What role does ideational change play in norm emergence? While there has been some attention to changes in the application of norms, most scholars refer to the ideas that are associated with a norm's practice as being fixed. I argue that ideational change is a causal mechanism that facilitates norm emergence. In particular, I propose three types of content change that capture changes in the ideas associated with the goals expected to be attained by the application of the norm ('logic of consequences'), with its morality ('logic of appropriateness'), and with its relations with similar or alternative practices ('specification'). These changes in the rational and moral reasoning and argumentation that frame the practice that is associated with an emerging norm are likely to make this practice congruent with more contexts and appealing for more states. To illustrate the content change proposition, this article traces the emergence of the international norm of truth and reconciliation commissions. In the debates that followed the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, truth and reconciliation commissions shifted from being seen as a political compromise to being regarded as a 'holistic' tool for social and political reconstruction and came to be associated with multiple democratizing effects. Truth and reconciliation commissions also shifted from being the 'weaker alternative' to trials to a practice that is morally equal and complementary to the judicial option. Taken as a whole, these changes in the expected utility, morality, and specification of truth and reconciliation commissions facilitated their emergence and consequent institutionalization as an international norm.

In the last round of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at the Taba Conference (January 2001), Israeli negotiators went where no Israeli officials went before: they considered the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and a quasi-statement that acknowledges the Palestinian tragedy and Israel's share of historical responsibility. This paper argues that at least in part this shift in the negotiations' framework can be traced back to the public debate instigated by the work of Israeli New Historians.Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (michal@mit.edu). She thanks Boaz Atzili, Naomi Chazan, Orit Gal, Eran Kaplan, Daniel Levy, Ran Levy, Gil Merom, Clair Moon, Melissa Nobles, Jeremy Pressman, Stephen Van Evera, Amos Zehavi, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments and suggestions. She also thanks Kezia Avieli-Tabibyan from the Center of Educational Technology (MATAH, Israel) for her valuable assistance with Israeli history textbooks.

What constitutes a strong or a weak norm? Scholars often refer to strong or weak, or strengthening or weakening norms, yet there are widespread inconsistencies in terminology and no agreed-upon measures. This has hindered the accumulation of knowledge and made it difficult to test competing hypotheses about norm development and contestation. To address these conceptual problems and their analytical implications, this article conceptualizes norm strength as the extent of collective expectations related to a principled idea and proposes two indicators to assess a norm’s strength: the level of international concordance with a principled idea, and the degree of international institutionalization of a principled idea. The article illustrates the applicability and utility of the proposed conceptualization by evaluating the strengths of two transitional justice norms: the norm of legal accountability and the norm of truth-seeking. In so doing, the article resolves empirical disputes over the origins and status of these norms. In particular, the analysis reveals that while legal accountability became a norm in the early 1990s and is today a strong norm, truth-seeking emerged later and remains a weak norm. More generally, the proposed framework should advance existing debates about norm contestation, localization, violation, and erosion.

Truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) have emerged as an international norm and are assumed to be an essential element of national reconciliation, democratization, and post-conflict development. Despite the increase in the number of TRCs being initiated around the globe and the international consensus regarding their positive effects, there is little understanding of the long-term effects and consequences of TRCs. Specifically, currently there are no established methods or mechanisms for measuring the impacts of TRCs; furthermore, the few examples of efforts to measure these impacts have serious limitations. This article explores both the rise in TRCs as an international norm and the contradictions and inadequacies in existing efforts to measure the impacts and successes of commissions. Through this examination, we aim to demonstrate the need for more critical, interactive, and inclusive mechanisms of assessment for understanding the effects of TRCs. The objective is neither to promote nor to criticize a specific TRC or TRCs in general; however, this article emphasizes the need to think rigorously about how we assess the effects of TRCs and offers insights into the value of more comprehensive mechanisms for assessing the impacts and local perceptions of commissions.

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