HSPS Tripos 2015-16
Part II, Pol 3: Ethics and World Politics
Paper Organiser:
Dr Duncan Bell - dsab2@cam.ac.uk
Lecturers:
Dr Duncan Bell
Dr Stefano Recchia – sr638@cam.ac.uk
Dr Sharath Srinivasan - ss919@cam.ac.uk
Supervisors:
Dr Duncan Bell
Dr Gwilym David Blunt
Lior Erez - le261@cam.ac.uk
Vladimir Kmec - vk287@cam.ac.uk
Dr Marissa Quie - mq1000@cam.ac.uk
Dr Or Rosenboim - or245@cam.ac.uk
Dr Sharath Srinivasan
[Full list TBC]
Outline of the Course
Aims and Objectives
● To provide a broad overview of contemporary debates about ethics and world politics
● To encourage critical reflection on global justice, human rights, and political violence
● To demonstrate the complexity of linking theoretical arguments with practical examples
● To offer intellectual resources for thinking about a wide range of topics in contemporary politics
Structure of the Paper
The paper is divided into two parts. Part I comprises an introductory lecture and three Sections: (1) Political
Boundaries and the Scope of Justice; (2) Human Rights; (3) Ethics of Political Violence. These sections
provide an overview of some of the central ethical issues in world politics. In Part II, students select one of
two modules: (1) Military Intervention and Political Violence (2) Human Rights. (Selection means that
supervisions will be given on the particular module – note that you are encouraged to attend the lectures for
all of the modules). These modules examine how some of the theoretical arguments elaborated in Part I apply
- or fail to apply - in a variety of practical political contexts.
Brief Description
The paper has two main aims. The first is to introduce students to a range of arguments about pressing
normative questions in world politics. This is, and always has been, a central theme in both International
Relations and Political Theory. What does ‘ethics’ mean in the context of world politics? What is the ethical
status of political borders? Do the rich states (and citizens) of the Global North have a moral obligation to
distribute wealth to the poor states (and citizens) of the Global South? Is patriotism a virtue or a vice? What is
a human right? Are human rights a form of western imperialism? Under what conditions, if any, is war
justified? What about terrorism? By the end of the course, students should be to grapple with complex
questions of this kind.
Many of the topics and arguments covered by the paper have important historical precursors, some of which
are explored in depth in the papers covering the History of Political Thought. However, this paper
concentrates on current debates and recent scholarly literature, drawing on work from various academic fields
including IR, political theory, sociology, and anthropology. The paper expands on some of the topics
introduced in the Part I Politics and International Relations papers, and provides students with intellectual
resources relevant for thinking about the material covered in other Tripos papers.
The second aim is to explore normative issues in a variety of concrete political contexts, showing how the
circumstances and dynamics of political life can challenge or complicate theoretical arguments about ethics. In
particular, it does this through offering students the choice to explore some detailed case studies.
Pol 3 concentrates on three interlinked topics. It starts with an introductory discussion of the character of
ethical argument in world politics, before addressing three main topics. The first concerns the scope of justice
and the moral status of political boundaries, focusing especially on cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and statism,
and examining questions about whether the rich (individuals or communities) have a moral duty to redistribute
wealth to the poor, and if global democracy is a normatively desirable goal. The second major topic is human
rights. Here we will examine different conceptions of human rights as well as exploring a range of criticisms of
the idea. The final topic explores the ethics of political violence. This section will focus on the just war
tradition and its critics, while paying special attention to humanitarian intervention and the ethics of terrorism.
The topics covered in the three sections are inter-related and the lectures will draw out some of the
connections.
Supervision and Assessment
Students taking Pol 3 will have six essay supervisions over the course of the year. Four of the supervisions will
cover questions from Part I of the course. In Part I, students are expected to write at least one essay from each
of the three sections. The remaining two supervisions will cover the module chosen for Part II. Students will
also have at least one revision supervision covering Part I of the course.
Students will be assessed through a written examination in the Easter Term. The examination paper will have
2 Sections. Section A, covering the material from Part I of the course, will have 10 questions. Section B,
covering the material from the modules in Part II, will have 8 Questions (4 for each module). Students must
answer three questions in three hours, 2 from Section A and 1 from Section B. A mock exam paper can be
found at the end of this document.
Lecture List [TBC]
Michaelmas Term 2015
Lecture 1: Introduction
Section I: Political Boundaries and the Scope of Justice
Lecture 2: Theoretical Foundations of Cosmopolitanism
Lecture 3: Nationality and Self-Determination
Lecture 4: Patriotism and the State
Lecture 5: Distributive Justice and Global Poverty
Lecture 6: Global Democracy and Citizenship
Section II: Human Rights
Lecture 7: What are Human Rights?
Lecture 8: Human Rights: Political Conceptions
Lecture 9: Relativism, Universalism, and Human Rights
Lecture 10: Challenging Human Rights
Section III: The Ethics of Political Violence
Lecture 11: Debating the Ethics of War
Lecture 12: The Jus ad Bellum and the Prevention/Pre-emption Distinction
Lecture 13: Jus in Bello and Jus Post Bellum
Lecture 14: Humanitarianism and Humanitarian Intervention
Lecture 15: The Ethics of Terrorism
Lent Term 2016
Module I: Military Intervention and Political Violence
Lecture 1: Why Seek Multilateral Approval?
