Organised Hypocrisy or Multiple Actors and Centres of Agency? Examining the Competitive Arena for Normative change Processes in the Area of Peacekeeping

How does normative change occur in IOs? Previously IO behavior has been theorized as a consequence of the interest of powerful states (Koremenos et al., 2001, see e.g. Krasner, 2009), but recent literature has begun to unpack the processes of normative change in IOs, and according agency in normative change processes elsewhere than to member states and powerful states. This has been done with concepts borrowed from organizational sociology related to bureaucratic dysfunction such as ‘dysfunctional behavior’, ‘pathologies’ (Barnett and Finnemore, 1999, 2004), or ‘organized hypocrisy’ (Weaver, 2008, Lipson, 2007). In the area of UN peacekeeping operations, the UN bureaucracy itself with the Secretary-General have been argued as norm entrepreneur (Johnstone et al., 2007). The paper will agree to this bottom-up perspective on normative formation, but also propose that there is a complex interplay between external and internal actors in the normative change processes in the UN, and that active small states such as Norway and individual practices may have an impact on the normative development. The paper will use the sociology of professions and the concept of ‘revolving doors’ to theorize normative change processes in the area of peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Finally, the paper will question of what kind of legitimacy norms hold that may not have been initiated, nor developed by member states per se in the UN system, but generated through practices in the field and at headquarters, as well as by active small states.