Session 18: Welcome to the world of norms

This weeks reading by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink delves into the concept of norms and how the understanding and interpretation of norms is the foundation of the Constructivist School of Thought. Continuing from last sessions readings on ideas and the mass acceptance of ideas, this week Finnemore and Sikkink take us on a journey of norms and how it is these norms that shape both domestic politics and international politics.

According to Finnemore and Sikkink, the definition of a norm is a standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity. These norms are what shape political views within a state and these are seen as a way to run a country, both though regulative norms which give order and constrain behavior and constitutive norms which create interests within actors of the state. What was particularly interesting and really caught my attention was the part where the authors talk about how by definition, there are no bad norms because from the vantage point of even the most brutal leader, his norms are seen as acceptable. The most evident example of this is that of Hitler. He didn't think that his ideology was incorrect because he felt that people who were not part of the Aryan Race were not going to survive, and in a world where the Social Darwinistic principles reign, it was essential to make Germany great and as less vulnerable to external threats as possible. His norms and explanations and justifications of norms were acceptable to millions, and we see that Hitler and his ring of henchmen and the SS were strong propagators of the racial ideology. Echoes of Hitlers domestic policy were present in his foreign policy as well, and this complexity is discussed by the authors who claim that there is a two-level norm game that occurs where the domestic and the international norm tables are increasingly linked.

Like any good scholar, Finnemore and Sikkink understand the drawbacks of the School. Much like the Realist School and Liberal School, the Constructivist school struggles with explaining change and how the international distribution of ideas causes this change to occur. Perhaps one explanation to this lies in the fact that when there is a change in how certain idea or ideology are viewed, there is change in the system. An example of this might be that an ideology such as communism was seen as acceptable when it was circumscribed within a certain geographical region. However, when the idea started spreading it caused alarm in the Western World where the capitalist ideology trumped.

This weeks reading is interesting and adds a further complexity in the Constructivist School because it provides an interesting insight in how domestic norms and international norms are interlinked and the way that norms are interpreted help shape the course of History. A very interesting and thought provoking read!