Abstract
ABSTRACT To date, there has been little research on how advocacy coalitions influence the dynamic relationships between norms. Addressing norm collisions as a particular type of norm dynamics, we ask if and how advocacy coalitions and the constellations between them bring such norm collisions to the fore. Norm collisions surface in situations in which actors claim that two or more norms are incompatible with each other, promoting different, even opposing, behavioural choices. We examine the effect of advocacy coalition constellations (ACC) on the activation and varying evolution of norm collisions in three issue areas: international drug control, human trafficking, and child labour. These areas have a legally codified prohibitive regime in common. At the same time, they differ with regard to the specific ACC present. Exploiting this variation, we generate insights into how power asymmetries and other characteristics of ACC affect norm collisions across our three issue areas.
Highlights
Decades of International Relations (IR) research on transnational civil society actors have confirmed that in many cases these actors – and the networks and coalitions they form – play a decisive role “in teaching governments what is appropriate to pursue in politics” (Price 1998, 639)
Looking at norm collisions in three international issue areas, we identify a research puzzle that merits comparative research: why, despite shared characteristics of the three issue areas, do we see differences in how norms are brought into collision? In our article, we aim to provide explanations for this puzzle by looking at constellations of advocacy coalitions and the ways in which these constellations affect conflictual relationships between international
While we have assessed a variety of scope conditions and their explanatory potential for the emergence and dynamic of norm collisions elsewhere (Gholiagha, Holzscheiter, and Liese 2020), in this article we focus on constellations of advocacy coalitions as a potentially powerful explanatory factor for both the emergence and the dynamics of norm collisions
Summary
Decades of IR research on transnational civil society actors have confirmed that in many cases these actors – and the networks and coalitions they form – play a decisive role “in teaching governments what is appropriate to pursue in politics” (Price 1998, 639). Our overall theoretical starting point is the assumption that norms do not collide by themselves but always require agents that articulate norm collisions in international debate. Our concept of norm collisions speaks to but differs from related concepts such as norm contestation (Wiener 2018; Deitelhoff and Zimmermann 2020), norm sabotage (Schneiker 2021), or norm disappearance (Panke and Petersohn 2012). We depart from this literature’s focus on contestation, sabotage, or “death” of a particular international norm. Norm collisions presuppose that the validity of two or more colliding norms in a given situation is not contested; otherwise, norms and their behavioural prescriptions could not be identified as being in conflict with each other. We propose to examine how actors relate various norms to one another in a given situation and focus on perceived incompatibilities between at least two norms that actors articulate
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