Lecture 2: NATO’s Humanitarian War over Kosovo
Lecture 3: The U.S. Invasion of Iraq, 2003: Was it a Just War?
Lecture 4: After War: Jus Post-bellum and International Trusteeship (Bosnia, 1995-)
Lecture 5: Strike and Retreat? Supporting Local Insurgents from the Air (Libya, 2011)
Lecture 6: Freedom Fighters or Terrorists? The Ethics of Guerrilla Warfare (Iraq, 2003-)
Module II: Human Rights
Lecture 1: Human Rights Institutions and the Politics of Development
Lecture 2: Migration, Poverty, and Human Rights
Lecture 3: Human Rights and Asian Values
Lecture 4: Human Rights and the Limits of Liberalism
Lecture 5: Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism
Lecture 6: Human Rights and the Responsibility to Protect
Reading Material & Sample Questions
The reading list for Part I is divided into 15 topics which track the course of the lectures. Texts are divided
into three categories: general, core, and supplementary. Each of the Sections starts with a short list of General
readings, which are important for addressing the Section as a whole. Under each of the topic headings you will
find lists of Core and Supplementary readings. The general and core readings are important for preparing
supervision essays. By exam time, you should have read all of the General texts as well as the Core texts
for the topics you are revising. The Supplementary reading lists are provided for those who want to dig
deeper into particular subject areas. Note that many of the readings are relevant for more than one Section.
Readings for Part II are listed under the module descriptions towards the end of this document.
Most of the set texts are accessible through the University Library electronic resources portal or are available
in the SPS library. College libraries also stock some of the key books. However, articles and book chapters that
are not accessible through the electronic portal can be downloaded from the SPS Library CamTools site.
The main background reading is Duncan Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics (Oxford UP, 2010). It covers most
of the themes in the course, but is best used as an introductory overview for each topic.
A list of sample questions can be found under each topic heading. Further sample questions can be found at
the end of each chapter in Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics.
Discussion of ethics and world politics is at the forefront of current academic (as well as public) debates in a
variety of fields and relevant new material is being published all the time. Those wanting to follow the evolving
literature, from a variety of different perspectives, should check the following academic journals, all of which
are available on-line: Constellations: A Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory; European Journal of Social Theory;
European Journal of International Relations; Global Constitutionalism; Journal of Global Ethics; Journal of International
Political Theory; International Theory; Ethics; Ethics & International Affairs; Humanity; Human Rights Quarterly;
Philosophy & Public Affairs; Journal of Political Philosophy; Millennium: Journal of International Studies; Political Theory;
and the Review of International Studies.
The following websites are valuable:
http://plato.stanford.edu
An excellent on-line encyclopaedia of philosophy, covering both key thinkers and important topics.
http://www.e-ir.info/
A wide-ranging website aimed principally at IR students, containing news, essays, podcasts, and commentary
on international politics
http://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199548620/
The On-line Resource Centre page for Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics includes a list of further case studies
for chapters in Part III of the book, as well as interactive flashcards to helps students learn key concepts
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
The text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
http://www.undp.org/
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) site contains information about global inequality and
poverty, including the annual Human Development Reports
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
The UN Millennium Development Goals
http://www.justwartheory.com/
An excellent collection of resources dedicated to the ethics of war
Introduction: Realism and Moralism in World Politics
Sample Questions:
- What, if anything, is wrong with moralism in international politics?
- Is political realism necessarily a conservative position?
- Utopianism is an essential part of any good political theory. Discuss.
Core Reading
- Duncan Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics (Oxford UP, 2010), Introduction & chs. 1-5
- C. A. J. Coady, Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics (Oxford UP, 2008)
- William A. Galston, ‘Realism in Political Theory,’ European Journal of Political Theory, 9 (2010)
- Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton UP, 2008), pp. 1-55
- Andrew Hurrell, ‘Order and Justice in International Relations: What’s at Stake?’ in Rosemary Foot,
John Lewis Gaddis & Andrew Hurrell (eds.), Order and Justice in International Relations (Oxford UP,
2003)
- Charles Mills, ‘“Ideal Theory” as Ideology,’ Hypatia, 20 (2005)
- William Scheuerman, ‘The Realist Revival in Political Philosophy, or: Why New is Not Always
Improved,’ International Politics, 50/6 (2013)
Supplementary Reading
- Jonathan Allen, ‘The Place of Negative Morality in Political Theory,’ Political Theory, 29/3 (2001)
- Joshua Busby, Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge UP, 2010)
- David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro (eds.), Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics
(Minnesota UP, 1999) [explores post-structural arguments about global ethics]
- C.A.J. Coady (ed.), What’s Wrong with Moralism? (Blackwell, 1996)
- David Estlund, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton UP, 2008), pp. 263-75
- Raymond Geuss, ‘Outside Ethics’ in his Outside Ethics (Princeton UP, 2005)
- Stanley Hoffmann, Duties beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of Ethical International Politics
(Heath, 1981)
