This study is about two pervasive aspects of the social world: argumentation and compromise. We listen to arguments, make arguments and exchange arguments in order to make up our minds about something and in order to persuade others to make up their minds in the same way we do. Some arguments convince us. We are persuaded by the line of reasoning that the argumentation contains. Other arguments, by contrast, are unconvincing. They do not make sense to us. There are different degrees of non-persuasiveness. Some arguments violate our most deeply held beliefs. They upset us, we firmly reject them in their entirety, and we do not even consider abandoning our stance. Others, by contrast, do not violate our most fundamental beliefs and we discard them with less vigour. Since we feel less strongly about our opposition, we are prepared to compromise on our stance if there are incentives to do so.

It is my contention that argumentation and compromise provide a generative mechanism through which nations come to select norms. I depart from the existing literature on norm selection in three important ways. First, my research inquires in depth not only into the international but also the domestic processes through which nation-states select norms. The field of International Relations continues to exhibit a strong tendency to conduct research on the international without the national or to narrow the latter down to elite interactions. Much of the literature on norm selection shares this tendency.