Responding to Norm Collisions: Procedural Norms and Interface Management in Fragmented Areas of Transnational Politics (COLLISIONS)

Background:

This research project compares the genesis of norm clashes in six fields of international policy: human trafficking, drug control, organ trafficking, refugee protection, genetically modified organisms, and child labor.

Main research question:

The research project asks under what conditions norm collisions manifest in international politics and how different actors (state; non-state; interstate) respond to such collisions. Through comparison, the project will first identify the contexts in which actors within the problem areas under consideration establish incompatible normative positions. In a second step, the project analyzes the procedural norms underlying actors' responses to these perceived norm clashes.

Research objective:

The project contributes to the overarching goals of the research group by reconstructing and analyzing responses to horizontal interface conflicts. At the same time, it reveals the normative principles underlying these responses. Thus, the project will provide essential insights for the common goals of the research group: on the one hand, for the creation of an inventory of principles that guide the handling of norm conflicts, and on the other hand, for an empirically derived typology of responses to norm conflicts. The theoretical framework of the project combines legal pluralist perspectives and assumptions from (critical) constructivist norm research to explain the findings from the comparative case studies.