Challenges to Security Norms after 9/11: When Does Contestation End?

• In Event: Domestic Politics of Terrorism

Abstract

While scholars long treated norms as stable things, norms are now increasingly conceptualized as malleable entities whose meaning is contested. Recently, populist movements have questioned the value of existing institutions and norms: UKIP’s criticism of freedom of movement in the EU and Donald Trump’s (threats of) trade tariffs are a case in point. Instead of shedding light on this increase in contestation that we see empirically, norm contestation research so far has mainly focused on abstract theorizing. Some scholars see contestation as a sign that norms are merely an instrument of the powerful, whereas others are overly optimistic that contestation increases legitimacy by allowing marginalized voices to get heard. This paper contributes to an emerging literature that analyses norm contestation empirically. I study the debates over the US’s intervention in Afghanistan and the Bush administration’s ‘enhanced interrogations’. These two cases not only help us to gain insights on what resolves norm contestation, but also share similarities with the contestation by populist movements that we see today: Resentments towards terrorists rather than towards elites served as a pretext to question existing consensus on norms such as the prohibition of torture and the right to self-defense.

I argue that norm contestation ends, and norms are clarified when all participants agree on a norm frame (justification) and claim (action that follows). This norm clarification can take different forms depending on whether the prior consensus was reinforced, or a new consensus developed and on whether contestation occurred overtly or covertly. I study the debate over the intervention of Afghanistan and the Bush administration’s ‘enhanced interrogations’. While 9/11 and international terrorism triggered both the US’s contestation of the well-established right to self-defense and the prohibition of torture, the Bush administration’s attempts at reinterpretation were accepted in the former case and rejected in the latter. This shows that neither external events nor power are sufficient to resolve norm contestation. Rather, the intent and identity of the norm challenger, the presence or absence of shared perceptions that a norm interpretation solves a joint problem (output legitimacy) and support from states with a similar identity matter. I rely on content analysis of newspaper articles, speeches and political debates in international institutions such as the UN Security Council in my analysis.

Author

• Anette Therese Stimmer, Nuffield College, University of Oxford