“A searing exploration of the variety of ways that ‘normalcy’ functions in contemporary international affairs to justify and sustain a particular vision of acceptable politics. The authors’ critical mapping of normalization practices provides ample food for thought for anyone interested in the current condition and future prospects of liberal international order.”
—Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, American University
“Normalization through normative manipulation is liberalism in action, much in evidence as the global liberal order implodes. In this conceptually innovative book, Visoka and Lemay-Hébert identify three distinctive situations in which dominant states set rules for ‘helping’ outlier states become normal and meticulously document interventionary normalization in state practice.”
—Nicholas Onuf, Florida International University“It is an excellent book: sophisticated in the argument, elegant in presentation and style. The authors convincingly present international interventions as complex governmentality arrangements where discourses and practices are deployed to normalize and discipline states. Usually, studies tend to focus solely on approaches to state-building or resilience or development or disaster-management, but the stakes here are higher.”
—Pol Bargués, CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs)
“This book is well-written and innovative in its conceptual contribution to the discipline of International Relations. As the notion of ‘normalization’ captures a vast number of political phenomena, it resonates with the scholarship that investigates the discursive and lived effects of wars, oppression, and disasters.”
—Stefanie Kappler, Durham University
