4 - Norm Research on Conflictive Norm Relations

Summary

This chapter reassesses how norm studies around the three moves have advanced and limited our understanding of ambiguous and conflictive relations between norms. It focuses on a specific type of norm relation, a norm collision. Conflicting or incompatible social expectations regarding the appropriate behaviour of actors in a given situation characterise a norm collision. Adherence to one norm may then result in the breach of another. First, the chapter engages with the neglect or limited perspective of norm collisions in the three moves of norm research. Second, it illustrates how choosing a specific norm concept – as connected to each of the three ‘moves’ in norm research – matters for theorising and identifying norm collisions in and between dense and complex institutional frameworks and as a result of contestation. Third, it discusses how crises nurture norm collisions by destabilising agreed-upon norm balances. It uses the most recent transnational and domestic policy responses to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of how norms interact in practice and how a prioritisation of one norm may (negatively) affect another.