a whole and the state as a whole were both considered abnormal. The frame of reference for re-establishing normalcy was changing specific social structures, norms, and behaviours. When it comes to accepting normalcy, the emphasis is on a much smaller group of interventions to alter personal and organizational routines while still being regarded as normal.

One of the main ways of understanding practices of forging international acceptance of domestic normalcy is to look at the confessionary politics manifested through state reporting to international human rights bodies. Lawson and Tannaka (2010, 422) argue that ‘‘normality’ is not something that every state is simply free to define for itself, thus highlighting the fact that the social construction of meaning in the international sphere is formulated via much broader intersubjective dynamics.’ For a state to be accepted as normal, it has to perform various technologies on itself, on its institutions, structures, individuals, and conduct which demonstrates its willingness to transform, modify, and perfect itself in accordance with externally tailored requirements and perceptions of how a normal state should behave in the international system. Universal periodic reviews on human rights compliance to the UN Human Rights Council represent one of the main institutionalized forms of state confession on the protection and promotion of human rights, which reveal numerous discourses and practices invoked to retain international acceptance (see UN Human Rights Council 2020). For example, Myanmar has used the UN universal periodic review to promote the narrative of a responsible state, arguing that ‘as a member of the United Nations promoting and protecting human rights, Myanmar has been working to become a state party to the remaining core international human rights treaties’ (UN Human Rights Council 2015, 5).

Yet, state-based mechanisms for monitoring human rights compliance not only perform the function of promoting alternative truths, but they also play a vital role in the constitution and reproduction of other states’ status as normal states regardless of the facts on the ground. In the past, as UN Secretary-Genera, Annan (2005, para 182) admitted, mechanisms such as the UN Commission on Human Rights were used by states ‘not to strengthen human right but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others’. The deliberations and discussions of working groups that are part of the universal periodic review serve as a space for praising states for their efforts to promote and protect human rights. They often channel light criticism or whitewash failures. For example, in the case of Israel’s review of human rights compliance at the Human Rights Council, the vast majority of states who are aligned with Israel internationally almost entirely ignore Israel’s violations of international and human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the construction of illegal settlements and apartheid-like policies (UN Human Rights Council 2008). On the other hand, Palestine’s international allies explicitly deplore Israel’s refusal to recognize and protect the rights of Palestinians.

Most often the outcome of the universal periodic reviews results in adopting the review documents by the UN Human Rights Council, which is marked by states as an important renewal of their international standing and human rights record. In this instance, states under scrutiny commit to undertaking small actions, such as institutional reforms, training on human rights, and consultation with civil society; these constitute sufficient measures to be seen as complying with international human rights obligations and thus continue to be perceived as normal states. As Cowan (2014, 60) argues, the universal periodic review ‘reinforces through repetition not only the normality of being a sovereign state, but also the idea that it is the state, and its policies, which are responsible for both violations and realisations of human rights’.

In addition to confessionary practices, commissions of inquiry have emerged as a mechanism in service of accepting normalcy of a state undergoing protracted or temporal internal conflict and troubles. These commissions, established by either international or domestic actors, seek to establish the facts and circumstances of the alleged human rights violations by military and security forces with the view of ensuring full accountability of perpetrators and justice for victims. In some instances, the commission of inquiry plays the function of restoring international credibility of the affected state, thus resulting in accepting local normalcy, whilst in other instances such mechanisms may serve to delegitimize and abnormalize particular societies. However, the overall task of commissions of inquiry is to identify anomalies in the system and propose ways for domestic reforms enables targeted states to retain international acceptance without requiring major structural changes. This is particularly the case as ‘most recommendations are addressed to the State concerned, and their implementation is dependent on the political will of the authorities’ (OHCHR 2015, 101).

