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This article is concerned with conceptualizing those actors who seek to undo the collective normative standard that has already been achieved. I call these actors norm saboteurs. Unlike norm entrepreneurs, who promote a new norm, or norm antipreneurs, who resist a new norm, saboteurs seek to obstruct the implementation of an already accepted norm. They not only oppose a norm, but also seek to prevent others from maintaining the normative status quo, i.e., from implementing a norm. In order to do so, saboteurs can apply a variety of strategies, relying on persuasion, blocking or obfuscation. The analysis shows that norms assumed to be the most robust—those having achieved a taken-for-granted quality—can actually lack resilience. Actors that follow widely accepted norms might even be sanctioned by saboteurs for upholding the normative status quo.

This article uses the reflection on the direction (whither) and health (wither) of constructivism and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that was witnessed in 2017 to see what these deliberations reveal about the fixity of norms and their contestation. The argument presented is that constitutive norms create fixed parameters of shared understandings but that within those parameters the meaning and application of the norm can be contested and debated. This insight helps to bridge the gap between conventional and critical constructivists and shows that the premise of jettisoning the ASEAN Way as necessary for ASEAN to achieve its ambitious community-building project is flawed. The argument relies on insights from the constructivist literature on norm degeneration to show how contestation is not one part of a norm's life cycle but rather a constant companion. However, norms are not just contested, but they have fixity, and here practice theory can help show that the social world is just as much about continuity as it is change. The ASEAN case study is timely as introspection about the efficacy of its constitutive norms – the ASEAN Way – was prominent in 2017 as ASEAN turned 50.

The persistence and strength of international norms are thought to depend partly on the willingness of actors to punish their violation, but norm enforcement is often inconsistent. This article investigates states' use of economic sanctions in order to gain insight into the role of metanorms (norms about enforcing norms) in international politics and explain this inconsistency. The quantitative analyses examine patterns of economic sanctions and arms embargo practices across different security norms and reveal two central findings. First, international metanorms may accommodate important interstate relationships. Although severe human rights abuse, conflict, nuclear weapons development, and support for terrorist organisations tend to attract sanctions, they are infrequent in comparison with norm violations. Valued relationships between senders and targets seem to be an accepted limit to the pursuit of costly norm enforcement. Second, norm violations nevertheless remain rare, suggesting that factors other than the prospect of material punishment may encourage compliance. Indeed, by preserving interstate relationships, international metanorms may facilitate the engagement needed for socialisation and social pressures as alternative compliance mechanisms.

Electoral misconduct is widespread, but only some countries are punished by international actors for violating democratic norms. Using an original dataset and country case studies, this book explains variation in international norm enforcement and shows that despite being selective, it can nevertheless have transformative effects on both the quality and outcome of elections.

Widespread adoption of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) represents a puzzle. It cannot be described as serving the interests of any state as understood in conventional theories of international relations because it commits countries to radical social change. Yet all but six UN member states have ratified it. We argue that the case can only be explained by reference to Waltz' first image, the individual level. We invoke Giddens' notion of structuration to explain how a small group of like-minded women, many of them diplomats, were able to work within existing structures of international diplomacy to create institutions that embedded their ideals in international law. These women were critical actors, positioned simultaneously in activist organizations and government and diplomatic institutions, giving them leverage to institutionalize new norms. The case shows the importance of analysis at the individual level to explain normative change in the international system.

After World War II, the United States reconstituted its military policy for the third time in its history. A strategy of deterrence was adopted as the military counterpart to a foreign policy of containment. This strategy involved military alliances, overseas deployments, larger and diversified military forces, higher levels of readiness, and development of programs for strategic retaliation, continental defense, European defense, and limited war. By 1972, the original basis for this strategy was disappearing: public support for military burdens had decreased; the Soviet Union had achieved military parity with the United States; Europe, Japan, China were independent centers of economic and political power; local hegemonic powers had emerged in the Third World. For the foreseeable future, only the Soviet Union is in a position to aspire to global preeminence and thus pose a significant threat to U.S. security. Hence the U.S. must aim to avoid: military inferiority vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, diplomatic isolation among the major powers, and exclusion by the Soviet Union from political or economic access to any major portion of the Third World. These goals require military forces to support diplomacy as well as to maintain deterrence. More specifically, they require: a redefinition of the role of the strategic retaliatory force, recognizing its diplomatic as well as deterrent functions; the adaptation of U.S. forces deployed in and designed for the defense of Europe to the more general purpose of great power reinforcement; and the conversion of limited war forces into counterintervention forces to deter Soviet military intervention in the Third World. While civilians played a major role in developing the strategy of deterrence, the principal responsibility for elaborating these changes in strategy will rest with military officers.