The Dual Quality of Norms and Governance beyond the State: Sociological and Normative Approaches to ‘Interaction’

Abstract

This essay develops a critique of modern constructivist approaches to norms in international relations theory. It distinguishes between a behaviourist and a societal perspective on norms. The former explains compliance with norms and/or norm diffusion via the logic of appropriateness and the logic of arguing, respectively, the latter understands divergence in normative meaning via the logic of contestedness. Using Habermas's approach to facts and norms as a framework, the article discusses the possibilities of legitimate governance based on core constitutional norms such as democracy, the rule of law and fundamental and human rights and their role in contexts beyond the modern nation‐state.

Key Words:

• Norms
• constructivism
• governance
• Habermas
• legitimacy

Acknowledgements

This paper has been presented and discussed at a number of international conferences. For critical comments I would like to thank especially the organisers and participants of the conferences on Habermas and International Relations Theory at the Universities of Birmingham (2004) and Frankfurt/Main (2005), as well as participants of International Studies Association and British International Studies Association panels at which the paper's earlier versions have been presented. For specific comments my thanks go to Guido Schwellnus, Uwe Puetter, Ben Muller, Harald Mueller, Thomas Risse, Karin Fierke, Fritz Kratochwil, two anonymous referees, and, in particular to Jim Tully.

Notes

1. See Kratochwil's point that ‘material factors such as the changes in the technology of destruction have to be noted, as have changes in our ideas concerning issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, governmental powers, etc. Recovering the original is, therefore, not an idle undertaking. But understanding the ‘original’ is only a first, although indispensable, step. The second step entails going beyond the conventional conceptual divisions and their constitutive assumptions, and casting a fresh and unobstructed look of how … norms and rules “work”, i.e., what role they play in molding decisions' (Kratochwil 1989: 4, emphasis added).

2. For example, Ulrich Beck recently emphasised the search for a new ‘unit of analysis’ which is able to reflect cosmopolitan – read: non nation‐state – societal conditions (Beck 2005).

3. The literal translation of Jürgen Habermas's Faktizität und Geltung (Habermas 1992) should read ‘facticity and validity’. The English translation of the book title as ‘between facts and norms’ obscures the literal emphasis on the validity of norms in the original work.

4. For example Risse and Ropp point out that ‘norm compliance becomes a habitualized practice’. Accordingly, domestic institutionalisation is perceived as threefold, including ‘processes of bargaining and adaptation, of arguing and moral consciousness‐raising, and of institutionalization and habitualization’. Social interaction is thus seen as a key component of ‘an overall socialization process by which domestic actors increasingly internalize international human rights norms’ (Risse & Ropp 1999: 237).

5. Similarly, Kowert and Legro had pointed out earlier ‘if norms are important, a second question naturally emerges: Where do norms themselves come from? While the preceding essays [in Katzenstein et al. 1996] devote considerable effort to answering the first question, they rarely address the second one’ (Kowert & Legro 1996: 468).

6. As Reus‐Smit puts it, ‘content and implications [of norms] vary from one historical and practical context to another’ (Reus‐Smit 2001: 526).

7. This view builds on the observation of the ontologisation of social phenomena elsewhere. For example Alberto Melucci had warned against the ontologisation of social movements (Melucci 1988: 330; 1989: 26); see also Alexander Wendt's critique of the ontologisation of the state (Wendt 1987).

8. The term is Karin Fierke's, Queen's University Belfast, 25 November 2005.

9. For seminal studies on a relational approach to institution building, see for example Tilly 1975; Somers 1994; Giddens 1979 as well as Habermas 1985.

10. This point had been famously raised by Kratochwil and Ruggie (1992) in their seminal study on regimes.

11. While Husserl has coined the term ‘life‐world’ Habermas has developed it into a theory of communication which has been applied to the study of norms in world politics (see Habermas 1988: 210). Habermas explicitly criticises both Husserl and Schuetz for working with social theoretical tradition which supports a ‘culturally reductionist concept of the life‐world’ which is ultimately and ‘consequently dissolved into a sociology of science’ (ibid.).

12. Habermas, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 April 2003, 23. For a similar assessment see Taylor's observation that ‘the ‘rule’ lies essentially in the practice’ (Taylor 1993: 58; emphasis original).