Is the Territorial Integrity Norm in Its Death Throes?

Abstract

The territorial integrity norm, designed to safeguard states against forcible redrawing of their borders and for decades regarded as foundational to the post-1945 global order, has been repeatedly challenged since 2008. These developments have led commentators to suggest that the norm is undergoing significant weakening or even outright extinction. The assumption informing these assertions is that norm strength internationally is determined by (1) the frequency of violations, (2) the relative power of violators, (3) the effectiveness of enforcement measures by third parties in countering violations, or (4) some combination of the three. In contrast, I argue that the territorial integrity norm has not markedly eroded. Norms are socially held ideas about proper behavior rather than patterns of actual behavior. A norm can be undone only by a collective abandonment of its underlying idea, not by individual infringements or ineffective enforcement. Its strength is the extent to which social commitment to it persists. The necessary empirical indicator of that commitment is concordance: public affirmation of norms, especially in cases of norm breaking. Although supplementing concordance with material measures to counter norm-breaking constitutes additional evidence of that commitment, norm strength is not contingent on the success of these efforts, which may prove elusive even when they entail substantial material coercion. Norm strength is undermined not by international society’s inability to restore the status quo ante when violations occur, but by its failure to call them violations and to continually repudiate them in the first place. In the case of territorial integrity, concordance has been most compellingly expressed by third-party refusals to recognize the forcible acquisition of territory as a valid transfer of sovereignty. In line with the pre-2008 practice, the recent attempts at, or formal backing of, such territorial acquisitions have, overall, continued to elicit sweeping refusals to extend recognition.