INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Rules, Norms and the State Behaviour

Rules, Norms and the State Behaviour

How do Rules and Norms shape State Behaviour?

When one thinks about rules and norms, the first thing that comes to mind is something that is clearly being followed by majority of a society and something that has been designed, implemented and followed through the consensus of the entire society. However, the society is formed through the collaboration of a number of different sects, races, religions and people have different sets of minds regarding the world.

When these different minds meet together, there are undoubtedly several conflicts of thoughts as well as the formation of politics. However, at the end of the day, these different people and individual minds collectively form different rules and norms of the society which gives birth to the behaviour of the state on the national and international level. In order to better understand about how rules and norms impact the behaviour of the state; an in depth discussion regarding the relevant factors is required (Cortell & Davis, 1996, p. 467).

Development of Rules and Norms on the Societal Level

As mentioned above, a society is a formation of people belonging to entirely different sets of minds and ideologies. Moreover, when these people are left together inside a border and asked to form a successful society; usually a chaos is released as everyone believes in their own sets of ideas and tries to implement the ideas on the society in their very own different way. Therefore, it becomes extremely necessary to provide these people with a singular platform from where they could collaboratively live in the society.

This is the point where rules and norms formation comes into play. Rules refer to explicitly understood principles and regulations followed within a society with regards to the ways and standards of life. On the other hand, norms refer to generally acceptable activities within the society. Norms are not usually written and recorded but are mutually understood by the members of the society as something that is an important part of their identity and ways of life (Gordon, Governatori & Rotolo, 2009, p. 292).

Implementation of Rules and Norms

Once the rules and norms have been developed, the next step is to implement the developed rules and norms. This is done through multiple channels including the following:

Development of Organizations which continuously work to enforce the designed rules such as law enforcement agencies etcetera.

Development of Organizations which train people in the perceptual manner and give them a sense regarding the importance of following societal norms such as schools & colleges etcetera.

Development of the societal media and cultural cloud which continuously promotes the national and local culture to the people through media etcetera. However, due to globalization the cultural clouds have been greatly affected as other cultures have also mixed in.

Linkage with Power Politics

In every nation, politics exist on the basis of a number of factors including the authority of majority, democratic selection of leader or on the basis of physical ...