Ideas and norms influence constructivist approaches to state power and behaviour through identity-specific analysis, observing norms intersubjectively as not universally shared. Christian Reus-Smith (2018) challenged that norms exist independently, and thus diverge from liberals who assume cooperation as something capable of all ‘rational’ actors (pg. 99, 110). Liberals such as Robert Keohane (1995) warranted cooperation as something to be expected, even for revisionist states (pg.45). However, this was not the case for all states and observed US hypocrisy failing to ratify the Rome Statute as obscuring international law and the norm internalisation process (Garrett, 1999, pg.24). Nonetheless, Finnemore and Sikkink’s (1988) norm socialisation model was euro-centric and limited in application in non-Western autocracies who may reject ‘cascading’ foreign norms (pg.895-899).

Similarly, their model also did not overcome ‘cascading’ norms that faced resistance. For example, climate change as an international threat remains a yet to be internalised, suggesting that the model was too linear (pg.898-899). On the other hand, realists interpreted norms and ideas as inferior to material factors that informed a state’s security-seeking behaviours. For Waltz (2015), norms as a means to achieve security outcomes are viable (pg.63-64). However, this was repudiated by offensive realists who go a step further arguing norms as superficial and ineffective for superpowers who have historically violated international law (Mearsheimer, 2022, pg.18).