Books by Jonathan Havercroft
A picture of sovereignty holds the study of politics captive. Captives of Sovereignty looks at th... more A picture of sovereignty holds the study of politics captive. Captives of Sovereignty looks at the historical origins of this picture of politics, critiques its philosophical assumptions and offers a way to move contemporary critiques of sovereignty beyond their current impasse. The first part of the book is diagnostic. Why, despite their best efforts to critique sovereignty, do political scientists who are dissatisfied with the concept continue to reproduce the logic of sovereignty in their thinking? Havercroft draws on the writings of Hobbes and Spinoza to argue that theories of sovereignty are produced and reproduced in response to skepticism. The second part of the book draws on contemporary critiques of skeptical arguments by Wittgenstein and Cavell to argue that their alternative way of responding to skepticism avoids the need to invoke a sovereign as the final arbiter of all political disputes.
Papers by Jonathan Havercroft
Given the prevalence of riots throughout human history, the lack of normative theorizing about ri... more Given the prevalence of riots throughout human history, the lack of normative theorizing about riots when compared to other forms of political violence is striking. I hypothesize this lacuna is due to the riot’s extra-institutionality. Riots are extra-public because crowds riot rather than institutionalized groups such as parties or social movements. Riots are extra-state because they violate the state’s monopoly on violence. Riots are extra-legal because they are a form of unlawful assembly. Riots are extra-Parliamentary because they operate outside of the normal legislative process. When political theorists have scrutinized each of these four institutions, they also have identified reasons to resist each of them. By considering the justifiable reasons for resisting each of these foundational institutions I propose some provisional criteria for a justifiable riot and argue that political theorists should pay attention to the normative dimension of riots.
British Journal of Political Science
Given the prevalence of riots throughout human history, the lack of normative theorizing about th... more Given the prevalence of riots throughout human history, the lack of normative theorizing about them compared to other forms of political violence is striking. The author hypothesizes that this is due to riots' extra-institutionality. Riots are extra-public because they involve the participation of crowds, rather than institutionalized groups such as parties or social movements. They are extra-state because they violate the state's monopoly on violence. Riots are extra-legal because they constitute a form of unlawful assembly. They are also extra-parliamentary because they operate outside the normal legislative process. This article considers justifiable reasons to resist each of these foundational institutions, and proposes provisional criteria for a justifiable riot. The author concludes by urging political theorists to further examine the normative dimension of riots.
International Studies Quarterly, 2019
While international relations scholars make many claims about violence, they rarely define the co... more While international relations scholars make many claims about violence, they rarely define the concept. This article develops a typology of three distinct kinds of violence: direct, indirect, and pacification. Direct violence occurs when a person or agent inflicts harm on another. Indirect violence manifests through the structures of society. We propose a third understanding of violence: pacification. Using a phenomenological methodology, and drawing on anarchist and postcolonial thought, we show that the violence of pacification is diffuse, inconspicuous, intersubjective, and structured into the fabric of society. This understanding of violence matters for the study of international relations in general and research on the liberal peace in particular. We argue that the spread of liberal institutions does not necessarily decrease violence but instead transforms it. Our phenomenological analysis captures empirical trends in human domination and suffering that liberal peace theories c...
International Studies Quarterly, 2019
While international relations scholars make many claims about violence, they rarely define the co... more While international relations scholars make many claims about violence, they rarely define the concept. This article develops a typology of three distinct kinds of violence: direct, indirect, and pacification. Direct violence occurs when a person or agent inflicts harm on another. Indirect violence manifests through the structures of society. We propose a third understanding of violence: pacification. Using a phenomenological methodology, and drawing on anarchist and postcolonial thought, we show that the violence of pacification is diffuse, inconspicuous, intersubjective, and structured into the fabric of society. This understanding of violence matters for the study of international relations in general and research on the liberal peace in particular. We argue that the spread of liberal institutions does not necessarily decrease violence but instead transforms it. Our phenomenological analysis captures empirical trends in human domination and suffering that liberal peace theories c...