- Andrew Hurrell, On Global Order: Power, Values, and the Constitution of International Society (Oxford UP,
2007) [A wide-ranging text in the ‘English School’ tradition]
- Renee Jeffrey, Reason and Emotion in International Ethics (Cambridge UP, 2014)
- Margaret Kohn & Keally McBride, Political Theories of Decolonization: Postcolonialism and the Problem of
Foundations (Oxford UP, 2011) [Non-western theory, includes discussion of Fanon and Gandhi]
- Will Kymlicka and William Sullivan (eds.), The Globalization of Ethics: Religious and Secular Perspectives
(Cambridge UP, 2007) [A useful account of contending approaches, especially religious ones]
- James Laidlaw, The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom (Cambridge UP, 2013) [An
anthropology of ethics]
- Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge UP, 2003)
- Mark Philp, Political Conduct (Harvard UP, 2007) [A ‘realist’ account of political thought & action]
- Richard M. Price (ed.), Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics (Cambridge UP, 2008) [on IR
constructivism and ethics]
- Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of International Relations (Oxford
UP, 2008) [An excellent overview of IR theory and its ethical dimensions]
- Judith Shklar, ‘The Liberalism of Fear’ in Shklar, Political Thought and Political Thinkers, ed. Stanley
Hoffmann (Chicago UP, 1988)
- Michael C. Williams, The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations (Cambridge UP, 2005)
[re-reading realism as a form of critical political theory]
- Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Routledge, 2006 [1985]) [A sceptical classic]
- Bernard Williams, ‘Realism and Moralism in Political Theory’ in Williams, In the Beginning was the
Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, ed. Geoffrey Hawthorn (Princeton UP, 2007)
Section I: Political Boundaries and the Scope of Justice
The lectures in this section discuss the theoretical bases for conflicting normative arguments about
world politics. Lecture 1 discusses cosmopolitanism. Lectures 2 and 3 introduce prominent alternatives
to cosmopolitanism, focusing on the ethical status of states and nations. Lectures 1-3 provide the main
theoretical arguments for thinking about the topics covered in the following two lectures – global
poverty (Lecture 4) and democracy in the international system (Lecture 5).
General Readings for Section I:
-
Nancy Fraser, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (Columbia UP, 2008)
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Harvard UP, 1999)
Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, 2nd ed. (Polity, 2008)
Pogge’s volume is one of the pioneering texts in the recent upsurge of interest in cosmopolitanism, and
among other things it proposes a ‘Global Resources Dividend’ to address global poverty. In contrast,
Rawls, the most influential liberal philosopher of the twentieth century, presents a non-cosmopolitan
theory focusing on the idea of ‘a people’. Fraser, meanwhile, draws on the legacy of ‘Critical Theory’ in
order to present a distinctive radical cosmopolitanism.
Theoretical Foundations of Cosmopolitanism
Sample Questions
- Is cosmopolitanism a normatively desirable position in the contemporary world?
- Cosmopolitanism is the ideology of the global managerial class. Discuss.
- What is the relationship between ‘empirical’ and ‘normative’ accounts of cosmopolitanism?
Core Reading
- Craig Calhoun, ‘The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travelers: Towards a Critique of Actually
Existing Cosmopolitanism,’ South Atlantic Quarterly, 101/4 (2002)
- Simon Caney, ‘Cosmopolitanism’ in Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics
- Simon Caney, Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (Oxford UP, 2005), esp. chs. 1-4
- Fraser, Scales of Justice, chs. 1-4
- Pratap Bhanu Mehta, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Circle of Reason,’ Political Theory, 28 (2000)
- Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, esp. chs. 1, 7
- Charles Mills, ‘Race and Global Justice’ in Barbara Buckinx et al (eds.), Domination and Global
Political Justice: Conceptual, Historical and Institutional Perspectives (Routledge, 2014)
- Martha Nussbaum, ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’ in For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of
Patriotism, ed. J. Cohen (Beacon, 1996)
Supplementary Reading
On ‘Empirical’ Cosmopolitanism:
- Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minnesota UP, 1996)
- Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande, ‘Varieties of Second Modernity: The Cosmopolitan Turn in Social
and Political Theory and Research,’ British Journal of Sociology, 61 (2010)
- Ulrich Beck & Natan Sznaider (eds.), British Journal of Sociology, ‘Cosmopolitan Sociology’ (2006)
- Ulrich Beck, The Cosmopolitan Vision (Polity, 2006) [By a leading social theorist]
- Gerard Delanty (ed.), Handbook of Cosmopolitan Studies (Routledge, 2012) [a wide ranging collection
of essays]
-
Gerald Delanty, The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory (Cambridge UP,
2009)
Hiro Saito, ‘An Actor-Network Theory of Cosmopolitanism,’ Sociological Theory, 29 (2011)
Manfred Steger, The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global
War on Terror (Oxford UP, 2008), esp. the discussion of ‘Justice Globalism’ (ch. 5)
On ‘Ethical’ Accounts of Cosmopolitanism:
- Kwame Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Norton, 2006) [defending ‘cultural
contamination’ and a ‘thin’ form of liberal cosmopolitanism]
- Brian Barry, ‘Statism and Nationalism: A Cosmopolitan Critique’ in Ian Shapiro and Leo Brilmayer
(eds.), Global Justice (NYU Press, 1999)
- Jens Bartelson, Visions of World Community (Cambridge UP, 2009) [A powerful historical account]
- Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, 2nd ed. (Princeton UP, 1999) [A classic]
- Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (Cambridge UP, 2004)
- Seyla Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism (Oxford UP, 2006)
- Gillian Brock, Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford UP, 2009), esp. chs. 1-4
- Gillian Brock (ed.), Cosmopolitanism versus Non-Cosmopolitanism: Critiques, Defenses, Reconceptualizations
