Scholars are powerful actors in norm discourses. Their publications, projects and scholarly research embody dominant narratives, which subtly influence scientific communities but also normative orders. Especially scholarly writing constitutes a practice that stabilizes certain hegemonic norm narratives. Taking the literature on norm diffusion as an example, this paper examines how IR norm research – from its beginnings to its rise during the constructivist turn – has been dominated by a specific reading of normalizing narratives. The paper argues that this practice of ‘writing norms’ has not only gained a hegemonic position among IR scholars, but works to naturalize distinct narratives on norm diffusion. These narratives depict norm diffusion as a rather top-down process, which artificially detaches the ‘global’ (West) from the ‘local’ (Rest). We will look into the naturalizing effects of particular influential works in norm diffusion literature and specifically examine the demarcation of ‘global’ and ‘local’ narratives as one characteristic of writings on norm diffusion. How and with what kind of mechanisms do norm diffusion scholars set produce norms? And how do their writings shape conceptualizations of the ‘global’ and the ‘local’, which naturalize a specific view of the world?
