Research on norms in international relations to date has mainly focused on the question of norm diffusion or norm adaption: how do norms spread from international organizations to the domestic level and how are norms translated into local contexts. The question of how norms emerge within international organizations however remains understudied. Also, a lot of country- or region-specific studies have been made, but not so much attention was paid to the comparative approach. The paper examines in comparative perspective how political norms emerge in regional organizations, drawing on the examples of EU and ASEAN. The specific focus will thereby lie on the question how certain events like the enlargement of regional organizations lead to this emergence and which factors play a role in this process. How can we explain for example the emergence of a democratic norm in the European Union and how can we explain norm dynamics in the ASEAN? Norm emergence, the dependent variable, is considered as a process at whose end a specific set of rules is constitutionalized in the RO’s primary law. The enlargement of the RO is hence the independent variable. Against the background of theories on norm emergence from sociology (Elster 1982, Bicchieri 1990, Coleman 1990) and international relations (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, Acharya 2011) as well as concepts from public policy like focusing events (Birkland 1997), the paper develops a concept on factors that lead to the emergence of political norms in regional organizations and tries to elaborate conditions for norm dynamics in different regional contexts (actors, direction of normative process, etc.). The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of how regional political identity is formed.