(Oxford UP, 2013) [cutting-edge essays on cosmopolitanism]
- G. Brock and H. Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (Cambridge UP, 2005)
- Allen Buchanan, Justice, Legitimacy and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law
(Oxford UP, 2004), esp. ch. 1-4 [a very influential text combining philosophy and law]
- Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (eds.), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation
(Minnesota UP, 1998) [non-liberal, post-colonial cosmopolitanisms]
- Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (Routledge, 2001) [a ‘post-modern’
cosmopolitics]
- Toni Erskine, Embedded Cosmopolitanism: Duties to Strangers and Enemies in a World of “Dislocated
Communities” (Oxford UP, 2008) [addresses the communitarian challenge]
- Farah Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice, Discipline (Oxford UP, 2011) [on nonwestern iterations of cosmopolitanism]
- Jürgen Habermas, ‘Kant’s Idea of Perpetual Peace, with the Benefit of Two Hundred Years’
Hindsight’ in James Bohman and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (eds.), Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s
Cosmopolitan Ideal (MIT Press, 1997) [by the leading critical theorist of his generation]
- David Harvey, Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom (Columbia UP, 2009) [a powerful
Marxist critique of mainstream cosmopolitan arguments]
- David Held, Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities (Polity, 2011) [A good, basic introduction]
- James Ingram, Radical Cosmopolitcs: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic Universalism (Columbia UP,
2013) [a critical theoretic challenge to liberal moral cosmopolitanism]
- Charles Jones, Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism (Oxford UP, 1999)
- Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (Routledge, 2005), ch. 5 [A neo-Schmittian critique]
- Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Harvard UP, 2007)
- Onora O’Neill, Bounds of Justice (Cambridge UP, 2000) [An influential neo-Kantian approach]
- Sheldon Pollock, Homi Bhaba, Carol Breckenridge, & Dipesh Chakrabarty (eds.) Cosmopolitanism
(Duke UP, 2002) [Non-liberal cosmopolitanisms]
- Samuel Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought
(Oxford UP, 2001), esp. chs. 2,3,4 & 7 [important essays on liberal theories of justice]
- Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen (eds.), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice
(Oxford UP, 2002) [A useful interdisciplinary collection of essays]
- Richard Vernon, Cosmopolitan Regard: Political Membership and Global Justice (Cambridge UP, 2010)
- Jeremy Waldron, ‘Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan Alternative,’ University of Michigan Journal
of Law Reform, 25 (1992) [an influential and fierce critique of culturalist arguments]
- Jeremy Waldron, ‘What is Cosmopolitan?’ Journal of Political Philosophy, 8 (2000)
- Lea Ypi, Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency (Oxford UP, 2011
Nationality and Self-Determination
Sample Questions
- Is [(a) liberal democracy OR (b) cosmopolitanism] compatible with nationalism?
- What is ethically significant about nationality?
- Do nations have a right to self-determination?
Core Reading
- Isaiah Berlin, ‘Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power’ in Berlin, Against the Current: Essays in
the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (Viking Press, 1980)
- Avishai Margalit and Joseph Raz, ‘National Self-Determination,’ Journal of Philosophy, 87 (1990)
- David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford UP, 2007)
- Margaret Moore, ‘Defending Community: Nationalism, Patriotism, and Culture’ in Bell (ed.), Ethics
and World Politics
- Roger Scruton, ‘In Defence of the Nation’ in Scruton, The Philosopher on Dover Beach (Continuum,
2009)
- Bernard Yack, ‘The Myth of the Civic Nation,’ Critical Review, 10 (1996)
Supplementary Reading
- Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and spread of Nationalism (Verso,
1985) [the most influential recent account of nationalism]
- Duncan Bell, ‘Agonistic Democracy and the Politics of Memory,’ Constellations, 15 (2008)
- Seyla Benhabib, Ian Shapiro, Danilo Petranovich (eds.), Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances
(Cambridge UP, 2007), esp. chs. 3,6,7,10,11
- Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (Sage, 1995) [excellent empirical analysis]
- Allan Buchanan and Margaret Moore (eds.), States, Nations, and Borders: The Ethics of Making
Boundaries (Cambridge UP, 2003) [Covers a variety of philosophical and religious perspectives
- Margaret Canovan, Nationhood and Political Theory (Edward Elgar, 1996)
- Joan Cocks, Passion and Paradox: Intellectuals Confront the National Question (Princeton UP, 2002)
- Chaim Gans, The Limits of Nationalism (Cambridge UP, 2003)
- Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (Farrar, 1995)
- Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford UP, 1995) [a very
influential defence of liberal multiculturalism]
- Andrew Mason, Community, Solidarity and Belonging: Levels of Community and their Normative Significance
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000) [dissects arguments about different types of ‘community’]
- Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Harvard UP, 2002) [on the ethical significance of the past]
- R. McKim and J. McMahan (eds.), The Morality of Nationalism (Oxford UP, 2007)
- David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford UP, 1995) [a classic account]
- Margaret Moore, The Ethics of Nationalism (Oxford UP, 2001)
- Rahul Rao, Third World Protest: Between Home and the World (Oxford UP, 2010), esp. chs. 1-4
- Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton UP, 1993) [an influential defence of the nation]
- Charles Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in his Philosophical Arguments (Harvard UP, 2007) [C]
- James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge UP, 1995)
- Michael Walzer, ‘Nation and Universe’ in Walzer, Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory, ed.
