Description
In studying international state behaviour and interactions, scholars have increasingly focussed on developing a dichotomy of good versus bad international citizens based on adherence to international norms and conventions. Within this distinction, there have not been adequate studies that examine the underlying problems associated with good/normal states and bad/deviant states coming to socially share a common and meaningful understanding of international order. In nuclear politics, this gap segways into normal states having a recurring problem of not being able to socialise deviant states in nuclear governance, and consequently make the latter forego thinking about acquiring nuclear weapons capability. In examining both these gaps, this paper asks: How do normal and deviant states interact with each other in the existing international system? In answering this question, this paper develops two main arguments. Firstly, norm-abiding states are often unable to interact with deviants in a socially meaningful way as the former remain unaware of the agency that encourages deviants to undertake non-compliance. Secondly, because of the lack of meaning and development of common understandings through these social interactions, deviants often view themselves as having lost out in this unfair international system. The paper illustrates these arguments by employing the empirical case of Iran and the United States in nuclear politics from 2015-2021. It contributes to the scholarship on the fluidity of state interactions, identities, behaviours of contestation, and nuclear governance.
