Transnational Norms and Military Development: Constructing Ireland's Professional Army

This article examines the impact of transnational norms on military development. In so doing, it combines constructivism's study of systemic norms with culturalist work on unit-level norms. I focus on two transnational norms — norms of conventional warfare and norms of civilian supremacy — and show how they shape military development through a case study of post-revolutionary Ireland. I draw on recent work by constructivists to elucidate the context, process and mechanism whereby transnational norms are diffused and empowered in new national contexts — a process called norm transplantation. Norm transplantation is particularly problematic when transnational norms clash with local norms. Drawing on studies of military culture and military innovation, I identify the conditions necessary for norm transplantation to occur in cases of cultural clash. Returning to the Irish case, I show how transnational norms of military professionalism became encoded in Irish Army culture despite the fact that its predecessor, the Irish Republican Army, practised norms of military sovereignty and unconventional warfare.