David Miller (Yale UP, 2007)
- Bernard Yack, Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community (Chicago UP, 2012)
The State and Patriotism
Sample Questions
- Is patriotism a virtue or a vice?
- Does membership of a state generate special obligations to compatriots?
- Is constitutional patriotism simply another name for liberal nationalism?
Core Reading
- Margaret Canovan, ‘Patriotism is Not Enough,’ British Journal of Political Science, 30 (2000)
- Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics, chs. 6 & 20
- George Kateb, ‘Is Patriotism a Mistake?’ Social Research, 67 (2000)
- Cécile Laborde, ‘From Constitutional to Civic Patriotism,’ British Journal of Political Science, 32 (2002)
- Jan-Werner Müller, Constitutional Patriotism (Princeton UP, 2007)
- Thomas Nagel, ‘The Problem of Global Justice,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 33/2 (2005)
- Rawls, The Law of Peoples
Supplementary Reading
- Allen Buchanan, ‘Rawls’s Law of Peoples: Rules for a Vanished Westphalian World,’ Ethics, 110/4
(2000) [a cosmopolitan critique of Rawls]
- Michael Blake, ‘Distributive Justice, State Coercion and Autonomy,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 30/3
(2001) [an argument about the normative significance of the state, focusing on coercion]
- Michael Blake, Justice and Foreign Policy (Oxford UP, 2013), esp. ch. 1
- Simon Caney, ‘Distributive Justice and the State,’ Political Studies, 57 (2008)
- Samuel Freeman, Rawls (Routledge, 2007), esp. ch. 10 [The best general introduction to Rawls]
- Robert Goodin, ‘What is so Special about our Fellow Countrymen?’ Ethics, 98 (1988)
- Jürgen Habermas, ‘The European Nation-State: On the Past and Future of Sovereignty and
Citizenship’ in Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Polity, 1996)
- Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford UP, 2000)
- Patchen Markell, ‘Making Affect Safe for Democracy: On “Constitutional Patriotism,”’ Political
Theory, 28 (2000) [an excellent essay]
- Rex Martin and David Reify (eds.), Rawls’s Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia? (Blackwell, 2006)
- Richard Miller, Globalizing Justice: The Ethics of Poverty and Power (Oxford UP, 2010)
- Terry Nardin, Law, Morality, and the Relations of States (Princeton UP, 1983) [A classic discussion]
- Philip Pettit, ‘A Republican Law of Peoples,’ European Journal of Political Theory, 9/1 (2010)
- Andrea Sangiovanni, ‘Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35/1
(2007) [Another statist argument, focusing on the issue of reciprocity]
- Hent Kalmo & Quentin Skinner (eds.), Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present and Future of a
Contested Concept (Cambridge UP, 2010), esp. ch. 1,4,5,8,12
- Stephen Macedo, ‘Just Patriotism?’ Philosophy & Social Criticism, 37 (2011)
- Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘Is Patriotism a Virtue?’ in Ronald Beiner (ed.), Theorizing Citizenship (SUNY
Press, 1995)
- Kok-Chor Tan, Justice Without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Patriotism (CUP, 2004)
- Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism (Oxford UP, 1995)
- Alexander Wendt, ‘Why a World State is Inevitable,’ European Journal of International Relations, 9
(2003) [An intriguing argument, from a leading IR scholar, about the direction of world politics]
- Hugh Lloyd Williams, ‘The Law of Peoples’ in David Reidy and Jon Mandle (eds.), A Companion to
Rawls (Blackwell, 2013) [other chapters look at Rawls on the just war, human rights, etc.]
Distributive Justice and Global Poverty
Sample Questions
- What is the libertarian objection to egalitarian global wealth distribution?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of Pogge’s argument about negative duties?
- Is there a basic right to subsistence?
