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Weak language norm(s) versus domestic interests: Why Ukraine behaves the way it does

Abstract Many analyses of the role of international norms in world politics study those particular norms that can be classified as relatively robust. Furthermore, such analyses critique alternative theories which foreground the role of domestic interests in affecting the behaviour of state elites, by calling into question the presumed objectivity of interests. The present article takes a different tack to the largely similar challenge. Specifically, it shows – on the example of Russian speakers in Ukraine – that even weak and contested international norms, like the norm of language rights for national minorities, can have independent effects on the behaviour and policy of state elites. The latter holds, in demonstrable terms, if state elites act in ways that militate against their most salient apparent interests. In the Ukraine case, this article argues, such ‘interests’ are the protection of the Ukrainian language as the country’s sole official language. So the cause of the (variable) behaviour of elites in Ukraine lay in a weak and contested norm, namely the norm of language rights for national minorities.