Critical International Political Theory

2018 ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
Anna Jurkevics ◽  
Seyla Benhabib
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
World Order ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
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.

Real-World Global Egalitarianism

2018 ◽  
pp. 117-129
Author(s):  
Darrel Moellendorf
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
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.

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.

scholarly journals Climate migration and the UK

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 3-26
Author(s):  
Laurie Parsons
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Migration Policy ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
New Directions ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Relationship

This article discusses the relationship between climate change and migration in the context of the UK. After a brief overview of climate migration scholarship, it examines the framing of climate migration as a crisis in UK policy discourse, highlighting the disjuncture between policy and academic scholarship in this respect. Subsequently, it examines the reasons for this schism, exploring both the framing of climate migration within the UK media landscape and the securitisation of the topic within UK government policy. Finally, the article explores how the UK�s political landscape undergirds the political logic of climate finance, emphasising the role of British domestic politics in shaping the boundaries and direction of climate change as it manifests in governance. The article closes by exploring potential new directions in UK climate migration policy.

The History of the Covenants

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Hertig Randall
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
Civil And Political Rights ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Acid Test ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Domestic Level

Translating the UDHR into a binding treaty ‘with teeth’ was an acid test for the international community. This chapter places the genesis of the ICESCR and the ICCPR in its political context. It highlights the interlocking challenges of the Cold War and of decolonization and also underscores disagreement among allied nations as well as attempts to ‘export’ the domestic conception of human rights. Three issues central to completing the International Bill of Human Rights are analysed: (1) identification of the rights to be included; (2) States’ obligations to give effect to human rights on the domestic level; and (3) international supervision mechanisms. These issues are closely related to the decision to divide human rights into two Covenants. In tracing the major controversies and decisions reached, light is also cast on the relationship and characteristics of civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights, as understood at the time.

Humanitarian Actors and International Political Theory

2018 ◽  
pp. 315-329
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Welsh
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Humanitarian Action ◽  
The Core ◽  
Specific Subset ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
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

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-118 ◽  
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 ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
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.

New national organization of Europe: nationalism and minority rights after the end of the Cold War

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
Matti Jutila
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship

Post–Cold War Europe witnessed the resurgence of different forms of nationalism and also the re-establishment of a minority rights regime. At the surface level, rights of national minorities seem to undermine nationalism as a political organization principle, but on a closer investigation the relationship between the two is more complex. This article uses insights from the English school’s theorizing on primary and secondary institutions to investigate the relationship between the primary institution of nationalism and secondary institution of minority rights regime. After a brief discussion of nationalism as a primary institution and its influence on the implementation of universal human rights, this article presents a detailed study of the minority rights regime analysing how it challenges, transforms and reproduces nationalism as a primary institution of contemporary European society of states.

The European Union and human rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-64
Author(s):  
Gerard McCann ◽  
Nadia Makaryshyn
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Charter Of Fundamental Rights ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Ideological Tensions ◽  
The Eu

Chapter 4 provides a critical perspective on the development of the EU in the Cold War period, the ideological tensions underpinning its operation and its increasing influence on the development of concepts of human rights and their reflection in EU social policy. Issues covered include the tensions between human rights and EU’s ‘pooled sovereignty’, economic, foreign, and migration policies. It discusses the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Pillar of Social Rights, the challenges posed by neoliberalist concepts of ‘free trade’ ‘competition’ and ‘privatisation’. Finally, it looks at the challenges facing the EU as a result of a range of global situations – the banking crisis, refugees fleeing ongoing conflict, migration and globalisation, global inequalities in trade and wealth and global insecurity.

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