Core Reading
- Garret Hardin, ‘Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor,’ Psychology Today, 8 (1974) [C]
www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html
(For a satirical response: Harrett Gardin [Michael Patton], ‘Game Preserve Ethics: The Case for
Hunting the Poor,’ Southwest Philosophy Review (2005))
- Alison Jaggar, ‘“Saving Amina”: Global Justice for Women and Intercultural Dialogue,’ Ethics &
International Affairs, 19/3 (2005)
- Margaret Kohn, ‘Postcolonialism and Global Justice,’ Journal of Global Ethics, 9 (2013)
- Chandran Kukuthas, ‘The Mirage of Global Justice,’ Social Philosophy & Policy, 23 (2006)
- Kok-Chor Tan, ‘Poverty and Global Distributive Justice’ in Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics
- Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, esp. chs. 4,8,9
- Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. (Princeton UP, 1996)
- Iris Marion Young, ‘Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model,’ Social Philosophy
& Policy, 23 (2006)
- Peter Singer, ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1 (1972)
Supplementary Reading
- Andrew Altman and Christopher Heath Wellman, A Liberal Theory of International Justice (Oxford
UP, 2009), esp. ch. 6 [A libertarian account, sceptical of global redistribution]
- Christian Barry and Thomas Pogge (eds.), Global Institutions and Responsibilities: Achieving Global Justice
(Blackwell, 2006), esp. chs. 2,4,6,8, 13
- Charles Beitz (ed.), Global Basic Rights (Oxford UP, 2009) [Dedicated to Shue’s work]
- Gillian Brock, ‘Taxation and Global Justice: Closing the Gap Between Theory and Practice,’ Journal
of Social Philosophy, 39/2 (2008) [explores policy options for addressing global poverty]
- Simon Caney, ‘Global Justice: From Theory to Practice,’ Globalizations, 3/2 (2006)
- Monique Deveaux, ‘The Global Poor as Agents,’ Journal of Moral Philosophy (2014)
- David Held and Aysa Kaye (eds.), Global Poverty: Patterns and Explanations (Polity, 2007)
- Alison M. Jaggar (ed.), Thomas Pogge and His Critics (Polity, 2010), esp. the chapter by J. Cohen
- Alison Jaggar (ed.), Gender and Global Justice (Polity, 2014) [an important analysis of gender in GJ]
- Thomas McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development (Cambridge UP, 2009), esp. chs.
1,6,7 [Habermasian account of connections between development and empire]
- Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Harvard UP, 2011) [A
useful introduction to the influential ‘capabilities’ position]
- Thomas Pogge, Politics as Usual: What Lies behind the Pro-Poor Rhetoric (Polity, 2010)
- Mathias Risse, On Global Justice (Princeton UP, 2012) [a very wide-ranging ‘pluralist’ account]
- Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey, ‘Resisting “Global Justice”: Disrupting the Colonial
“Emancipatory” Logic of the West,’ Third World Quarterly, 30 (2009)
- Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Oxford UP, 2001) [An influential volume]
- Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization, 2nd ed. (Yale UP, 2004)
- Thomas Weiss, ‘What Happened to the Idea of World Government?’ International Studies Quarterly,
53 (2009) [calls for a return to thinking seriously about the idea]
- Leif Wenar, ‘Property Rights and the Resource Curse,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 36 (2008)
- Lea Ypi, Christian Barry, and Robert Goodin, ‘Associative Duties, Global Justice, and the
Colonies,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 37/2 (2009) [a rare essay addressing the question of empire]
Global Democracy and Citizenship
Sample Questions
- What differentiates ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ from projects to create a world state?
- Is it possible – or desirable – to democratise international institutions?
- Is the concept of citizenship intelligible outside the context of the state?
Core Reading
- Daniele Archibugi, The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Towards Cosmopolitan Democracy (Princeton UP,
2008) OR ALTERNATIVELY David Held, Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the
Washington Consensus (Polity, 2004)
- Seyla Benhabib, ‘Citizens, Residents, and Aliens in a Changing World: Political Membership in the
Global Era,’ Social Research, 66 (1999)
- James Bohman, ‘Democracy and World Politics’ in Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics
- Robert Dahl, ‘Can International Organizations be Democratic? A Skeptics View’ in Ian Shapiro &
Casiano Hacker-Cordon (eds.), Democracy’s Edges (Cambridge UP, 1999)
- Fraser, Scales of Justice, esp. chs. 5 & 6
- Matthias Koenig-Archibugi, ‘Is Global Democracy Possible?’ European Journal of International
Relations, 16 (2011)
- Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, ch. 6
- William Scheuerman, ‘The (Classical) Realist Vision of Global Reform,’ International Theory, 2/2 (2010)
- Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford UP, 2000), ch. 7
Supplementary Reading
- Daniele Archibugi, Matthias Koenig-Archibugi, and Raffaele Marchetti (eds.), Global Democracy:
Normative and Empirical Perspectives (Cambridge UP, 2011) [An excellent new collection of essays]
- James Bohman, Democracy Across Borders: From Demos to Demoi (MIT Press, 2007)
- Luis Cabrera, The Practice of Global Citizenship (Oxford UP, 2011)
- Jean Cohen, Globalization and Sovereignty: Rethinking Legality, Legitimacy, and Constitutionalism
(Cambridge UP, 2012) [a major account critical of cosmopolitan democracy]
- John Dryzek, Deliberative Global Politics: Discourse and Democracy in a Divided World (Polity, 2006)
- Carol Gould, Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights (Cambridge UP, 2004)
- Robert Goodin, ‘Global Democracy: In the Beginning,’ International Theory, 2/2 (2010)
- Nicolas Guilhot, The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and the Politics of Global Order (Columbia UP,
2005) [A critical account of Western democracy-promotion]
- David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Polity,
1995) [One of the first arguments for CD]
- Bonnie Honig, ‘Between Decision and Deliberation: Political Paradox in Democratic Theory,’
American Political Science Review, 101/1 (2007) [post-structural critique of deliberative democracy]
- Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the Post-Westphalian
Era (Polity, 1998) [A broadly Habermasian work by a leading IR Critical Theorist]
- Ian Shapiro, The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton UP, 2003) [Overview of democratic theory]
- Jan Aart Scholte (ed.), Building Global Democracy? Civil Society and Accountable Global Governance
(Cambridge UP, 2011)
- Torbjorn Tannsjo, Global Democracy: The Case for a World Government (Edinburgh UP, 2008)
- Danilo Zolo, Cosmopolis: Prospects for World Government (Polity, 1997) [A neo-Schmittian critique]
Section II: Human Rights
The lectures in this section introduce and assess the idea of human rights. The sequence opens with a
general introduction to the notion of a human right (Lecture 7). Lecture 8 focuses on recent attempts
to develop a ‘political’ conception of rights in order to address concerns about the philosophical
foundations of the idea. Lecture 9 examines further attempts to overcome the problem of foundations,
concentrating in particular on the issue of relativism. Lecture 10, meanwhile, introduces some feminist,
Marxist and post-colonial criticisms of liberal conceptions of human rights.
