International Relations

A well-established and popular text which provides systematic coverage of the classical concerns of International Relations theory – power, national interest, foreign policy and war – alongside analysis of the impact of globalization on security, governance and the world economy. A central concern throughout is to show how the theories the authors outline and assess can help make sense of the puzzle of current world events, from the rise of Russia and China, the downturn in the world economy and the changing role of America to the challenges of identity politics and human rights.


Reviews:

'An excellent new edition which reinforces the book's place as my preferred text for students new to International Relations. Accessible and compelling without glossing over the complexity of the issues, the fourth edition has been impressively updated to take account of real-world and theoretical developments.' Anthony F. Lang, Jr, University of St Andrews.

'[A] very appealing book... The text succeeds in giving a clear account of all the main theoretical possibilities and, in a non-judgemental but not uncritical way, setting them in context... I can think of no book more likely to succeed in persuading a sceptical undergraduate - someone convinced of the existence of a self-evident world of facts - that not only is a knowledge of theory necessary to understand international relations, but it is fun.' - James Mayall, Review of International Studies

This article assesses the structure and operation of the ICC by setting out a case for the defence of the Court, a case for its prosecution and a verdict. Defenders of the Court suggest it has had a positive impact because: it has accelerated moves away from politics and towards ethics in international relations; it goes a long way towards ending impunity; it is a significant improvement on the previous system of ad hoc tribunals; it has positive spill-over effects onto domestic criminal systems; and because the courage of the Prosecutor and Trial Judges has helped to establish the Court as a force to be reckoned with. Opponents of the Court see it as mired in power politics, too reliant on the UNSC and on state power to be truly independent; failing to bring peace and perhaps even encouraging conflict; and starting to resemble a neo-colonial project rather than an impartial organ of justice. The verdict on the Court is mixed. It has gone some way to ending impunity and it is certainly an improvement on the ad hoc tribunals. However it is inevitably a political body rather than a purely legal institution, its use as a deterrent is as yet unproven and the expectation that it can bring peace as well as justice is unrealistic.

The chapter traces the philosophical and legal history of the contemporary concept of the evil individual in International Relations. The individual as an actor has become increasingly important in both the practice and study of international relations since 1945, and there has been a marked shift in international political and legal discourse away from assigning responsibility to states for extremes of political violence or atrocity, and towards assigning responsibility – specifically criminal responsibility – to individuals. Those accused of atrocities (now framed as international crimes) are often labeled as evil. However, the concept of the ‘international’ individual agent is highly problematic, and the chapter explains why this is so, before considering the political implications of the rise of the evil individual. These implications include the legitimation of state violence through the categorization of all intolerable or “atrocious” violence as the action of deviant individuals, the temptation to understand conflict in dualist terms of “good” and “evil”, and a blindness towards instances of great suffering which cannot be framed as caused by intentional human action. The position also gives apparent support to the mistaken assumption that evil cannot be predicted or prevented, only punished after it has occurred.

The chapter is concerned with the shift in international political and legal discourse away from assigning responsibility for political violence to states and towards assigning criminal responsibility to individuals, in particular with the establishment, in 1998, of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This new Court is premised on assumptions that there are universal moral standards which apply to human behaviour, and that through the assignation of responsibility to individuals and the infliction of punishment according to these standards, the international criminal justice system (ICJS) can deter crime, end conflict and bring about justice. The chapter takes seriously these goals, but questions the ability of the system to achieve them – and raises the question of whether the ICJS may in fact encourage atrocity by enabling state violence. It examines the move from state civil agency to individual criminal agency within international legal discourse, the limited and internally contradictory conception of international agency necessary to sustain this move and the uneasy relationship between morality, politics and law conceived by the framers of international criminal law, before considering the implications of the new system.

The chapter examines how it is that institutions can be responsible actors, and how to respond to those institutions which are responsible for harm. The argument in the chapter is split into four sections. In the first section I outline a conception of responsibility that takes into account the social nature of responsibility ascriptions and discuss how institutional responsibility fits into such a conception. The second section examines how, within the ‘social practice’ of responsibility, the duties that a delinquent institution is said to have breached come to attach to the institution in the first place. These duties can be assigned, incurred or assumed before action, or, in rare circumstances, assigned afterwards. The third section reflects upon whom or what it is that should be responded to if an institution fails to discharge its moral responsibilities. I propose that the correct body to aim the response towards is not the delinquent institution itself but the group of people who controlled the resources of the institution and made decisions in its name at the time of the morally suboptimal acts or omissions: the ‘executive group’. The final section of the chapter examines what kind of responses delinquent institutions might be appropriate, and makes the case for collaborative rather than punitive responses. The argument here is that we should concentrate on incentivising and assisting institutions to accept and discharge responsibility in the international system rather than on attempting to punish those who do not.