International Studies Quarterly, 2018
While international relations scholars make many claims about violence, they rarely define the co... more While international relations scholars make many claims about violence, they rarely define the concept. This article develops a typology of three distinct kinds of violence: direct, indirect, and pacification. Direct violence occurs when a person or agent inflicts harm on another. Indirect violence manifests through the structures of society. We propose a third understanding of violence: pacification. Using a phenomenological methodology, and drawing on anarchist and postcolonial thought, we show that the violence of pacification is diffuse, inconspicuous, intersubjective, and structured into the fabric of society. This understanding of violence matters for the study of international relations in general and research on the liberal peace in particular. We argue that the spread of liberal institutions does not necessarily decrease violence but instead transforms it. Our phenomenological analysis captures empirical trends in human domination and suffering that liberal peace theories cannot account for. It reveals how a decline in direct violence may coincide with the transformation of violence in ways that are concealed, monopolized, and structured into the liberal order. We call this process liberal pacification. Ilan Zvi Baron is an Associate Professor in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. His research is on the politics of the Jewish Diaspora's relationship with Israel, post-truth politics, political responsibility and dystopian fiction. His most recent book is, How to Save Politics in a Post-Truth Era. Jonathan Havercroft is an Associate Professor in International Political Theory at the University of Southampton. He has published work on the historical development and transformation of state sovereignty, 17th century and 20th century political philosophy, space weaponization and security, global dimensions of indigenous politics and hermeneutics. His is the author of Captives of Sovereignty (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Isaac Kamola is assistant professor of political science at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. His research examines critical globalization studies, the political economy of higher education, and African anticolonial theory. He is author of Making the World Global: US Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary
Political Studies Review, 2020
In an apparently post-truth era, the social science scholar, by disposition and training committe... more In an apparently post-truth era, the social science scholar, by disposition and training committed to rational argumentation and the pursuit of truth, appeals as the ideal bulwark against excessive politicization of facts and expertise. In this article, we look to the experience of four prominent social scientists who have recently left the academy to enter politics with the aim of using their academic expertise to reshape policy. We use these cases to explore fundamental dilemmas derived from a close reading of Max Weber's seminal vocation essays of a century ago. Weber observed that politicians were driven by a will to power, whereas academics were driven by a will to truth. We argue that these two competing dispositions create four tensions for the academic turned politician: 1) between calling and commitment; 2) between means and ends; 3) between rationalization and professionalization; and 4) between facts and values. Analysing memoirs written by four of the most prominent academics-turned-politicians in recent times, we explore how Weber's tensions manifest in contemporary practice. Our account reveals that these actors face a daunting, but not impossible, task. Their success depends on wedding the relentless pursuit of ends with the prudent application of political means.
Global Constitutionalism, 2019
Review of International Studies, 2009
Securing outer space, 2009
States must strive to avoid, the 2001 Report of the Commission to Assess United States National S... more States must strive to avoid, the 2001 Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization urged action on “five matters of key importance”(Commission 2001: 9). First among those recommendations is the “demand that US national security space interests be recognized as a top national security priority.” In making this call, the Commission was speaking in terms increasingly familiar to the national security community, including Congress. Indeed, the mandate of the Commission ...
