Constructivism emphasizes the role of ideas, identities, and norms in shaping state behavior and international politics, as well as the intersubjective and relational nature of these ideational factors. Social relations “make or construct people – ourselves – into the kinds of beings that we are. Conversely, we make the world what it is, by doing what we do with each other and saying what we say to each other” (Onuf, 1998, 59). Constructivism therefore highlights the intangible yet relational aspects of our reality: a world in which the meaning of objects and actions is not fixed but socially constructed through our interactions; states are held together by collective belief and actively participate in the social construction of anarchy. Norms play a significant role by defining appropriate behavior and enabling action by providing a framework for actors to understand and interact with the world.

This chapter explores the dynamics of non-linear changes within social systems, focusing on the processes that lead to societal collapse and ‘emergence’ (when a new social order forms that is qualitatively different from the past). The chapter first reviews the forces that create stability, differentiation, and oscillation. The DIME model is introduced, which explores how activists choose tactics to follow up the success or failure of their collective action. The chapter explores dynamics of intergroup contestation, including polarisation and backlash that drive systems towards either emergence or collapse. System stability is supported through coordinated identities and norm sequences that are often localised spatially, which act as homeostatic mechanisms to create resilient systems. However, behavioural changes manifest as actors establishing new cues and framing collective actions in ways that channel energy towards new identities and norms. Finally, the chapter explores mutual radicalisation, where mutual feedback loops of failure and threat signals between groups drive radicalisation, reinforcing intergroup tensions.

This chapter introduces the dynamics of ecosystems and chaotic systems, providing an accessible overview for readers unfamiliar with complexity theory. Key concepts such as fractals and emergence are defined and applied to social groups through the FLINT model of Factional Leadership, Intergroup Conflict, Norms, and Time, which explains how factions and subgroups form and ferment within a seemingly unified group. This model examines forces driving subgroup differentiation and the challenges of achieving lasting social change because of the need to influence multiple groups simultaneously and overcome resistance. The chapter revisits psychological research on effective activism, underscoring the importance of addressing both conformity and dissent within and between groups. Finally, we discuss empirical methods for analysing these complex dynamics, including network analyses, person-centred analyses, and agent-based modelling, which offer new ways to understand and study the formation and evolution of groups.

The chapter begins by examining how groups form and socialise members, and the forces of conformity that sustain existing norms. We then consider the emergence of differentiation and innovation, exploring how processes of minority influence and dissent challenge conformity. The chapter then explores the impact of contested norms, particularly in systems of inequality, and considers how these norms are challenged and transformed under more repressive and open regimes. This chapter also explores power, repression, agency and resistance, and how reinterpretations of classical studies by Milgram and Zimbardo are now understood through the lens of social identity theory. The transmission of norms between groups is discussed, alongside the entrepreneurs of identity who mobilise advantaged groups to support disadvantaged groups. This chapter makes a transition from traditional theories of intergroup relations to new paradigms that emphasise the fluidity of norms, the role of emerging leadership, and the transformative potential of identity in group dynamics.

As coal burning was explicitly politicized with reference to coal’s contributions to climate change over the last ten to fifteen years, a number of policy norms associated with phasing out coal burning (or its financing) have emerged and stabilized in transnational politics. This chapter tracks aspects of these normative politics focusing on both the promulgation and diffusion of the new policy norms and a number of critiques and challenges – many grounded in distributional and procedural justice – to coal phaseout norms that emerge as a response to the transnational promulgation of coal phaseout policies.

Chapter 4 is the first of the three chapters that draw on interviews, observations, and life stories from Bosnia and Herzegovina to narrate a story about what ‘Never Again’ means for the people in this country and formulate a claim about transitional justice’s complicity in the construction of conflict recurrence anxieties. This chapter proposes that the lack of state-sponsored, state-wide truth recovery and a national dialogue about the characteristics, dynamics, and consequences of the war creates anxieties about potential conflict repetition. It then demonstrates how the global project of transitional justice is complicit in creating and sustaining these anxieties. In particular, the chapter shows how the normative hierarchy of transitional justice and the positioning of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as a key source of the historical status quo helped enhance the building of multiple, competing, and often parallel biographical narratives about the war that prolong anxieties about potential conflict recurrence.

The changes at play in the contemporary world bring about challenges that are impacting political legitimacy. They make legitimacy at the same time more problematic and more relevant, at both the national and international levels. From this perspective, how these changes and challenges are going to be addressed in the coming years is likely to determine, to a large extent, the evolution of political legitimacy—nationally and internationally. Among the changes and challenges underway, and their associated events and trends, I highlight the following eight: (1) the challenge of integration and disintegration, (2) the economic and financial challenge, (3) the geopolitical challenge, (4) the normative challenge, (5) the technological challenge, (6) the reassessment of globalization challenge, (7) the crisis of democracy challenge, and (8) the governance challenge. I unpack them in turn and, for each of them, allude to their possible meaning and implications for political legitimacy.

Based on the degree of trust established in infancy, the belief in the possibility of control from the toddler period, and the successfulness of practice in peer interactions in the preschool, most children are prepared for the new meanings made possible by close friendships and real world competence of the elementary years. At times, success here can alter somewhat negative meanings brought forward from earlier eras. All children are now armed with logic and a more realistic understanding of causality. This allows them to see things as they are, including comparisons between them and others. A great leap in moral development occurs as children come to understand and affirm the value of rules and norms. Despite limitations in their degree of flexibility, embracing these norms can provide solid ground for the more relativistic and principled understanding of adolescence.

Describe some important features of infant–caregiver relationships; evaluate the role of early life experiences on later development; understand what emotions are for and how they develop.

This penultimate chapter turns to MacCormick’s institutional theory of law. This theory sought to answer questions about how law existed and how it was knowable. This chapter reads over four decades of this theory with character, doing so in two parts. In the first part, it explores the sense in which the very substance of the theory can be understood relationally, i.e., as underpinned by sensitivity to the dangers of domination, and a commitment to respect, decency, considerateness, and civility. The second part reads the institutional theory of law as a relational act in another sense, i.e., as mediating across what are otherwise often divisions or separations, such as between philosophy and sociology, or scholarship about law and the practice of law. The chapter tracks various changes in how MacCormick theorised law institutionally, from his early interest in law as institutional fact, to his later law as institutional normative order.

Understand how children direct their own learning and learn from others; describe the importance of imitation, play, and instruction; explain how children transfer what they know across different contexts.

Identify different perspectives on child development; describe important features about how children grow, adapt, and change; illustrate what is unique about human childhood.