Speaker
Description
The normalization of US drone strikes in counterterrorism challenges the assumption of an advantage of the actors who defend traditional interpretations of jus ad bellum and IHL norms. This study conceptualizes actor status and governance level of norms as risk factors to the antipreneurial advantage and probes their plausibility in an analysis of framing activities by the ICRC, the ACLU and HRW – identifying how they accounted for these risks through strategic elements of disagreement and rhetorical tactics. Findings suggest that the level of risk to an actor’s advantage depends on three factors aligning: 1) their access to institutional and epistemic authority, 2) institutional default and status quo bias toward the norm in question, and 3) how much interpretive elasticity they allow through either setting hard boundaries, category policing, teleological anchoring, or slippery slope projections in their disagreement. While it requires further testing, the proposed alignment model contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the antipreneurial advantage and helps extending the analytical lense to non-state actors’ antipreneurial behavior. Its implications are strategically relevant to non-state practitioners advocating for the governance of norm-disruptive weapon technologies in front of an international legal order under attack.
| Institutional Affiliation | University of St.Gallen |
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