How to Hold Unjust Structures Responsible in International Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Swati Srivastava ◽  
Lauren Muscott
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Structural Approach ◽  
Systemic Transformation ◽  
Interactional Perspective ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract Recent public discourse and political theory center on “structural” approaches of assigning responsibility for injustice in contrast to an “interactional” perspective. The interactional approach corrects discrete harms between agents to return to a just baseline, whereas the structural approach casts a wider net implicating agents in harmful structures for systemic transformation. This theory note advances the understanding of structural responsibility in international relations by defending it against common critiques of underspecification and lack of targeted accountability. We argue that structural arguments are better understood as constituting a framework on the nature of injustice rather than a theory or descriptor of particular harms. We present a “framework, theory, action” heuristic, drawing from constructivism's evolution from a theory (like realism and liberalism) when it first appeared to a framework (like rationalism) more recently. Our framework heuristic makes available a fuller range of conceptual tools to hold unjust structures responsible, including through targeted blame and liability, and discards the need to invent new actions to discharge structural responsibility. Rather than settle on one definition of structural responsibility—what it means, where it is located, and how it is discharged—we direct scholars to the numerous ways structural responsibility may be theorized and enacted.

E-health developments in the system of health services in Hungary and the European Union

2014 ◽  
Vol 155 (21) ◽  
pp. 822-827
Author(s):  
Ágnes Váradi
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
European Union ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Public Health Care ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Contemporary Issue ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Basic Features

The question of electronic solutions in public health care has become a contemporary issue at the European Union level since the action plan of the Commission on the e-health developments of the period between 2012 and 2020 has been published. In Hungary this issue has been placed into the centre of attention after a draft on modifications of regulations in health-care has been released for public discourse, which – if accepted – would lay down the basics of an electronic heath-service system. The aim of this paper is to review the basic features of e-health solutions in Hungary and the European Union with the help of the most important pieces of legislation, documents of the European Union institutions and sources from secondary literature. When examining the definition of the basic goals and instruments of the development, differences between the European Union and national approaches can be detected. Examination of recent developmental programs and existing models seem to reveal difficulties in creating interoperability and financing such projects. Finally, the review is completed by the aspects of jurisdiction and fundamental rights. It is concluded that these issues are mandatory to delineate the legislative, economic and technological framework for the development of the e-health systems. Orv. Hetil., 2014, 155(21), 822–827.

Between Specters of War and Visions of Peace

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald M. Mara
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Democracies

This book examines how ideas of war and peace have functioned as organizing frames of reference within the history of political theory. It interprets ten widely read figures in that history within five thematically focused chapters that pair (in order) Schmitt and Derrida, Aquinas and Machiavelli, Hobbes and Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche, and Thucydides and Plato. The book’s substantive argument is that attempts to establish either war or peace as dominant intellectual perspectives obscure too much of political life. The book argues for a style of political theory committed more to questioning than to closure. It challenges two powerful currents in contemporary political philosophy: the verdict that premodern or metaphysical texts cannot speak to modern and postmodern societies, and the insistence that all forms of political theory be some form of democratic theory. What is offered instead is a nontraditional defense of the tradition and a democratic justification for moving beyond democratic theory. Though the book avoids any attempt to show the immediate relevance of these interpretations to current politics, its impetus stems very much from the current political circumstances. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century , a series of wars has eroded confidence in the progressively peaceful character of international relations; citizens of the Western democracies are being warned repeatedly about the threats posed within a dangerous world. In this turbulent context, democratic citizens must think more critically about the actions their governments undertake. The texts interpreted here are valuable resources for such critical thinking.

The Political Theory of the Disruption

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold J. Laski
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
The Church

“Of political principles,” says a distinguished authority, “whether they be those of order or of freedom, we must seek in religious and quasi-theological writings for the highest and most notable expressions.” No one, in truth, will deny the accuracy of this claim for those ages before the Reformation transferred the centre of political authority from church to state. What is too rarely realised is the modernism of those writings in all save form. Just as the medieval state had to fight hard for relief from ecclesiastical trammels, so does its modern exclusiveness throw the burden of a kindred struggle upon its erstwhile rival. The church, intelligibly enough, is compelled to seek the protection of its liberties lest it become no more than the religious department of an otherwise secular society. The main problem, in fact, for the political theorist is still that which lies at the root of medieval conflict. What is the definition of sovereignty? Shall the nature and personality of those groups of which the state is so formidably one be regarded as in its gift to define? Can the state tolerate alongside itself churches which avow themselves societates perfectae, claiming exemption from its jurisdiction even when, as often enough, they traverse the field over which it ploughs? Is the state but one of many, or are those many but parts of itself, the one?

