Antje Wiener

Taking a cue from the parallel increase of global constitutionalisation and norm contestation in a global environment, this EURIAS project at NIAS contributes to the larger endeavour of developing a principled pluralist approach to global governance. To that end, and building on the PI’s ‘theory of contestation', it approaches the generation of normativity through norm contestation on three levels of global governance: macro level norms (type 1), meso level norms (type 2) and micro level norms (type 3). Type 1 norms include fundamental norms that are constitutive for contingent patterns of global governance such as sovereignty, human rights and the rule of law; they have been widely addressed by social constructivists and international lawyers. Type 3 norms include specific standards and regulations such as fishing quotas, electoral rules or emission quotas; they have been studied extensively by policy research in global and European governance. By contrast, type 2 norms such as the responsibility to protect, corporate social responsibility or common but differentiated responsibility have remained under-researched. 

Yet, as this project argues, type 2 norms are likely to fill the 'legitimacy gap’ at the meso level of global governance. The EURIAS research project holds, therefore, that identifying both (1) affected stakeholders’ actual involvement in norm contestations, and (2) conditions for stakeholders’ access to regular contestation at the meso-level, would enhance the possibility to develop norm ownership as a key condition of legitimate global governance. The argument is developed from the background of James Tully’s Public Philosophy in a New Key. To explore the role of norm ownership and potential sites for stakeholder engagement (including both ‘cititzens’ and ‘learned scholarship’), the project maps moments of contestation at the macro- and micro-levels, respectively. The contestatory practices are taken as an indicator for the absence of shared - institutional, constitutional, or organisational - ground rules (type 2 norms) of global governance. While they invariably reflect changing normativity, contestatory practices are as yet to be taken on board of global governance theories. The project aims to accomplish that.