Introduction: Norms and International Relations Theory

Norms and International Relations Theory

Abstract

The study of international relations today requires some consolidation of the growing debates on normative inquiries. The expansion in normative writing since the 1980s has included both new substantive justice claims and new approaches for studying them. Three main developments at the end of the last century accelerated such reassessment of IR norms. First, globalization brought with it a heightened sense of our material and ideational interdependence, that we coexist in a single world and effective and sustainable solutions to shared problems cannot be achieved without regard for justice. Second, the end of the Cold war led to a renewed interest in the promotion of a just world order on account of the strengthened perception that certain sets of values concerning the well-being of mankind were now more widely shared. Third, constructivists have challenged the neoutilitarian mainstream of IR-the synthesis of neo-realism/liberalism- and attempted to rectify biases caused by its strict rationalist assumptions by placing the ideational aspects in the center of IR theory.
International society has long embraced a view that, to borrow the words of R. Aron, focused on “the minimum conditions for coexistence of states”. The pursuit of morality or justice was seen as a challenge to the maintenance of international order. However, there are now some signs that this perception has given way to a concern with individual justice, to support for humanitarian intervention, human security, protection of the global environment, sustainable use of natural resources, and demands for distributional justice from rich to poor states. But existing responses to, or implementation of the new normative claims also suggest that traditional ideas of international order, depending on such norms as non-interference, are still very attractive to the majority of states. Furthermore, the apparent revitalization of liberal norms mentioned above cannot easily be differentiated from the policies of hegemonic America. Thus, while we acknowledge the importance of investigating the process of constructing new norms and coordinating conflicts among norms, we still require a more consolidated framework for dealing with the relationship between the norms of inter-state order and global justice claims.
The eight articles appearing in this issue all represent insightful responses to the theoretical challenge briefly suggested above.