International Political Theory and LGBTQ Rights

Lgbtq Rights ◽

Foreign Policies

The real-world politics of rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans, and queer people is deeply contested. While now recognized by the UN and leading democratic states (if still incompletely and often haphazardly), LGBTQ rights are denied in many other quarters. Empirical research demonstrates the value of human rights in securing protections for LGBTQ people while also highlighting the ambiguities of a rights-based politics. This chapter discusses discuss how the use of LGBTQ rights claims highlight the need for critical theoretical approaches to human rights. It considers the politicized and sometimes antithetical use to which the newly accepted discourses of LGBTQ rights are put in the foreign policies of states and the behaviour of other international actors. It examines how the practice of gay rights by states and other agents can be caught up in a politics which undermines their emancipatory impetus.

Real-World Global Egalitarianism

The Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198746928.013.7 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 117-129

Author(s):

Darrel Moellendorf

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Foreign Policy ◽

Political Theory ◽

Real World ◽

Ecological Crisis ◽

The Past ◽

The Social ◽

Human Rights Norms ◽

Egalitarian Justice

This chapter notes that normative International Political Theory (IPT) developed over the past several decades in response to political, social, and economic events. These included the globalization of trade and finance, the increasing credibility of human-rights norms in foreign policy, and a growing awareness of a global ecological crisis. The emergence of normative IPT was not simply an effort to understand these events, but an attempt to offer accounts of what the responses to them should be. Normative IPT, then, was originally doubly responsive to the real world. Additionally, this chapter argues that there is a plausible account of global egalitarianism, which takes the justification of principles of egalitarian justice to depend crucially on features of the social and economic world. The account of global egalitarianism applies to the current circumstances in part because of features of those circumstances.

International Political Theory and the Real World

The Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198746928.013.52 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 2-18 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Chris Brown ◽

Robyn Eckersley

Keyword(s):

Problem Solving ◽

Critical Theory ◽

International Relations ◽

Political Theory ◽

Real World ◽

World Politics ◽

Ideal Theory ◽

The Real ◽

This chapter introduces and defends the themes around which the Handbook has been constructed: the importance of an engagement between International Political Theory (IPT) and “real-world” politics, and the need to establish links between IPT and the empirical findings of International Relations scholars. The “new realist” critique of “moralism” is examined along with the more general critique of ideal theory, and both are found to hit a very narrow target. The conventional distinction between “critical theory” and “problem-solving theory” is also challenged, and each is defended as an equally important, albeit different, stage in the life of a theory. The second half of this chapter sets out the principles upon which the Handbook is organized, and provides a guide to each section and chapter.

After Liberalism in World Politics? Towards an International Political Theory of Care

Care Ethics ◽

10.4324/9781315873350-3 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 23-37

Author(s):

Fiona Robinson

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

World Politics ◽

Neo-Kantian Cosmopolitanism and International Law: Modest Practicality?

Kantian Review ◽

10.1017/s1369415419000335 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 24 (4) ◽

pp. 605-629

Author(s):

Peter Sutch

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

International Law ◽

Political Theory ◽

Global Justice ◽

Practical Approach ◽

Human Rights Law ◽

AbstractThis article explores the practical approach to global justice advocated by the cosmopolitan political theorists Pogge, Beitz and Buchanan. Using a comparative exposition it outlines their reliance on international law and on human rights law in particular. The essay explores the neo-Kantian influence on the practical approach and offers an original critique of this trend in contemporary international political theory.

European International Political Theory as a New Critical Theory of World Politics: The Instructive Case of Jean Baudrillard

10.1007/978-3-030-77274-1_8 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 129-146

Author(s):

Spiros Makris

Keyword(s):

Critical Theory ◽

Political Theory ◽

World Politics ◽

Jean Baudrillard ◽

Instructive Case

Critical International Political Theory

The Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198746928.013.5 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 73-86

Author(s):

Anna Jurkevics ◽

Seyla Benhabib

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Critical Theory ◽

Political Theory ◽

Domestic Politics ◽

World Order ◽

American Hegemony ◽

And Migration ◽

The Cold War ◽

The Relationship

This chapter assesses debates within the field of Critical Theory, broadly conceived, on central themes of international politics, including sovereignty, human rights, and American hegemony. After the Cold War, many critical theorists followed Jürgen Habermas’s shift in focus from domestic politics to the “post-national constellation.” We explore Habermasian critiques of Westphalian sovereignty and the accompanying call for cosmopolitan solutions to crises of human rights and migration. We also consider the critical re-evaluations of sovereignty that arose following 9/11 in response to the American “war on terror.” Finally, we turn to the recent return to sovereignty within Critical Theory. The most convincing new approaches call for a nuanced evaluation of the relationship between sovereignty and cosmopolitanism in order to rethink the institutional configuration of a world order that is already decidedly post-national.