General Readings for Section II
-
Charles Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights (Oxford UP, 2009)
Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed. (Cornell UP, 2003) OR
ALTERNATIVELY James Nickel, Making Sense of Human Rights, 2nd ed. (Blackwell, 2006)
Fuyuki Kurasawa, The Work of Global Justice: Human Rights as Practices (Cambridge UP, 2007)
Universal Declaration of Human Rights – available at http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Donnelly and Nickel can both serve as lucid introductory overviews of the idea of human rights,
though both also defend their own distinct views on the subject. Beitz develops a sophisticated
‘political’ conception of human rights. Kurasawa presents a different perspective, mixing sociology and
political thought to move away from abstract conceptions of rights in order to focus on how social
actors utilise rights claims to seek emancipation from oppression.
What are Human Rights?
Sample Questions
- What are human rights?
- What distinguishes human rights from other kinds of rights?
- Does the recent history of the human rights movement tell us anything important about the
concept of human rights?
Core Reading
- Duncan Ivison, ‘Human Rights’ in Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics
- Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, chs. 1-3 OR Nickel, Making Sense of Human
Rights, chs. 1-5
- Marie-Bénédicte Dembour, ‘What Are Human Rights? Four Schools of Thought,’ Human Rights
Quarterly, 32 (2010)
- Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Harvard UP, 2010)
Supplementary Reading
Histories of (Human) Rights:
- Robin Blackburn, ‘Reclaiming Human Rights,’ New Left Review (May-June 2011) [an extended
critical review of Moyn]
- Annabel Brett, Liberty, Right, and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought (Cambridge UP,
2003)
- Roland Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights (Pennsylvania UP, 2010)
- Mary Ann Gledon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(Random House, 2001)
- Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (Norton, 2007) [a key target for Moyn]
- Johannes Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent (1999)
-
Samuel Moyn, Human Rights and the Uses of History (Verso, 2014) [a collection of short essays]
Richard Tuck, Theories of Natural Rights: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge UP, 1981)
Jay Winter, Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the Twentieth Century (Yale, 2007), ch. 4
Theoretical (and Occasional Empirical) Accounts of Human Rights
-
-
Allen Buchanan, Human Rights, Legitimacy, and the Use of Force (Oxford UP, 2010), esp. Part I
Allen Buchanan, The Heart of Human Rights (Oxford UP, 2014) [an important study]
Sabine C. Carey, Mark Gibney & Steven C. Poe, The Politics of Human Rights: The Quest for Dignity
(Cambridge UP, 2010) [an introduction, focusing on empirical issues]
Thomas Christiano, ‘An Instrumental Argument for a Human Right to Democracy,’ Philosophy &
Public Affairs, 39 (2011)
Joshua Cohen, ‘Is there a Human Right to Democracy?’ in Christine Sypnowich (ed.), The
Egalitarian Conscience: Essays in Honour of G. A. Cohen (Oxford UP, 2006)
Roger Crisp (ed.), Griffin on Human Rights (Oxford UP, 2014) [dedicated to Griffin’s work]
Tim Dunne and Nicholas J. Wheeler (eds.), Human Rights and Global Politics (Cambridge UP, 1999),
esp. chs. 2 & 3 [A useful collection mixing IR and political theory]
Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Harvard UP, 1978) [A major theorist of rights]
David P. Forsythe, Human Rights in International Relations, 2nd ed. (Cambridge UP, 2006) [A useful
textbook for IR students]
Mark Frezzo, The Sociology of Human Rights: An Introduction (Polity, 2014)
Pablo Gilabert, ‘Humanist and Political Perspectives on Human Rights,’ Political Theory (2011)
Michael Goodhart (ed.), Human Rights: Theory and Practice (Oxford UP, 2009), esp. chs. 1-4, 7 [An
excellent interdisciplinary textbook]
James Griffin, On Human Rights (Oxford UP, 2009) [An important, complex philosophical
exploration; see also the symposium on Griffin in Ethics (July 2010)]
H.L.A. Hart, ‘Are There Any Natural Rights?’ Philosophical Review, 64 (1955) [seminal article]
Susan James, ‘Rights as Enforceable Claims’ in Andrew Kuper (ed.), Global Responsibilities: Who Must
Deliver on Human Rights? (Routledge, 2005)
George Kateb, Human Dignity (Harvard UP, 2011)
Duncan Ivison, Rights (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2007) [A good short introduction]
Julie Mertus, Bait and Switch: Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy (Routledge, 2004) [a useful account
