Norms research in international relations has developed sufficiently over the past thirty-five years to become its own sub-discipline within the field. It has its own corresponding 'toolbox' of concepts, approaches, and methods which have often resulted from debates representing distinct perspectives on how norms matter for IR as a field and for global international relations more generally. Even so, three groups of enduring questions continue to sit at the heart of norms research: first, the processes by which norms emerge, change or disappear, on the one hand, and by which they are contested, violated, diffused, or replaced on the other; second, the agency of actors at sites on the macro-, meso-, or micro-scale of global order, and who engages with these processes; and third, the embeddedness or interaction of norms with other pre-existing norms and structures such as the prevailing rules of engagement and clusters of normative meaning.

The Oxford Handbook of Norms Research in International Relations provides a state-of-the-art overview of past, current, and future norms research in International Relations. It provides a comprehensive overview of the toolbox that has developed over this time, mapping the field's development based on key conceptual milestones, notable theoretical moves, and developments with regard to the field's contribution to social science theory development on the one hand and politics and policymaking in world politics on the other.