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1 results

  • 6 - Norm Clarification

  • Anette Stimmer, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    The Politics of International Norms
    Published online:
    07 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 February 2025, pp 261-298

  • Summary

    This chapter studies norm contestation that led to norm clarification (frame and claim agreement). It compares the United States’s (US) contestation of the right to self-defense with its contestation of the prohibition of torture in the context of international terrorism. These episodes of contestation weakened the contested norms while ongoing. However, they eventually led to norm clarification through widespread acceptance of the US’s broadening of the right to self-defense and through widespread rejection of a narrowing of the torture prohibition. This norm clarification respectively increased or affirmed social and relative strength of the contested norms. The variation in outcome indicates that the preferred norm interpretations of materially powerful states do not always prevail. In this chapter, I engage in a fine-grained discourse analysis. Among others, this illustrates that whether proponents of norm change seek generally applicable norm change or covert exceptionalism affects argumentation, and that in-group reactions to norm interpretations are consequential.