Actors in international politics frequently relate to multiple international norms in taking and justifying decisions. The multiplicity of global normative standards creates constraints and opportunities, affecting how norms matter in contemporary world politics. International relations theorists have therefore devoted increasing attention to relations and interactions between international norms and to norms’ complex internal structures. In this article, I take stock of this recent research and propose avenues for advancing it. I sketch a pluralist agenda on norm complexity that I delineate from long-standing research on international regime complexity. I then zoom in on the most dynamic part of the agenda, the study of agency in complex normative settings. I argue that political actors creatively navigate norm complexity by (re-)connecting constitutive elements of different norms, thus relating these norms to one another in varying, often conflicting ways. I show how this concept of creative navigation can be integrated into different constructivist approaches to norms and normativity to highlight different drivers and implications of such creative agency. I use examples at the nexus of norms governing climate change, nuclear energy, and nuclear non-proliferation to illustrate how different perspectives on navigation can be applied in a pluralist engagement with norm complexity.
This study explores the concept of 'destituent power' and 'recall procedures', highlighting the relevance of philosophical thought for global constitutionalism and democratic oversight. Drawing on Paul Ric oe ur's notions of 'vigilance' and the 'political paradox' (1957), I argue that destituent power offers an important mechanism for maintaining accountability within constitutional systems. The paper brings political philosophy into dialogue with an empirical constitutional study of three East Asian countries - Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. These non-Western experiences clarify the practical dynamics of destituent power and bring to light innovative, yet little-known, recall mechanisms that carry significance for global constitutionalism.
This article examines national human rights institutions (NHRIs) as part of the evolving fourth-branch considerations within contemporary constitutionalism. Critically engaging with recent scholarship on fourth-branch institutions, it argues that, in general, NHRIs satisfy the criteria of double constitutionalization - as constitutionally entrenched entities and as protectors of constitutional rights. Through comparative analysis of ombuds institutions and human rights commissions, the article evaluates their mandate and functions against the existing criteria for fourth-branch actorness, particularly focusing on determining norm breaches and interpreting norms. The article argues that while NHRIs' constitutional design and unique international peer review accreditation suggest significant independence, their de facto performance often depends on volatile political and institutional environments. The empirical discussion in the article exposes how appointment procedures, budgetary control and political capture can undermine their constitutional promise. The article concludes that NHRIs occupy a liminal constitutional space - formally insulated from party politics but deeply implicated in high politics - and that their credibility rests on maintaining a precarious balance between independence and accountability. In doing so, it advances the theoretical and comparative understanding of NHRIs as core protectors of constitutional rights within the broader fourth-branch paradigm.
This article examines Turkey's constitutional trajectory through Carl Schmitt's concepts of sovereignty, exception and dictatorship. It argues that Turkey's political development cannot be fully understood as a process of gradual democratic erosion alone but must be analyzed as a sequence of constitutional ruptures in which exceptional powers have repeatedly redefined sovereign authority. From Abd & uuml;lhamid II's suspension of the 1876 Constitution to the Grand National Assembly's exercise of wartime sovereignty in 1921, the military interventions of 1960 and 1980, and President Erdo & gbreve;an's post-2016 consolidation of power, sovereignty has shifted among personal, collective and institutional actors capable of suspending legality and founding new constitutional orders. By situating Turkey within a longer history of sovereign reconstitution, the article critically reworks Schmitt's framework to show how emergency provisions - initially designed to defend constitutional order - can be transformed into instruments of constitutional refoundation. It demonstrates how commissarial responses to crisis may evolve into sovereign dictatorships, enabling regime transformation under the appearance of legal continuity. In doing so, the article contributes to debates on authoritarian constitutionalism and emergency governance by clarifying the constitutional mechanisms through which legality is suspended, reconfigured and redeployed. Beyond the Turkish case, the article advances a broader comparative agenda for global constitutionalism: integrating the study of democratic erosion with an analysis of sovereign reconstitution in moments of exception, thereby illuminating how contemporary constitutional orders are reshaped through crisis.