Humanitarian Actors and International Political Theory

The Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198746928.013.23 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 315-329

Author(s):

Jennifer M. Welsh

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Political Theory ◽

Armed Conflict ◽

Humanitarian Action ◽

The Core ◽

Specific Subset ◽

Underlying Causes ◽

The Impact ◽

Individual Human

This chapter examines how contemporary humanitarian institutions interpret and implement their normative responsibilities in international society. It analyses a specific subset of actors—the United Nations and humanitarian NGOs—and the impact of their attempts to privilege a more “individualist,” or cosmopolitan, approach to the mitigation and regulation of armed conflict. The chapter sets out the core values of humanitarian action, including humanity and impartiality, and then illustrates how the process of “individualization”—which challenges the primacy of collective entities such as warring parties or sovereign states —has created both normative and operational dilemmas for humanitarian actors. In the case of the UN, the imperative to protect individual human rights has transformed the practice of peacekeeping, through a robust interpretation of impartiality, while for humanitarian NGOs it has spawned efforts to address not only the immediate suffering produced by armed conflict but also the underlying causes of vulnerability.

Transnational corporations in ‘bad states’: human rights duties, legitimate authority and the rule of law in international political theory

International Theory ◽

10.1017/s1752971909000074 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 87-118 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

David Jason Karp

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Political Theory ◽

Rule Of Law ◽

International System ◽

Transnational Corporations ◽

Future Research ◽

The Rule Of Law ◽

Legal Rules ◽

Policy Analysts

From an international political theory perspective, this paper assesses the justifiability of ascribing human rights obligations, in the form of international or extraterritorial law, onto transnational corporations (TNCs). The major policy prescriptions in favour of extending human rights duties to include TNCs become deeply problematic when considered in light of advocates’ claims that human rights rules, rather than a sovereign’s legal rules, are necessarily the rules that are truly authoritative and/or in line with a ‘global rule of law’. This paper discusses concepts such as authority, human rights and the rule of law, and juxtaposes these concepts: firstly, with one another; secondly, with the legalstatus quoabout jurisdiction over companies; and thirdly, with corporations’de factotransnationality in the contemporary international system. This paper discusses key similarities and differences between companies, states, and individuals, and highlights the relevance of these distinctions to those agents’ potential human rights duties. This paper concludes by arguing that the ‘TNC and human rights’ project is well worth pursuing, but according to different theoretical foundations than those currently endorsed by legal and policy analysts, and it suggests important directions for future research.

Postmodernism, ethics and international political theory

Review of International Studies ◽

10.1017/s026021050011767x ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 21 (3) ◽

pp. 237-250 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Molly Cochran

Keyword(s):

International Relations ◽

Political Theory ◽

World Politics ◽

Political Practice ◽

Sovereign State ◽

International Theory ◽

A group of writers have taken up Nietzsche's hammer against the constructions of contemporary international theory. Postmodern approaches problematize the dominant understanding of international relations as a world of sovereign states which demarcate inside from outside, order from anarchy, identity from difference. More generally, they challenge the notion of sovereignty as an ahistorical, universal, transcendent concept, be it applied to the sovereign state, the sovereign individual or a sovereign truth. Sovereignty and the dichotomies regulated by its power are mechanisms of domination and closure which limit the play of political practice. It is the aim of these writers to hammer away at these limitations, opening space for plural and diverse practices in world politics.

Aesthetic and World Politics by Roland Bleiker. Basingtoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Hardcover: 271 pp.

Intermestic Journal of International Studies ◽

10.24198/intermestic.v2n1.8 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 105

Author(s):

Siti Aliyuna Pratisti ◽

Junita Budi Rachman

Keyword(s):

International Relations ◽

Immanuel Kant ◽

Political Theory ◽

World Politics ◽

Great Role ◽

Political Theories ◽

The World ◽

The Aesthetic

Aesthetic approach to politics is not really something considered as a novelty. Immanuel Kant has described the aesthetic relationship with rationality way back in the 17th century, as well as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jaques Rancier as a more contemporary counterpart. In the field of international relations, the study of aesthetics has been raised by a number of reviewers – from James Der Derian, Costas Constantinou, David Campbell, to Anthony Burke – who began to lay aesthetics as a foothold in approaching various phenomena. Roland Bleiker is one of the most consistent among them. In an essay entitled "The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory", Bleiker opened the discourse to establish aesthetics as one of the paradigms in international political theory. His essay is published in 2001, contrasts with the majority of international political theories that always try to "catch the world as it is". Bleiker assumes that there is always a distance between representation and what it represents. Through aesthetics, he criticizes approaches that fill this theoretical gap with mimetic ideas. He emphasizes that aesthetic studies do not try to mimic the reality, but it is trying to recognize the various emotions and sensibilities in the formation of a certain representation. The great role of "emotion" in politics is further explained by Bleiker through an essay entitled “Fear No More: Emotions and World Politics”, published seven years after.