Liberal Peacebuilding and Global Governance

Abstract Focusing on the disconnect between mainstream “liberal” peacebuilding and the discourses and practices of “new” and “alternative” peacebuilding actors, this article develops a nonbinary approach that goes beyond norm localization to capture the ways in which major powers influence the nature, content, and direction of normative change. Within the context of their bilateral and multilateral contributions to the “global peacebuilding order,” what forms and types of interventions are conceived by these actors as peacebuilding? How, in turn, has the substantive content of their peacebuilding practices (re)shaped norms and narratives in international peacebuilding efforts? Based on extensive empirical research of the peacebuilding policies and activities of China, Japan, and Russia, this article analyzes the way in which these “top-top” dynamics between norms embedded in the liberal narrative and major powers with competing visions can influence peacebuilding as practiced and pursued in host states. In doing so, it brings together research on global norms and peacebuilding studies and offers a simple yet analytically powerful tool to better understand the evolution of global peacebuilding order(s) and the role of rising powers in (re)shaping global governance.

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Between Banyans and battle scenes: Liberal norms, contestation, and the limits of critique

Review of International Studies ◽

10.1017/s0260210515000534 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 42 (3) ◽

pp. 513-534 ◽

Cited By ~ 43

Author(s):

Jonas Wolff ◽

Lisbeth Zimmermann

Keyword(s):

Global Governance ◽

Democracy Promotion ◽

Norm Diffusion ◽

Seminal Work ◽

Global Spread ◽

Battle Scenes ◽

Liberal Peacebuilding

AbstractIn studying the global spread and implementation of liberal norms, scholars have moved from linear notions of norm diffusion and promotion to an emphasis on norm contestation. Contestation by the supposed beneficiaries and addressees has taken centre stage in both research on the norms that underpin global governance and in studies on democracy promotion and liberal peacebuilding. While the impetus of this scholarship is normative – to overcome the taken-for-granted nature of liberal norms – the concept of contestation itself is mainly used with an analytical interest. Yet, as we show in this article, contestation also comes with – oftentimes implicit – normative connotations. Focusing on the seminal work of Milja Kurki, Oliver Richmond, Antje Wiener, and Amitav Acharya, we reconstruct these normative connotations. It turns out that the normative take on contestation is fairly conventional in all four approaches. Contestation is largely seen as a means to enable dialogue, as illustrated by Acharya’s metaphor of the Banyan tree. Fundamental conflicts over liberal norms (‘battle scenes’) are either not considered or seen as normatively undesirable. As a way forward, we propose a typology that enables scholars to empirically analyse contestation in its different expressions and suggest two strategies to normatively assess practices of contestation.

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The Ethics of Liberal Peacebuilding

The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190904418.013.5 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 41-58

Author(s):

Kristoffer Lidén

Keyword(s):

Global Governance ◽

John Rawls ◽

State Sovereignty ◽

Michael Walzer ◽

Gray Zone ◽

International Ethics ◽

International Intervention ◽

Liberal Peacebuilding

This chapter explores the normative underpinnings of the scholarly debate on liberal peacebuilding and situates them within international ethics. The debate is relevant for the ethics of global governance more broadly by addressing a theoretical gray zone between the ethics of international intervention and state sovereignty. The chapter argues that instead of rejecting the liberal internationalist objectives of peacebuilding, the critics tend to deny the coherence of liberal peacebuilding with these objectives. This is exemplified by relating the critique to the prevalent positions of John Rawls, Michael Walzer, and Simon Caney in international ethics. The critique challenges descriptive presuppositions of these positions by drawing on critical, poststructural, and postcolonial perspectives.

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From meditation to action – a research agenda for studying informal global rule-making: remarks on ‘Cosmopolitanism, publicity, and the emergence of a “global administrative law”’

International Theory ◽

10.1017/s1752971920000639 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-7

Author(s):

Oliver Westerwinter

Keyword(s):

Global Governance ◽

Comparative Research ◽

Research Agenda ◽

Institutional Design ◽

Administrative Law ◽

Democratic Legitimacy ◽

Institutional Architecture ◽

Global Law ◽

Rule Making ◽

Law Making

Abstract Friedrich Kratochwil engages critically with the emergence of a global administrative law and its consequences for the democratic legitimacy of global governance. While he makes important contributions to our understanding of global governance, he does not sufficiently discuss the differences in the institutional design of new forms of global law-making and their consequences for the effectiveness and legitimacy of global governance. I elaborate on these limitations and outline a comparative research agenda on the emergence, design, and effectiveness of the diverse arrangements that constitute the complex institutional architecture of contemporary global governance.

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The Role of Business in Global Governance

10.1057/9780230277533 ◽

2010 ◽

Cited By ~ 81

Author(s):

Annegret Flohr ◽

Lothar Rieth ◽

Sandra Schwindenhammer ◽

Klaus Dieter Wolf

Keyword(s):

Global Governance

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Mechanisms of Global Governance: Economic Analysis

Voprosy Ekonomiki ◽

10.32609/0042-8736-2013-7-4-28 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 4-28 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

L. Grigoryev ◽

A. Kurdin

Keyword(s):

Property Rights ◽

Economic Analysis ◽

Global Governance ◽

International Organizations ◽

Economic Activity ◽

Global Level ◽

Narrow Sense ◽

Key Characteristics ◽

Global Problems

The coordination of economic activity at the global level is carried out through different mechanisms, which regulate activities of companies, states, international organizations. In spite of wide diversity of entrenched mechanisms of governance in different areas, they can be classified on the basis of key characteristics, including distribution of property rights, mechanisms of governance (in the narrow sense according to O. Williamson), mechanisms of expansion. This approach can contribute not only to classifying existing institutions but also to designing new ones. The modern aggravation of global problems may require rethinking mechanisms of global governance. The authors offer the universal framework for considering this problem and its possible solutions.

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Catholicism and Cosmopolitanism: the Confluence of Three Catholic Scholars and the Cosmopolitan Democrats on State Sovereignty and the Future of Global Governance

De Ethica A Journal of Philosophical Theological and Applied Ethics ◽

10.3384/de-ethica.2001-8819.163237 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 37-51

Author(s):

Matthew Bagot

Keyword(s):

Global Governance ◽

State Sovereignty ◽

Current Debate ◽

Past Century ◽

Jacques Maritain ◽

The Past ◽

Technological Advances ◽

The Future ◽

Cosmopolitan Democracy ◽

Catholic Tradition

One of the central questions in international relations today is how we should conceive of state sovereignty. The notion of sovereignty—’supreme authority within a territory’, as Daniel Philpott defines it—emerged after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 as a result of which the late medieval crisis of pluralism was settled. But recent changes in the international order, such as technological advances that have spurred globalization and the emerging norm of the Responsibility to Protect, have cast the notion of sovereignty into an unclear light. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current debate regarding sovereignty by exploring two schools of thought on the matter: first, three Catholic scholars from the past century—Luigi Sturzo, Jacques Maritain, and John Courtney Murray, S.J.—taken as representative of Catholic tradition; second, a number of contemporary political theorists of cosmopolitan democracy. The paper argues that there is a confluence between the Catholic thinkers and the cosmopolitan democrats regarding their understanding of state sovereignty and that, taken together, the two schools have much to contribute not only to our current understanding of sovereignty, but also to the future of global governance.

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