Normative Ties That Bind? Contesting National and Sexual Minority Rights in a Post-Enlargement Europe

This study explores the strategic use of norm ambiguity, with specific reference to national minority rights and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people within the European Union (EU). Norms are shared standards of appropriateness that actors with a given identity ought to abide by. They thus constrain behavior. I show, however, that norms that are lacking in both clarity and enforceability may simultaneously have an unintended enabling effect. These norms are open to multiple interpretations. Strategic actors will recognize this and decide to act on the basis of the interpretation that best suits them. They will capitalize on the opportunity for norm contestation: the act of questioning a norm’s meaning and/or scope of application, while acknowledging its general validity. By defining it in a restrictive manner, actors can undermine the norm in practice without appearing to violate it outright. The study outlines specific scope conditions under which norm contestation should take place and when we should see alternative discursive modes of behavior, including outright norm rejection, instead. In short, I argue that norms do bind, but that they do so only loosely; strategic actors retain enough room for maneuver to advance their interests. Empirically, I put this argument to the test by tracing policy-making developments concerning national minority and LGBT rights in the European Parliament and within two of the youngest member states, Lithuania and Slovakia. I show how pro-European parties interpreted EU values self-servingly in order to justify the restriction of minority rights. This stands in stark contrast to the discursive behavior of Euroskeptics, who were not constrained to talk the normative talk and often simply rejected these values