The secret life-changes of norms: A comprehensive analysis of norm change

在过去三十年中，关注国际规范的研究有了显著增长。虽然学者们已经产生了大量的见解，但令人惊讶的是，很少有可推广的结果产生。这是因为规范研究主要依赖于比较研究或案例研究。这种研究是分析单一规范变化的精密工具，往往将调查限制在特定的政策领域，从而阻碍了推广。因此，对国际规范的研究类似于在开发更大数据集之前对战争的研究。在数据集可用之前，研究人员不知道今天形成关键研究项目的某些经验模式，例如民主和平或危险的两分体。简而言之，目前的规范研究甚至可能没有意识到未知的东西。纠正这种情况的主要障碍是缺乏记录规范信息的大型数据集；这使得不可能可靠地识别潜在的经验模式。因此，本项目旨在解决这一不足。它将通过开发规范动态数据库开辟新的领域，该数据库记录了规范在不同时间和几个政策领域的变化。这将有助于识别尚不为人知的规范变化模式，并为定量规范研究打开大门。此外，它将促进规范变化的更一般理论的发展和测试，这些理论随着时间的推移，在政策领域之间和内部保持不变。该项目的重要性在于：(1)由于缺乏系统的数据，规范变化的模式无法识别或调查。换句话说，规范研究甚至没有意识到未知的东西。(2)超越了现行规范研究的局限，走向定量规范研究。该项目将通过开发数据集来克服规范研究中缺乏系统数据的问题。(3)与其他国际关系子领域（如战争研究）类似，对新模式的识别将引发新的理论思考（如战争理论的步骤），甚至有可能创造新的研究子领域（如民主和平）。该项目试图通过提出规范随时间变化的一般理论，跨越政策领域，突破现有的界限。(4)通过关注个体特征对规范变化进行仔细的概念化，可以确定规范的哪些部分受到更频繁的变化的影响，或者哪些特征使规范更加稳健和灵活。这些知识可以为未来的战略以及决策者和实践者提供信息。

Research focusing on international norms has grown substantially over the course of the last three decades. While scholars have produced a tremendous number of insights, surprisingly few generalizable results have been generated. This is because norm research relies overwhelmingly on comparative or case studies. Such studies are precision instruments that analyze the change of a single norm and tend to restrict investigations to a specific policy field, which prevents generalization. As a result, the study of international norms is akin to studies of war prior to the development of larger datasets. Until datasets were available, researchers were unaware of certain empirical patterns that today form crucial research projects, e.g. the democratic peace or dangerous dyads. In short, current norm research may not even be aware of what is unknown. The main obstacle to remedying this situation is the lack of a large dataset recording information on norms; this makes it impossible to reliably identify potentially empirical patterns. Therefore, this project will aim to address this shortfall. It will break new ground by developing the Norm Dynamic Database, which records norm changes across time and several policy fields. This will facilitate the identification of patterns of norm change yet unknown and open the door to quantitative norm research. Moreover, it will facilitate the development and testing of more-general theories of norm change that hold over time and across and within policy fields. The project is of importance for the following reasons: (1) Due to a lack of systematic data, patterns of norm change cannot be identified or investigated. In other words, norm research is not even aware of what is unknown. (2) It moves beyond the limitations of current norm research towards quantitative norm research. The project will overcome the lack of systematic data in norm research by developing a dataset. (3) Similar to other International Relations-subfields, such as the study of war, the identification of new patterns will trigger new theoretical thinking (e.g. steps to war theory) and even has the potential to create new subfields of research (e.g. democratic peace). The project seeks to push the existing boundaries by presenting a general theory of norm change over time and across and within policy areas. (4) The careful conceptualization of norm change by focusing on individual characteristics enables the determination of which parts of a norm are subject to more frequent change or which characteristics make norms more robust and flexible. Such knowledge may inform future strategies as well as policy-makers and practitioners.