Social licence and norm violation

Abstract

It has become increasingly common to refer to ‘social licence’ or ‘the social licence to operate’.  However there is a good deal of disagreement around social licence.  This short commentary focuses on one ambiguity.  Some accounts stipluate that practice for which social licence might be given or withheld must lie outside general norms.  I argue that this cannot be an adequate definition of social licence.  It faces conceptual difficulties and would excluding many apparently uncontroversial appeals to the notion.