Norm challenges question the enduring quality of processes of institutionalisation and legalization that had been heralded as normative advances in a liberal world order in the early 2000’s. This paper is part of an interdisciplinary project on 'Norm Robustness and Contestation', convened Nicole Deitelhoff and Lisbeth Zimmermann at Goethe University Frankfurt (2015-2017) which focuses on norm contestation and change. From this perspective, the central questions are first, how does contestation effect normative stability or norm robustness? And second, and relatedly, how do contestations effect perceptions of justice – and conversely, injustice – in global society? The paper addresses these in five sections: section one introduces a narrower and a wider approach to norm contestation. Sections two and three unpack the concept of contestation further to include the effect of norm challenges with regard to both concepts of change, namely, the narrower aspect (i.e. change of a single norm’s robustness) and the wider normative context (i.e. change of the normative structure in world politics). Section four addresses conditions of access to contestation for involved stakeholders. And the concluding section five illustrates the value-added of the proposed bifocal approach with reference to four case scenarios and offers an outlook for future norms research. The present version of the paper is at the stage of pre-publication within a planned special issue edited by project convenors.
Norm challenges question the enduring quality of processes of institutionalisation and legalization that had been heralded as normative advances in a liberal world order in the early 2000’s. This paper is part of an interdisciplinary project on 'Norm Robustness and Contestation', convened Nicole Deitelhoff and Lisbeth Zimmermann at Goethe University Frankfurt (2015-2017) which focuses on norm contestation and change. From this perspective, the central questions are first, how does contestation effect normative stability or norm robustness? And second, and relatedly, how do contestations effect perceptions of justice – and conversely, injustice – in global society? The paper addresses these in five sections: section one introduces a narrower and a wider approach to norm contestation. Sections two and three unpack the concept of contestation further to include the effect of norm challenges with regard to both concepts of change, namely, the narrower aspect (i.e. change of a single norm’s robustness) and the wider normative context (i.e. change of the normative structure in world politics). Section four addresses conditions of access to contestation for involved stakeholders. And the concluding section five illustrates the value-added of the proposed bifocal approach with reference to four case scenarios and offers an outlook for future norms research. The present version of the paper is at the stage of pre-publication within a planned special issue edited by project convenors.