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International lawyers and international relations scholars recognize that international norms change over time. Practices that were once permissible and even “normal” — like slavery, conquest, and wartime plundering — are now prohibited by international rules. Yet though we acknowledge norm change, we are just beginning to understand how and why international rules develop in the ways that they do. This book sketches the primary theoretical perspectives on international norm change, the “legalization” and “transnational activist” approaches, and argues that both are limited by their focus on international rules as outcomes. It then presents the “cycle theory”, in which norm change is continual, a product of the constant interplay among rules, behavior, and disputes. International Norms and Cycles of Change is the natural follow-on to Prohibiting Plunder, testing the cycle theory against ten empirical cases. The cases range from piracy and conquest, to terrorism, slavery, genocide, humanitarian intervention, and the right to democracy. The key finding is that, across long stretches of time and diverse substantive areas, norm change occurs via the cycle dynamic. This book further advances the authors' theoretical approach by arguing that international norms have been shaped by two main currents: sovereignty rules and liberal rules. It includes five cases of sovereignty rules and five of liberal rules in order to reveal the broad cyclic pattern of international change in these two categories of rules.

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This research attempts to answer the question: to what extent do institutional procedures matter in shaping international organization policies? Little empirical evidence has been applied to the question, in part because structural forces predominate in most theories and because it is difficult empirically to isolate the procedural variable. The UN’s response to the 11 September 2001 attacks, in the context of its treatment of the terrorism issue generally, allows us to compare and contrast the response of the Security Council and the General Assembly’s Sixth Committee. While the case makes it clear that structural forces have influenced the choice of procedures in both bodies over their histories, it is also clear that exogenous shocks and the search for creative policies by major powers can cause dramatic shifts in institutional procedures. In particular, the events of 11 September created a unique opening for the United States and other Western powers to attempt a radical revision of anti-terror law. This could be done most efficiently through the Security Council by use of procedural provisions that were either dormant or only recently revitalized. Efforts to cement a consensus in the GA Sixth Committee quickly ran aground against age-old questions of the definition and scope of terrorism against the backdrop of norms on occupation and self-determination. The research should rekindle interest in procedural issues and the problem of ‘forum shopping’.

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