One of the most significant developments in contemporary International Relations (IR) has been the revival of interest in arguments concerning ethics, but the most interesting critiques of contemporay liberalism from the point of view of international ethics – critiques of the notion of moral obligation itself, put forward by virtue ethicists – have in large part been missed.To understand why the critiques of virtue ethicists matter for international relations and for International Relations, this article first sets out the problem they are responding to. Virtue ethicists argue that the notion of moral obligation employed in contemporary liberalism and, therefore, Western life is foundationless, and that trying to live by rules without foundations can lead to harm. This position is briefly explored through a discussion of the increasing reliance on rules in the form of law in IR, and some recent criticism of the effect of rule-based international action. The article moves on to discuss what virtue ethicists offer in the place of obligation: a focus on character, practical reason and human flourishing, all situated in social contexts. There follows an outline of the few attempts that have been made to relate virtue ethics (VE) to IR, and a discussion of possibilities for future research into this innovative approach. The argument throughout is that a concern with virtue offers us an original way to think about the kind of ethical dilemmas that we face in international relations and IR, by moving away from an unrealistic and ultimately doomed search for universal rules and moral stability and towards the much more challenging, dynamic and rewarding endeavour of developing the practical judgment to answer questions about what it means, as individuals and as groups, located in time and place and politics, to live life well.

Since 1945 responsibility for atrocity has been individualized, and international tribunals and courts have been given effective jurisdiction over it. This article argues that the move to individual responsibility leaves significant ‘excesses’ of responsibility for war crimes unaccounted for. When courts do attempt to recognize the collective nature of war crime perpetration, through the doctrines of ‘command responsibility’, ‘joint criminal enterprise’ and ‘state responsibility’, the application of these doctrines has, it is argued, limited or perverse effects. The article suggests that instead of expecting courts to allocate excesses of responsibility, other accountability mechanisms should be used alongside trials to allocate political (rather than legal) responsibility for atrocity. The mechanisms favored here are ‘Responsibility and Truth Commissions’, i.e. well-resourced non-judicial commissions which are mandated to hold to account individual and collective actors rather than simply to provide an account of past violence.

More than thirty years after the Khmer Rouge was responsible for the deaths of over one and a half million people, and after two amnesties for Khmer Rouge crimes were enacted in Cambodia, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) has been established, ostensibly to help heal the trauma of victims of Khmer Rouge atrocities and bring about justice. This chapter outlines the key features of the ECCC and assesses its successes and failures according to its own mandate. It goes on, however, to argue that accepting the restricted mandate of the court is a mistake, as it prevents a full discussion of accountability in Cambodia. I argue that the establishment of the ECCC represents less a victory for victims or for advocates of transitional justice than it is a reflection of the interests of the Cambodian government and those international actors who collaborated with a series of repressive regimes in Cambodia, including the current Hun Sen regime. By agreeing to a limited regime of transitional justice, the government has diverted diplomatic and donor attention away from allegations of corruption and human rights abuses in the present, towards its role as ‘saviour of the nation’ in the past. The international community is keen (now) to promote justice in Cambodia, and has significant resources available with which to incentivise or coerce domestic actors to allow a fair and independent court, but seems unwilling to use them. Unfortunately, international principle has coincided with domestic power in a way that does little for the victims of atrocities in whose name the ECCC was established.

In this paper I seek to investigate the notion of responsibility in IR. The dominant discourses of responsibility in contemporary international politics are the liberal nationalist discourse of the nation-state as protector of its people (see, especially, Walzer 1992) and the liberal cosmopolitan discourse of human rights (see, as exemplars, Beitz 1999, Caney 2005, and Pogge 2002) with responsibility in both cases being under-theorised, unclear and therefore inconsistently applied and exercised. A new interest in responsibility from politicians in the West has arisen simultaneously with a concern that the human rights regime has not delivered all that it should because it lacks sufficiently authoritative notions of responsibility or obligation for upholding rights. But the concept of responsibility is under-researched in IR, leading to divergent ideas of what responsibility means, so little responsible action. In addition, theorizing responsibility in philosophy has become to a large extent caught in a dead-end debate about free will and determinism.
To start to understand responsibility, we need to differentiate between metaphysical conceptions of responsibility qua responsibility, and the particular practices of responsibility we see in the world. A solid conception of what responsibility is, how it works, and what functions it serves in societies, domestic or international, should enable enlightened and influential intervention into debates on specific responsibilities. In this paper I briefly set out the central problem of understanding responsibility in any meaningful way – the problem of agency; outline a top-line conception of responsibility – a social practice model – which I argue overcomes the problem of agency and thus describes any and all practices of responsibility better than alternative conceptions; and start to use the model to critique existing liberal practices of responsibility.

The book is a study of the concepts of agency and responsibility, responding to the lack of explicit consideration of these notions in contemporary international political theory (IPT). In it, I develop an original theoretical viewpoint by critically analysing assumptions about agency and responsibility within mainstream IPT, and supplementing my analysis with insights from select literature within the fields of philosophy, sociology and social psychology. The objective of the book is to provide a more nuanced account of agency and responsibility in the international sphere, and to think through the implications of such an account for ongoing theorising and practice.

