Consistency, Efficiency or Triumph of the Right Norms – What is the (Implicit) Ideal in the Literature on Regime Complexity, Fragmentation, and Norm Contestation?

In order to identify the problems global disorder poses and develop strategies to deal with it, one needs to have an idea about what a normatively desirable order should look like. This paper argues that the literature on regime complexity, fragmentation, and norm contestation has so far paid too little attention to clarifying its underlying assumptions about good global governance. The paper presents an analysis of the underlying normative assumptions of different strands of the literature. Rationalist approaches to regime complexity and fragmentation often focus on regulative international institutions and see consistency as the central challenge. Less well covered by the literature are operative institutions. But praxis-oriented debates in the context of operative international institutions like the aid effectiveness agenda in development cooperation point to efficiency as a central aspiration. The constructivist literature on norm contestation looks at the same phenomenon from a very different perspective. Instead of asking about the consistency and efficiency of the overall governance system, they want to know which norms prevail over others. Underlying this question is an idea of politics which is more antagonistic and an interest in seeing the “right” norms – however defined – prevail. The paper concludes that a clearer distinction between the normative ideals on which the different strands of the literature are based on can enrich the debate and enable comparison and combination of approaches.