We propose to think with Antje Wiener about one of the most distinguishing and engaging features ... more We propose to think with Antje Wiener about one of the most distinguishing and engaging features of her book, A Theory of Contestation. That is what she refers to as its bifocal approach, an analytical or methodological orientation that explicitly conjoins " normative and empirical research " .1 In Wiener's words, In keeping with the bifocal approach two steps are to be reflected by research that seeks to analyse the legitimacy gap. The first step consists of identifying organizing principles in a selected sector of global governance, and the second step assesses how to 'fill' the legitimacy gap through regular contestation. The crucial aspect of this bifocal approach lies in linking the normative meta-organising principle of contestedness with the practice of contestation…2 While it is not uncommon for scholarship on international norms and global governance to stitch together the empirical and the normative, typically either in the form of smuggling an implicit normative posture into ostensibly purely empirical research or selectively engaging empirics to bolster an ordained desired conclusion with respect to the normativity of international norms, it is quite unusual for a scholar to present an approach that explicitly conjoins the two in a systematic methodology, as Wiener does. She, by contrast to convention, expressly and overtly integrates the normative and the empirical in the meticulous unfolding of her theorization of contestedness and contestation in the potential production of legitimacy of global governance provisions. We find this move on her part both refreshing and inspiring. It provides one of the many notable strengths of her book, which can be adopted, modeled, and modified by other scholars in future work, potentially collectively constituting the corpus of a distinct strand of international relations theory. At the risk of over-stepping our role and to highlight the distinctive theoretic contribution, we suggest that Wiener re-title her theory agonistic constructivism. At first this might sound a bit like arguing about semantics, or heaven forbid " re-branding " , but we have a theoretical reason for this. Social constructivism has become a sufficiently entrenched approach in International Relations theory that the old distinction between positivists and social constructivists has lost much of its meaning. While it is not quite accurate to say that " we are all social constructivists now " , we do think that it is accurate to say that anyone studying international norms must necessarily be a social constructivist of some kind. After all any norm must be constructed through some set of social practices that spells out a standard of appropriate behavior in a given context. If all norms research must in some sense be socially constructivist, then the real fissures between norms scholars are not at the level of ontological debates over materiality or ideality. Instead they are on the two substantive issues at the heart of Wiener's book: how are norms generated and how are they validated. And if this is the case, then the real
The Review of Politics, 2015
Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century, yet he ... more Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century, yet he published nothing on political philosophy. His few remarks on political and moral philosophy were outright hostile to the enterprise of normative theorizing. Despite this, Wittgenstein's influence on contemporary political philosophy has been far-reaching. This is because Wittgenstein's work had a crucial influence on the linguistic turn in philosophy, and philosophy's linguistic turn shaped much political thought in the latter half of the twentieth century. The linguistic turn refers to the increased interest in the connections between the nature of language and philosophical problems in the first half of the twentieth century. The classical view of the relationship between language and objects in the material world held that words functioned like labels that are applied to pre-existing objects.Keywords:discourse;feminism;foundationalism;interpretive social science;language;philosophydiscourse;feminism;foundationalism;interpretive social science;language;philosophy
Perspectives on Politics, 2012
This paper (for APSA 2015) explore the salience of Wittgenstein's reflections of seeing aspects a... more This paper (for APSA 2015) explore the salience of Wittgenstein's reflections of seeing aspects and Cavell's concept of soul-blindness for engaging Ranciere's discussion of politics and police, before showing how this theoretical engagement can help to explicate the character of Black Lives Matter as a social and political movement.
Research on the Tea Party finds that both libertarian and authoritarian attitudes drive support f... more Research on the Tea Party finds that both libertarian and authoritarian attitudes drive support for this movement, but political scientists lack a satisfactory explanation of this contradiction. To help resolve this puzzle, we argue a key factor driving support for the Tea Party is what Nietzsche called “misarchism:” an ideology which is antigovernment but statist and moralistic. Factor analysis of nine attitudes from the 2012 American National Election Study reveals that statism and moral traditionalism are intercorrelated on a dimension distinct from attitudes toward government. Regression analysis shows that the interaction of anti-government and morally statist ideological
factors is one of the strongest and most robust predictors of Tea Party support. Bayesian Model Averaging, multiple imputation, and genetic matching suggest that the correlation between misarchism and support for the Tea Party is not an artifact of model selection, missing values, or bias due to covariate imbalance.
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Books by Jonathan Havercroft
Papers by Jonathan Havercroft
factors is one of the strongest and most robust predictors of Tea Party support. Bayesian Model Averaging, multiple imputation, and genetic matching suggest that the correlation between misarchism and support for the Tea Party is not an artifact of model selection, missing values, or bias due to covariate imbalance.
factors is one of the strongest and most robust predictors of Tea Party support. Bayesian Model Averaging, multiple imputation, and genetic matching suggest that the correlation between misarchism and support for the Tea Party is not an artifact of model selection, missing values, or bias due to covariate imbalance.