Politics and Law as Latourian Modes of Existence

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Harman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
Politics And Law ◽  
Modes Of Existence ◽  
Circle Drawing

This chapter presents Graham Harman’s assessment of a vital, highly disputed, frequently perplexing contrast, namely that of the trajectories of political and legal enunciation. With an air of clinical detachment, Harman patiently disentangles the mesh of legal obligations and places this strange, non-referential chain into proximity with the political Circle, drawing on the dichotomy of Power Politics and Truth Politics offered in his recent study of Latour’s political philosophy. According to Harman, politics must precede law because it is the charge of politics to collect groups, which may in turn develop a legal order. Similarly, law relies more or less directly on the existence of political authorities – without politics, in other words, law is mere empty, unenforceable, unreliable words. Concluding with an enticing set of questions about the implications of this arrangement for a Latourian international relations theory, Harman’s chapter skilfully demonstrates the promise and the peril of a comprehensive scheme of modes of existence.

East Asia International Relations and International Relations Theory: Where Does a Poor Fit Exist, and What to Do about It

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (8) ◽  
pp. 1202-1218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min-hyung Kim
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
East Asia ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Indigenous Theory ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
Key Variables ◽  
Many Core ◽  
Central Claim

This article seeks to critically assess the relevance of International Relations Theory (IRT) for East Asia International Relations (IR). After identifying the shortcomings of IRT in explaining East Asia IR, the article provides several ways to modify it with a goal to make it more suitable for East Asia IR. Its central claim is that the IRT’s bias toward European experiences and great power politics generates unsatisfactory accounts for and inaccurate predictions about East Asia IR. This does not mean, however, that we should treat IRT as completely irrelevant and develop an indigenous theory of East Asia IR. Given that no single theory is complete and perfectly relevant across time and space and that many core concepts and key variables of IRT are also pertinent for East Asia IR, our efforts should instead be made to refine the existing IRT and make it more suitable for East Asia IR by problematising its major assumptions and central claims on the basis of East Asian experiences. This will save IRT from being a region-specific and a country-specific theory of IR.

David Hume’s Balancing Act: The Political Discourses and the Sinews of War

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
DANIELLE CHARETTE
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
David Hume ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Approach ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
Balance Of Trade

Both champions and critics of “neorealism” in contemporary international relations misinterpret David Hume as an early spokesman for a universal and scientific balance-of-power theory. This article instead treats Hume’s “Of the Balance of Power,” alongside the other essays in his Political Discourses (1752), as conceptual resources for a historically inflected analysis of state balancing. Hume’s defense of the balance of power cannot be divorced from his critique of commercial warfare in “Of the Balance of Trade” and “Of the Jealousy of Trade.” To better appreciate Hume’s historical and economic approach to foreign policy, this article places Hume in conversation with Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Andrew Fletcher, and Montesquieu. International relations scholars suspicious of static paradigms should reconsider Hume’s genealogy of the balance of power, which differs from the standard liberal and neorealist accounts. Well before International Political Economy developed as a formal subdiscipline, Hume was conceptually treating economics and power politics in tandem.

Typographica: The medium and the medieval-to-modern transformation

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald J. Deibert
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Information Age ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Information Revolution ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Epochal Change ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Common Thread ◽  
John Ruggie

There is an emerging consensus among a growing body of scholars that the present era is one in which fundamental change is occurring. Among International Relations theorists, for example, John Ruggie has argued that we are witnessing ‘a shift not in the play of power politics but of the stage on which that play is performed’. Similarly, James Rosenau contends that the present era constitutes a historical break leading to a ‘postinternational politics’, while Mark Zacher has traced the ‘decaying pillars of the Westphalian Temple’. This belief in epochal change is mirrored outside of the mainstream of International Relations theory in, for example, pronouncements of the emergence of ‘the information age’, ‘post-industrialism’, ‘post-Fordism’, or, more generally, ‘postmodernism’. While these analyses differ widely in terms of their foci and theoretical concerns, there is at least one common thread running through each of them: the recognition that current transformations are deeply intertwined with developments in communications technologies, popularly known as the ‘information revolution’.

