This article develops a model of contesting world society in order to show the origins of normative ideas in global governance, and to model how non-state actors attain legitimacy to interact with constructive norm development. The model draws on world society (Buzan 2018) and contestation approaches (Wiener 2014) to account for the ways non-state actors engage in global governance and make normative ideas count, enabling us to theorise normative paths from the societies of people to global governance. The MOSAiC Expedition of 2019-20 in the Arctic is explored to show how several empowered world society actors were able to make normative claims and reproduce practices through their engagement with this expedition. The expedition presented opportunities for different forms of world society actor to engage with norms in various ways, with powerful actors engaging constructively in norms of collaboration and reaffirming international science, while smaller-scale actors acted performatively to reproduce practices.
