As I watch the systematic (and intentional, in many cases) unraveling of many of our governmental institutions over the last few months I am tempted, as many are, to use words like “illegal” or “unconstitutional”. But I think what we have been witnessing is more basic than that. In many cases we are seeing the collapse of the very rules that we as a society have agreed to live by. This has caused me to think of this not as the failure of laws, or constitutions, but a breakdown in governing norms.
What are norms? Merriam-Webster defines them as “principle(s) of right action binding upon the members of a group and serving to guide, control, or regulate proper and acceptable behavior.” When I teach my undergraduate public policy students about the “big ideas” that influence public policy, the first thing we talk about are norms. These are not the same from one group to another, or one society or another, but they should guide the actions of the group or society. And where we are talking about the United States, they represent the principles and values that we have agreed will govern us.