Navigating norm complexity: A pluralist research agenda

Abstract Actors in international politics frequently relate to multiple international norms in taking and justifying decisions. The multiplicity of global normative standards creates constraints and opportunities, affecting how norms matter in contemporary world politics. International relations theorists have therefore devoted increasing attention to relations and interactions between international norms and to norms’ complex internal structures. In this article, I take stock of this recent research and propose avenues for advancing it. I sketch a pluralist agenda on norm complexity that I delineate from long-standing research on international regime complexity. I then zoom in on the most dynamic part of the agenda, the study of agency in complex normative settings. I argue that political actors creatively navigate norm complexity by (re-)connecting constitutive elements of different norms, thus relating these norms to one another in varying, often conflicting ways. I show how this concept of creative navigation can be integrated into different constructivist approaches to norms and normativity to highlight different drivers and implications of such creative agency. I use examples at the nexus of norms governing climate change, nuclear energy, and nuclear non-proliferation to illustrate how different perspectives on navigation can be applied in a pluralist engagement with norm complexity.