Realist Challenges

2018 ◽  
pp. 640-651
Author(s):  
Duncan Bell
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Theoretical Progress ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Feasibility Constraints

Realism casts a long shadow over International Political Theory. For many scholars, especially those working on global justice, it is a pernicious foe that needs vanquishing to secure political and theoretical progress. For its advocates, especially in International Relations, it serves as a blunt reminder of the limits of morality in international affairs. However, realism is a shape-shifting body of thought compatible with assorted ethical and political orientations. This chapter discusses some challenges that realism poses, but also challenges that realism itself faces. It opens with a discussion of how realists can contribute to debates over feasibility constraints, before challenging three common myths about realism—that it is amoral, state-centric, and conservative—and concludes with a discussion of liberal realism, understood as an international variant of the liberalism of fear.

International Political Theory 2020: The Worst of Times, the Best of Times

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-556
Author(s):  
Cian O'Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Lost Generation ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Academic Researchers ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe year 2020 has been a very trying one for many people, and universities have not been exempted from the challenges it has posed. There are real concerns that the effects of COVID-19 could lead to a lost generation of academic researchers. At the same time, this has been an unusually fecund period for the field of ethics and international affairs. New ideas regarding the relationship between politics and ethics have come to light, with implications for how we think about what ethics actually comprises. This essay seeks to take stock of this moment by considering the contributions to the field made by four recently published books. It concludes that we are observing a trend toward a more expansive way of thinking about ethics, one that has significant implications for how we approach the task of international relations scholarship.

Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Bertoldi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
Difference Principle ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
International Anarchy

Charles Beitz’s Political Theory and International Relations (PTIR) played a pioneering role for contemporary international political theory by bringing together two domains of inquiry that had proceeded largely independently from each other in the twentieth century. This chapter will assess PTIR’s contributions to international political theory and explore its continuing relevance for debates on sovereignty, human rights, and globalization in a plural world. After reviewing the ways in which PTIR shaped the evolution of both international relations theory and political theory by questioning the central assumptions of international anarchy and political autonomy and by establishing cosmopolitanism as the dominant mode of analysis for international political theory with its groundbreaking argument for a global difference principle, the chapter will conclude by identifying several productive tensions in Beitz’s work that can further enrich contemporary discussions of global justice.

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 Regional order and peaceful change: Security communities as a via media in international relations theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Koschut
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Security Community ◽  
Intellectual Heritage ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
Community Concept

The security community concept generally inhabits a rather small niche in the study of International Relations, as the logic of community fundamentally challenges the prevailing logic of anarchy. In this article, it is argued both on ontological and theoretical grounds that the concept’s intellectual heritage and depth transcends the boundaries of existing theories. In this sense, the concept of security community serves as a via media by linking different strands of International Relations theory together and by bridging various theoretical gaps. This argument will be developed in two steps. Firstly, it will be shown that the security community framework developed by Karl W Deutsch is deeply rooted in International Political Theory without belonging to one particular branch. By locating the concept in International Political Theory, an exercise that has been neglected by the security community literature; it will be secondly demonstrated that the concept of security community takes the middle ground between specific strands of International Relations theory, as these strands are ultimately based on concepts of moral philosophy.

Why Is There No International Theory?

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Martin Wight
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Perpetual Peace ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Raison D’État ◽  
The Rich

In this essay Wight explained why there is no set of classic works regarding relations among states—what Wight terms ‘international theory’— analogous to the rich political theory literature concerning the state. In addition to works on international law, four categories of effort have populated the field: (a) those of ‘irenists’ advocating mechanisms to promote peace; (b) those of Machiavellians examining raison d’état; (c) incidental works by great philosophers and historians; and (d) noteworthy speeches and other writings by statesmen and officials. International theory works have been ‘marked, not only by paucity but also by intellectual and moral poverty’, because of the focus since the sixteenth century on the modern sovereign state, with the states-system neglected. Moreover, while there has been material and organizational progress within states in recent centuries, international relations have remained ‘incompatible with progressivist theory’. People who recoil from analyses implying that progress in international affairs is doubtful sometimes prefer a Kantian ‘argument from desperation’ asserting the feasibility of improvements and ‘perpetual peace’. Wight concluded that ‘historical interpretation’ is for international relations the counterpart of political theory for the state.

scholarly journals Neo-Kantian Cosmopolitanism and International Law: Modest Practicality?