A number of illustrative examples show that the performative function of commissions of inquiry are to simultaneously retain international acceptance and forge a sense of self-transformation. In response to growing international pressure, the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) was established in 2011 by Bahraini King Hamad to investigate the allegations of human rights abuses and to ensure international acceptance. BICI’s final report found both government and opposition groups partially responsible for the violent events (Matthiesen 2013, 69). To retain wide international acceptance, following the 2011 violent events, Bahrain undertook symbolic and gradual measures to reform parts of its institutional structures that created the impression that the country promotes and protects human rights, has a culture of accountability and rule of law, and has legal avenues for handling and disciplining misconduct (Bahrain Embassy in Washington 2015). This commission enabled the vetting of alleged perpetrators and potentially removes malign elements from institutions, resulting thus in partial state reforms while retaining general normalcy and avoiding international intervention. This approach plays a major role in retaining the status of a normal state, whilst the situation on the ground or state behaviour might be far from what a normal society should be. The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, concluded: ‘Commissions can be used very effectively by Governments for the wrong purposes: to defuse a crisis, to purport to be upholding notions of accountability and to promote impunity … An ineffective commission can be more than just a waste of time and resources; it can contribute to impunity by deterring other initiatives, monopolizing available resources and making subsequent endeavours to prosecute difficult or impossible’ (UN Human Rights Council 2008, 18).

Accepting the normalcy of suppressive states for some can be seen as emblematic of a post-liberal order, while for others it is an optimal technology of state dominance in world politics. One of the strategies for prolonging the liberal order is to optimize interventions abroad and lure alliances and partnerships through a mixture of diplomatic, economic, and security incentives. It is an attempt to rebrand liberal internationalism by ‘reconciling the dilemmas of sovereignty and interdependence, seeking protections and preserving rights within and between states’ (Ikenberry 2018, 8). Moreover, accepting as normal those states that are complicit in serious human rights abuses is a strategic move. It plays out as a regime that accepts cultural difference and the political autonomy of states with uneven human rights records. This helps disguise imperialist agendas. It tends to decouple the Western states from colonial-like practices, interventionism, and utilization of human rights as an ideological and foreign policy instrument. Ultimately, accepting other states as normal is also a precondition for engaging in strategic relationships, which is crucial for the survival and preservation of the status of dominant powers. Yet, by invoking the notion of non-intervention while demanding self-transformation, dominant states perform a form of disguised intervention.

Conclusion: Creating docile states

The search for normalcy frequently tends to be optimized by actors based on situational circumstances, as shown by the mapping of normalization practices across the globe, including conflict-affected, disaster-affected, and suppressive states. Converging different intervention strategies under the justifications of normalization adds value by improving understanding of the spectrum, intensity, and most importantly unevenness and selectiveness supporting modern intervention practices.

In societies that are labelled as fragile and failed, the focus and scope of intervention tends to be deep, seeking to spread and impose an external regime of normalcy. The fragile and failed states that are labelled as abnormal are exposed to a set of extensive measures for imposing normalcy from the outside which were guided by liberal interventionism (statebuilding and peacebuilding) as a knowledge and practice regime. In societies which are labelled as broken or disaster-prone, the focus of intervention is on consolidating and improving their resilience and capacity to bounce back and forward. We found that disaster-affected states are associated with incorrigibility and thus exposed to different regimes for restoring normalcy through resilience-building and emergency management. Finally, the goal of intervention is to deepen normalcy through confessional and self-regulatory processes in societies where irregularities are accepted as normal despite them. Although they continue to be allies with dominant states in the international system, the states linked to oppressive and authoritarian regimes frequently gain acceptance as typical states thanks to a system of confessional practices and global pastoral politics.

In principle, normalization interventions are meant to contribute to the formation of a society of states which are expected to share common values and interests and are governed by a common set of rules and institutions. They pull all the states in the direction of a universal world order embedded in the unity and sameness of values, norms, and institutions that are considered as good, progressive, and in service of peace, justice, and order. Yet, as examined in the article, the continuum of normalizing interventions – ranging from those seeking to impose a new order of normalcy over fragile states to those seeking to either restore or develop a more resilient normalcy in disaster-affected states, or accept an existing order of normalcy in suppressive states – is embedded in multiple teleologies, which optimize the norms and ethics of normal subjects around the world.