International Relations and the Reconstruction of Political Theory

Politics ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 135-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Williams
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
State Behaviour

International relations and political theory are generally seen as two distinct disciplines with their afferent methodologies and clusters of problems. This division of labour has in some respects proved useful but may now be too extreme. Political theory and international relations have a common subject matter in political action and state behaviour. The advantages for political theory and international relations in crossing the dividing lines between the disciplines are explored. A case is made for a political theory which is focussed on international relations and an international relations which exploits the approaches and methods of political theory.

scholarly journals Scarred souls, weary warriors, and military intervention: the emergence of the subject in the just war writings of Jean Bethke Elshtain

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 859-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER LEE
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Military Force ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
A Site

AbstractOver the past three decades Jean Bethke Elshtain has used her critique and application of just war as a means of engaging with multiple overlapping aspects of identity. Though Elshtain ostensibly writes about war and the justice, or lack of justice, therein, she also uses just war a site of analysis within which different strands of subjectivity are investigated and articulated as part of her broader political theory. This article explores the proposition that Elshtain's most important contribution to the just war tradition is not be found in her provision of codes or her analysis of ad bellum or in bello criteria, conformity to which adjudges war or military intervention to be just or otherwise. Rather, that she enriches just war debate because of the unique and sometimes provocative perspective she brings as political theorist and International Relations scholar who adopts, adapts, and deploys familiar but, for some, uncomfortable discursive artefacts from the history of the Christian West: suffused with her own Christian faith and theology. In so doing she continually reminds us that human lives, with all their attendant political, social, and religious complexities, should be the focus when military force is used, or even proposed, for political ends.

Minority Rights

2018 ◽  
pp. 165-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kymlicka
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
International Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Level ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Rights Issues

It has often been noted that the political claims of minorities and indigenous peoples are marginalized within traditional state-centric international political theory; but perhaps more surprisingly, they are also marginalized within much contemporary cosmopolitan political theory. In this chapter, I will argue that neither cosmopolitanism nor statism as currently theorized is well equipped to evaluate the normative claims at stake in many minority rights issues. I begin by discussing how the “minority question” arose as an issue within international relations—that is, why minorities have been seen as a problem and a threat to international order—and how international actors have historically attempted to contain the problem, often in ways that were deeply unjust to minorities. I will then consider recent efforts to advance a pro-minority agenda at the international level, and how this agenda helps reveal some of the limits of both cosmopolitan and statist approaches to IPT.

scholarly journals The Politics of Peoplehood

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan White ◽  
Lea Ypi
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
The People ◽  
Definition Of

Contemporary political theory has made the question of the “people” a topic of sustained analysis. This article identifies two broad approaches taken—norm-based and contestation-based—and, noting some problems left outstanding, goes on to advance a complementary account centred on partisan practice. It suggests the definition of “the people” is closely bound up in the analysis of political conflict, and that partisans engaged in such conflict play an essential role in constructing and contesting different principled conceptions. The article goes on to show how such an account does not lead to a normatively hollow, purely historical conception of “the people,” but rather highlights the normative importance of practices that, at the minimum, de-naturalise undesirable conceptions of the people and, at their best, give political legitimacy and a representative basis to those one might wish to see prosper.

scholarly journals Jan Hornat: Transatlantic Democracy Assistance. Promoting Different Models of Democracy.

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-73
Author(s):  
Veronika Bílková
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Democracy Assistance ◽  
Constructivist View ◽  
The Us ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Eu

The approaches of EU institutions and the US to democracy assistance often vary quite significantly as both actors choose different means and tactics. The nuances in the understandings of democracy on the part of the EU and the US lead to their promotion of models of democratic governance that are often quite divergent and, in some respects, clashing. This book examines the sources of this divergence and by focusing on the role of the actors’ "democratic identity" it aims to explain the observation that both actors use divergent strategies and instruments to foster democratic governance in third countries. Taking a constructivist view, it demonstrates that the history, expectations and experiences with democracy of each actor significantly inform their respective definition of democracy and thus the model of democracy they promote abroad. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in democracy promotion, democratization, political theory, EU and US foreign policy and assistance, and identity research.

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