Micro-Foundations of Norm Entrepreneurship: B. Ečer and the Crime of Aggression

• In Event: Ideas and Rhetoric in IR

Abstract

Finnemore and Sikkink’s 1998 ‘norm life cycle’ model has inspired a substantial literature investigating norms’ emergence and staying power. However, because their model hinges on Sunstein’s ‘tipping point’ theory, we argue it biases scholarship towards powerful actors with resources to spread norms, often overlooking the micro-foundations of norm entrepreneurship—intellectual work involved in reshaping ideas and communicating them to relevant audiences. To remedy this gap, we argue for a distinction within their model between norm entrepreneurs and norm popularizers and demonstrate how research into the former can promote a fruitful partnership between IR and work in the history of political thought (HPT) tracing inflection points in norms’ life cycles. We illustrate this argument with multi-archival research (conducted in the US, UK, and Czechia) into Bohuslav Ečer, Czechoslovakia’s representative at the 1943-1948 UN War Crimes Commission. Though much of his memory has been lost to history due to both communist repression and the American bias of existing scholarship, we demonstrate Ečer was a pivotal norm entrepreneur with regards to the criminality of aggressive war. Drawing on previously uncited evidence, we show how Ečer’s ideas developed and spread, shaping US wartime policy and, ultimately, the foundational 1945 Nuremberg Charter. Appreciation of Ečer’s role both contributes to our understanding of a pivotal norm in international criminal law’s emergence and enriches our theoretical understanding of norms’ life cycles.

Authors

• Adam Lerner, University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Jessie Barton Hronesova, UNC - CHAPEL HILL