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

在过去的三十年里，专注于国际规范的研究有了很大的增长。虽然学者们已经提出了大量的见解，但令人惊讶的是，几乎没有产生概括的结果。这是因为规范研究压倒性地依赖于比较或案例研究。这类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，这阻碍了泛化。因此，对国际规范的研究类似于在开发更大的数据集之前对战争的研究。在数据集可用之前，研究人员不知道某些经验模式，这些模式今天构成了关键的研究项目，例如民主和平或危险的二元结构。简而言之，目前的常模研究可能甚至没有意识到什么是未知的。纠正这种情况的主要障碍是缺乏记录关于规范的信息的大型数据集；这使得不可能可靠地确定潜在的经验模式。因此，该项目将致力于解决这一不足。它将通过开发Norm动态数据库来开辟新的天地，该数据库记录不同时间和几个政策领域的规范变化。这将有助于确定未知的规范变化模式，并为定量规范研究打开大门。此外，它还将促进更普遍的规范变化理论的发展和测试，这些理论可以随着时间的推移在政策领域之间和范围内适用。该项目之所以重要，原因如下：(1)由于缺乏系统数据，无法确定或调查规范变化的模式。换句话说，规范研究甚至不知道什么是未知的。(2)它超越了现有规范研究的局限，向定量规范研究迈进。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)类似于国际关系的其他子领域，如战争研究，新模式的确定将引发新的理论思维(如战争步骤理论)，甚至有可能创建新的研究子领域(如民主和平)。该项目试图通过提出规范随时间、跨政策领域和在政策领域内变化的一般理论来推动现有的界限。(4)通过侧重于个别特征对规范变化进行仔细的概念化，能够确定规范的哪些部分需要更频繁地变化，或者哪些特征使规范更加稳健和灵活。这种知识可以为未来的战略以及政策制定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.