The core argument I advance is that the individualist conceptions of agency and responsibility inherent in liberal and cosmopolitan liberal thought are highly problematic, serve political purposes which are often unacknowledged, and have led to the establishment of an international institutional regime which is limited in the kind of justice it can bring to international affairs. I outline alternative views of agency and responsibility – agency as sociality and a social practice model of responsibility – which both better describe the way we talk about and experience our social lives, and offer significant possibilities to broaden the scope of international justice and, through this, enable human flourishing.

1989 signifies the collapse of Soviet communism and the end of the Cold War, a moment generally recognized as a triumph for liberal democracy and when capitalism became global. The Global 1989 challenges these ideas. An international group of prominent scholars investigate the mixed, paradoxical and even contradictory outcomes engendered by these events, unravelling the intricacies of this important moment in world history. Although the political, economic and cultural orders generated have, for the most part, been an improvement on what was in place before, this has not always been clear cut: 1989 has many meanings, many effects and multiple trajectories. This volume leads the way in defining how 1989 can be assessed both in terms of its world historical impact and in terms of its contribution to the shape of contemporary world politics.

Reviews
'This volume offers a seminal and strikingly original reinterpretation of the end of the Cold War. It provides not only a refreshing and revealing look back at 1989, but also a remarkably insightful look forward to the lasting impact of 1989 on the future of global politics.' Charles A. Kupchan, Georgetown University and Council on Foreign Relations, author of How Enemies Become Friends

'Like many joyous moments, 1989 has had diverse, unexpected and not always beneficial consequences. The editors of this volume ask all the right questions about 1989 as a turning point and the contributors provide many intelligent and provocative answers.' Richard Ned Lebow, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor, Dartmouth College and Centennial Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science

'This impressive collection of essays examines the place in global history of the revolutionary events of 1989, but it will also interest anyone attempting to theorize the overall trajectory of contemporary societies.' Michael Mann, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

'This excellent book should be widely read and pondered because it addresses one of the most important issues of our time: why the triumphalism of 1989 has given way to a growing pessimism about the future of world politics.' John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago

'This book brings together a distinguished group of scholars to illuminate an important subject whose larger significance policymakers, scholars and the broader reading public think they understand but probably don't. Nearly anyone who thinks much about politics has a take on the meaning of 1989. Lawson, Armbruster, Cox and their collaborators are here to tell you that what you think you know about the implications of the Cold War's and Euro-Eurasian communism's collapse rests on tenuous conceptual or empirical foundations, or probably both.' William C. Wohlforth, Daniel Webster Professor, Dartmouth College and Editor in Chief, Security Studies

In Negotiated Revolutions, George Lawson marks a definitive departure in the study of radical change, presenting a comparative analysis of three transformations from authoritarian rule to market democracy. Through the lens of international historical sociology, the book brings three apparently distinct transformations, from disparate regimes and geographies, under a common rubric.

Reviews
'…a new advance in the study of radical change…Lawson identifies a set of transitions located in three continents that accompanied the end of the cold war in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While insisting on differences of history and political culture, Lawson nonetheless shows comprehensively how the global political context combined with the maturing of internal tensions to produce a new variant of revolutionary outcomes.' Professor Fred Halliday, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

'This is a very important book. George Lawson provides by far the best comparative and international discussion of the negotiated revolutions that took place at the end of the Cold War, and analyses these events in light of his considerable insights into the on-going debates about theories of revolution.' Professor O.A. Westad, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

'This is a timely, important, insightful and well-written book…it produces novel insights into the conception of revolution that all scholars interested in the topic should take heed of. Perhaps most significantly, it provides an excellent bridge between the complementary, though often sealed off, disciplines of Macro-Sociology/Historical Sociology and International Relations…I strongly recommend this book.' John M. Hobson, University of Sheffield, UK

'…a valuable tool to criticize past research on revolutions for a number of shortcomings…[Lawson] provides a strong case for an "international sociology" as a conceptual framework for studying change in international relations as but a case of more comprehensive social change. His case-studies are highly readable, condensed accounts…' International Affairs

'Lawson does readers a favor by creating a model of revolution that allows one to retain what is useful from the past and combine it with what has changed in the present. Such scenarios may allow better predictions of future revolutionary activities…Recommended.' Choice

'Overall, the author succeeds in his analysis: the cases provide effective and convincing illustrations…of the importance and usefulness of the concept of negotiated revolution…this is a refreshing read…provides an excellent weaving together of theory and evidence…' Political Studies Review

'[Lawson's] case for the emergence of negotiated revolutions…is compelling and the discussion of the three cases well argued. Negotiated Revolutions thus marks a valuable contribution to the study of revolutions and social change generally in the post-Cold War era.' Political Science Quarterly