Abstract European societies are increasingly grappling with the often violent and deceitful circumstances through which now-treasured artefacts made their way from their colonies to museums in the metropole. This article shows this emerging norm of colonial heritage restitution by describing key norm components and assessing the norm’s current strength. Moreover, the article analyses the norm’s implementation in two European states to better understand how and why states implement the colonial heritage restitution norm. The comparison shows that Belgium and the United Kingdom have implemented the norm differently and incompletely: while both states have seen extensive discourse surrounding colonial heritage restitution as a moral duty to right past wrongs among civil society and museums, domestic legal changes and museum policies have varied due to different institutional contexts and government positions on heritage restitution. The paper attests to the critical role of national governments’ norm support for explaining divergent implementation, while other domestic actors such as museums and civil society groups are advocating for heritage restitution. The paper contributes to emerging research on museums as norm entrepreneurs in International Relations and transitional justice in established democracies.
Franziska Boehme (Fri,) studied this question.