In order to mitigate perceived anomalies within and among states without perceiving such interventions as impositions from outside, efforts for the normalization of states point to the desire for the creation of a world community through a combination of different technologies of power. Normalization techniques in world politics serve to both homogenize and diversify societies. Interventions for imposing normalcy aim to categorize states into separate groups, whereas those for restoring and accepting normalcy usually concentrate on homogenizing elements. Interventions that seek to impose normalcy cite divergent discourses as justification for suspending the rules governing state sovereignty, whereas interventions that seek to restore and accept normalcy frequently centre on international acceptance and mutual recognition. Liberal interventions de facto target failed or weak states, transforming them into new types of standard players in international politics. States that are vulnerable to disasters are urged to develop resiliency, turn the negative event into a positive outcome, and move forward to a more sustainable normalcy. When dominant states try to maintain and increase their pastoral influence over other states by simply protecting and treating their allies as normal states regardless of their repressive and delinquent behaviour, homogenizing effects become apparent. To be removed from the international abnormalization agenda, suppressive states are urged to address violations of human rights and practice self-transformation.

In conclusion, these discourses and practices show that the goal of normalization interventions is not to create strong, independent and sovereign states; rather the focus appears to be the creation of docile states that are capable of self-normalizing and self-disciplining and who are tame enough to accept constant external supervision. Looking at international interventions from the prism of normalization has exposed the will to create docile states which in many cases are not necessarily liberal or do not mirror the intervener’s identity and values. The will to create docile states through normalization interventions is a will to establish an international society which is constantly subject to external examination and imposition. Thus, docile states are those which are viewed as decent, rational, or responsible, and capable of self-transformation through learning, self-regulation, or self-discipline. Docile states are capable of determining what measures to implement and which norms and values to depart from. They are self-corrective actors seeking to adopt regulatory norms which are depicted globally as normal. They are adaptable states, open to external regulation, examination, and control. Such obedience is seen as an ultimate form of satisfying both local and international requirements for peace, order, and development. Additionally, docile states are meant to be passive yet productive. In order to retain a sense of independence and sovereignty, docile states have to constantly engage in political adjustment and self-transformation as the result of new forms of knowledge and measurements of normalcy imposed on them. Docile states are nevertheless meant to have some agency; they are expected to act as norm-takers and to display a submissive attitude towards norm-making states (see Björkdahl et al. 2015).

Ultimately, docility in world politics – as one of the end goals of normalization interventions – enables dominant states to exercise power at the lowest cost and with as little resistance as possible. Normalization practices constitute power relations between, on the one hand, those who take on the role of observing, judging, and examining, thus producing discursive knowledge on normalcy, and on the other hand, those who are targets of normalization who are expected to transform themselves into docile subjects through various technologies of power. Ultimately, the discourses of abnormalcy enable the former to (re)constitute a Schmittian sovereign power by deciding on the normal and the exception, while subjugating the latter into a process of social transformation and self-alienation. Those who judge, examine, and diagnose which states are normal and abnormal perform temporal sovereign exceptions. In the name of promoting the normal, subjected societies to normalization interventions become exceptions upon which impositions can be made without being perceived as imperial and coercive in nature. The politics of exceptionality in the context of international interventions are well engrained within the political and moral theology of liberal interventionism, disaster management, and human rights promotion, where crisis, catastrophes, threats, and risks constitute solid bases for emergency powers (Agamben 1998).

The discussion of normalization interventions in this article along with the concluding remarks on docility point out that the next phase of research in intervention and statebuilding studies requires more holistic and multi-scalar engagement with international discourses and practices to be able to capture the multiple facets of contemporary and forthcoming interventions in world politics. This involves looking at disciplinary technologies beyond narrow focus on conflict-affected situations to account for a platitude of forms and technicques of intervention which are often overlooked as a result of limits by posed by disciplinarity and epistemological enclosures.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the journal editors for guidance and patience and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. This article draws on our book Normalization in World Politics published with the University of Michigan Press in 2022.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the Journal Publication Scheme of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Dublin City University, Ireland.