The liberal-communitarian debate in contemporary political philosophy and its significance for international relations

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID MORRICE
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
World Government ◽  
Moral Reality ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law

This article examines the debate between liberalism and communitarianism in contemporary political philosophy and considers its significance for international relations. The debate tends to pose a false dichotomy between liberalism and communitarianism, and neither position alone can provide an adequate basis for international relations theory. It is necessary to go beyond the liberal-communitarian divide in order to reconcile the valuable insights that may be rescued from both positions. There is a community which is a moral reality, which includes all individuals and maintains their moral integrity, and which can accommodate all legitimate, smaller communities. This is the community of humanity, which is recognized in traditional theories of natural law and the law of nations. The article concludes by considering whether the universal community of humanity requires and justifies world government.

Francisco de Vitoria

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirstin Bunge
Keyword(s):  
General Framework ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Traditional Conception ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Politics And Law ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria

This chapter argues that on the threshold of modernity, Vitoria’s jus gentium created a general framework for a legal order between people and nations. It shows how under the changing conditions of economy, theories of political domination, and relation between religious and secular spheres, the foundations of politics and law were re-assessed. At this juncture, one of the most important findings of Vitoria’s political and legal philosophy was that the sphere of political practice became more autonomous although still thought of as part of a God-given order. As the political power of the pope and the emperor was fading, new stakeholders gradually appeared. The traditional conception of totus orbis clarifies—one hundred years before the Peace of Westphalia—the scope in which different types of stakeholders such as individuals and social or political communities can act freely and (at least theoretically) interact on equal terms.

The Path to the Austro-Sardinian War: The Post-Napoleonic States System and the End of Peace in Europe in 1848

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-385
Author(s):  
Miroslav Šedivý
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Normal Stress ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Armed Force ◽  
The Political ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
Peace In Europe

The aim of this article is to explain the long-term process leading to the decision of Sardinian King Charles Albert to wage war against Austria in March 1848. Moving beyond the normal stress on Italian national consciousness, the article focuses more on the King’s attitude towards the conduct of European powers in Italian affairs and attempts to prove that repeated illegal and aggressive actions of the European powers after 1830 destroyed the King’s faith in the fairness of the political-legal system established at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, leading also to his loss of faith in the strength of law and increasing his belief in the power of armed force in international relations. All this significantly contributed to his final decision to start a war of conquest against Austria, which he regarded as weak and thus no longer respected, much like his attitude towards the existing political-legal order in general.

The Borders of Corruption

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca R. Fiske
Keyword(s):  
Legal Order ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Politics And Law ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

The U.S. has been in a state of exception now for many years, and there appears to be no end in sight. There exists an entire generation who has know life under only this form of government, one that, as Giorgio Agamben explains, takes “a position at the limit between politics and law…an ambiguous, uncertain, borderline fringe, at the intersection of the legal and the political.” In the name of security, the characteristic limiting of constitutional rights, the sanctioning of torture, and the proliferating of NSA surveillance are fast becoming the norm. Recently, much has been written concerning the bio-political consequences of an endless state of exception in which the executive power trumps the judiciary, and a new legal order emerges. This chapter will consider the relationship between corruption and the permanent state of exception.

Latour, Bruno (1947–)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Harman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
William James ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modes Of Existence

Bruno Latour is a French philosopher whose work and influence have been mainly in the social sciences, and he is one of the world’s most cited authors in this field. Along with Michel Callon and John Law he is considered one of the founders of actor-network theory (ANT), a method of avoiding abstract terms such as ‘society’, ‘capitalism’ and ‘the economy’ by focusing on the role of individual actors in building up any collective. ANT is thus a ‘flat ontology’ that places humans, nonhumans, concepts and fictional characters on the same footing. All entities are equally real, though not equally strong: neutrons simply have more or better allies attesting to their existence than Popeye, square circles or white ravens. Entities are termed ‘actors’ or ‘actants’, since they can be known and understood only by the effects they have on other things: there is no substance or thingly surplus hidden behind their concrete actions. From the late 1990s Latour partly renounced ANT due to its inability to distinguish between the truth conditions of differing modes of reality, a problem he tried to address in his new ‘modes of existence’ project. Among the chief influences on his work are the semiotics of A.J. Greimas, the metaphysics of A.N. Whitehead, the pragmatism of William James, and the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes.

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