Multiplicity, hybridity and normativity: disputes about the UN convention against corruption in Germany
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117820965662 |
| Author | Max Lesch |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820965662
International Relations
2021, Vol. 35(4) 613 –633
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117820965662
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Multiplicity, hybridity and
normativity: Disputes about
the UN convention against
corruption in Germany
Max Lesch
Zeppelin University
Abstract
In 2014, Germany became the 173rd state to ratify the UN Convention against Corruption
(UNCAC) – after more than ten years of disputes in the German parliament. To make sense
of the protracted debates about ratifying UNCAC, the article follows the recent introduction
of Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology to International Relations (IR). I argue that this approach
opens new avenues for researching normativity in hybrid arrangements of multiple, overlapping
orders of worth and through ongoing tests of the right evaluation of a situation. I show that the
belayed ratification of UNCAC in Germany was the result of the hybridity inherent to norms
against corruption. In the debates, members of the German parliament relied on competing
normative inventories to translate the term ‘public official’ to the German context and to settle
the meaning of corruption. This article contributes to IR norm research by unpacking normative
multiplicity and contradictions that undergird international norms and disputes about them.
Keywords
corruption, hybridity, Luc Boltanski, multiplicity, norms, pragmatic sociology
Introduction
Norms against corruption have emerged and diffused in international and regional organ-
isations since the 1990s.1 In 2003, this process culminated in the adoption of the United
Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) which entered into force only
two years later. Today, the global anti-corruption norm shares almost universal formal
support with most of the states around the globe having ratified one or more international
instruments against corruption.2 While Germany signed UNCAC immediately after its
Corresponding author:
Max Lesch, Zeppelin University, Am Seemooser Horn 20, 88045 Friedrichshafen, Germany.
Email: max.lesch@zu.de
965662IRE0010.1177/0047117820965662International RelationsLesch
research-article2020
Article
614 International Relations 35(4)
adoption, it did not ratify the Convention until November 2014. As a Western democracy
and advocate of the good governance agenda, Germany was expected to be a forerunner.
Yet, it only ratified UNCAC as the 173rd member state because for 10 years, the German
parliament3 could not agree on the necessary reforms of German bribery laws.
Germany had to align the German Criminal Code’s narrow legal regulations with
UNCAC Article 15, which obliges states parties to criminalise the bribing of national
public officials, including members of parliament (MPs). As new legislation was required
to extend existing bribery laws to the rules governing the conduct of MPs, observers
described the challenge as mere ‘regulatory problems’4 or ‘more procedural than sub-
stantive’5 issues. However, Anja Jakobi has rightly cautioned that ‘changing the rules of
national politics might be more difficult than the current acceptance of global anti-cor-
ruption norms suggests’.6 Disputes about corruption flared up in the German parliament
between 2009 and 2013 when the opposition introduced three bills to pave the way for
ratifying UNCAC. German MPs had to come to terms with criminal law regarding their
own conduct – a dispute which they could not settle until 2014. Germany’s tedious rati-
fication process was not only about technically adapting the German Criminal Code but
also brought up highly normative questions about the role of German MPs as ‘public
officials’ and the very meaning of a legal concept of political corruption.
To make sense of the protracted debates about ratifying UNCAC in Germany, the
article builds on Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology, which has recently been intro-
duced to International Relations (IR).7 Pragmatic sociology assumes that norms are
inherently fragile. They are less shaped by silent acceptance and compliance than by
ongoing disputes.8 It shifts the focus from individual norms to the concept of ‘orders of
worth’: normative inventories through which actors evaluate the meaning of practices. It
thus allows IR scholars to reconstruct how actors navigate their complex normative envi-
ronment. So far, scholars have followed this approach, for instance, in the study of
diverse ‘moral narratives’ in the field of global health, disputed hearings in the US
Congress on the conduct of security forces in the ‘war on terror’, different justifications
of responsibility in the UN Security Council, or parliamentary debates about legitimacy
in the financial crisis.9 In this article, I link pragmatic sociology to IR norm research and
the study of norms against corruption.
I argue that pragmatic sociology contributes to norm research in IR by rendering intel-
ligible how actors cope with, capitalise on and create normative multiplicity and hybrid-
ity. Both are crucial, yet often neglected, sources for disputes about international norms
that go beyond using distinct normative backgrounds or semantic ambiguity as explana-
tion for controversy and change.10 One the one hand, multiplicity alludes to the various,
and often contradictory, orders of worth that shape normativity in a given issue area or
situation. On the other hand, hybridity refers to norms that comprise more than one order
of worth in often fragile arrangements. The ever-present tensions between multiple over-
lapping and competing normative inventories leads to ongoing processes of negotiation
and is a crucial feature of normative disputes and their outcomes.11 Beyond formal
acceptance or rejection, actors struggle to cope with multiplicity, to disentangle hybridity
and thereby create normativity in practice. Moreover, active ‘hybridisation’ can be a
crucial driver of norm dynamics when actors link different normative claims to forge
new or modified norms.12 The central contribution of pragmatic sociology to IR norm
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