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 ◽  
International Political Theory

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.

Virtue Ethics and International Relations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Ainley
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Positive Contribution ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
International Ethics ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
The Right ◽  
Working Out

Virtue Ethics (VE) is a way of thinking about how to behave well which focuses on the character of moral agents and the nature of the good life. This contrasts with dominant approaches to international ethics which prioritize the identification or development of moral rules or duties (deontological approaches) or the consequences of actions (consequentialist approaches). The relevance of virtue ethics to international affairs is established by setting out the critique of the dominant law-based approaches offered by VE and then exploring the positive contribution VE can make. Virtue ethicists argue that character and a concrete conception of the human good are central to ethics—that the right question to ask when working out what it means to be ethical is not “what should I do” but “what sort of person should I be?” The three central concepts in VE—virtue, practical wisdom, and flourishing—have not been applied systematically qua VE in international political theory or international relations, but their appearance in various guises in recent scholarship suggests avenues for future research. Four such avenues are identified, ranging from the moderate to the radical, which offer innovative ways to confront key ethical dilemmas faced in international affairs.

Just War Theory in Times of Individual Rights

2018 ◽  
pp. 220-232
Author(s):  
Janina Dill
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Radical Revision

Just war theory (JWT) has undergone a radical revision over the last two decades. This chapter discusses the implications of this reformulation for the role of JWT in International Political Theory (IPT) and for JWT’s strategic usefulness. Revisionists’ consistent prioritization of individual rights means JWT now follows the strictures of justified violence according to contemporary IPT. At the same time, the collective nature of war makes it impossible for anyone but the omniscient attacker to properly protect individual rights and thus to directly implement revisionist prescriptions. I argue that revisionism is strategically relevant not in spite of, but because of this lack of practicability on the battlefield. It highlights the impossibility of waging war in accordance with widespread expectations of moral appropriateness, which largely follow the strictures of justified violence according to contemporary IPT. This is a crucial limitation to the political utility of force in twenty-first-century international relations.

International Law and International Political Theory

2018 ◽  
pp. 59-73
Author(s):  
Gerry Simpson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
War Crimes Trials ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
International Diplomacy ◽  
The Way

This chapter probes the way in which description, prescription, and critique form a congeries of approaches that together, in turn, produce an intellectual field that might be described as the political theory of international law (though it is hardly one thing, and some of it refuses altogether the injunctions of traditional political theory). All of this will lead to an examination of two particular problems of international diplomacy to which political theories of international law appear to have responded: namely, intervention and war crimes trials, and an engagement with two interdisciplinary turns (to History and to International Relations) through which international law has enlivened its habits of thought and theoretical inclinations.

EMPIRE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN VICTORIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 281-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
DUNCAN S. A. BELL
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This essay surveys recent scholarly work on the political theory of empire and international relations in Britain during the long nineteenth century. It traces the dominant themes and arguments to be found, points to some interpretative and methodological weaknesses, and highlights a number of topics that remain to be explored in detail. I focus on the following: the relationship between liberalism and empire and, in particular, the role played by the idea of civilization in circumscribing liberal claims to universality; the nature and evolution of international law, and the key role that jurisprudential thought played in shaping conceptions of civilization and setting the bounds of legitimacy for imperialism; the vexed relationship between the history of imperial thought and cultural/political history; and the important, though frequently marginalized, role of the colonial empire in the Victorian imperial imagination. Finally, I suggest that areas that remain to be explored in depth include non-liberal visions of international affairs; the role of theology in shaping conceptions of global order; and the balance between the United States, Europe, and the various (and very different) elements of the empire.

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