of how human rights are deployed in foreign policy]
Johannes Morsink, Inherent Human Rights: Philosophical Roots of the Universal Declaration (2009)
James Nickel, ‘Rethinking Indivisibility: Towards a Theory of Supporting Relations between
Human Rights,’ Human Rights Quarterly, 30 (2008)
Michael J. Perry, The Idea of Human Rights: Four Enquiries (Oxford UP, 1998)
Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford UP, 1986) [a leading theorist of rights]
Joseph Raz, ‘Human Rights without Foundations’ in Samantha Besson and John Tasioulas (eds.),
The Philosophy of International Law (Oxford UP, 2010)
Mathias Risse, ‘Common Ownership of the Earth as a Non-Parochial Standpoint: A Contingent
Derivation of Human Rights,’ European Journal of Philosophy, 17/2 (2009)
Amartya Sen, ‘Elements of a Theory of Human Rights,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 32/4 (2004)
Katherine Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics
(Norton, 2011) [an influential, optimistic account]
Jeremy Waldron, Liberal Rights: Collected Papers, 1981-1991 (Cambridge UP, 1993) [important essays
by a leading theorist]
Jeremy Waldron (ed.), Theories of Rights (Oxford UP, 1984) [A selection of classic essays on rights]
Jeremy Waldron, ‘The Role of Rights in Practical Reasoning: Rights versus Needs,’ The Journal of
Ethics 4 (2000)
Leif Wenar, ‘The Nature of Rights,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs, 33 (2005)
Human Rights: Political Conceptions
Sample Questions
- What does Hannah Arendt mean by the ‘right to have rights’?
- Do human rights need secure philosophical foundations?
- Should we insist on a minimal conception of human rights?
Core Reading
- Hannah Arendt, ‘The Decline of the Nation-State and the end of the Rights of Man’ in Arendt, The
Origins of Totalitarianism ([1951] available in multiple editions)
- Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights
- Seyla Benhabib, ‘Claiming Rights across Borders: International Human Rights and Democratic
Sovereignty,’ American Political Science Review, 103 (2009)
- Joshua Cohen, ‘Minimalism About Human Rights: The Most We Can Hope For?’ Journal of Political
Philosophy, 12 (2004)
- Jean Cohen, ‘Rethinking Human Rights, Democracy, and Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization,’
Political Theory, 36 (2008)
- Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (Princeton UP, 2001)
Supplementary Reading
- Brooke Ackerly, Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference (Cambridge UP, 2008) [a subtle
feminist account]
- Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, new ed. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003)
[includes an influential critique of Arendt on rights]
- Peg Birmingham, Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility (Indiana
UP, 2006)
- Allen Buchanan, Human Rights, Legitimacy, and the Use of Force (Oxford UP, 2010)
- Margaret Canovan, Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought (Cambridge UP, 2003)
- Adam Etinson (ed.) Human Rights: Moral or Political (Oxford UP, 2014) [cutting-edge essays]
- Jeffrey C. Isaac, ‘A New Guarantee on Earth: Hannah Arendt on Human Dignity and the Politics
of Human Rights,’ American Political Science Review, 90 (1996)
- Benjamin Gregg, Human-Rights as Social Construction (Cambridge UP, 2012)
- Duncan Ivison, ‘Republican Human Rights,’ European Journal of Political Theory, 9 (2010) [challenges
view that republicans do not have a theory of human rights]
- Andrew Kuper (ed.), Global Responsibilities: Who Must Deliver on Human Rights? (Routledge, 2005) [a
useful collection of essays on who should uphold rights
- Onora O’Neill, ‘The Dark Side of Human Rights,’ International Affairs, 81 (2005)
- Patricia Owens, ‘Refugees and the “Right to Have Rights”’ in Alexander Betts & Gil Loescher
(eds.), Refugees in International Relations (Oxford UP, 2010) [Arendtian reflections]
- Serena Parekh, ‘Resisting “Dull and Torpid” Assent: Returning to the Debate over the
Foundations of Human Rights,’ Human Rights Quarterly, 29 (2007) [Arendt, again]
- Serena Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity: A Phenomenology of Human Rights
(Routledge, 2008)
- Christian Reus-Smit, ‘Struggles for Individual Rights and the Expansion of the International
System,’ International Organization, 65 (2011)
- Dana Villa (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt (Cambridge UP, 2000), esp. chs. 1, 2, 4,
6, 10, 11 [On diverse aspects of Arendt’s thought]
- Andrew Vincent, The Politics of Human Rights (Oxford UP, 2010) [A useful introduction, focusing on
the politics of rights]
Relativism, Universalism & Human Rights
Sample Questions
- What is cultural (or moral) universalism?
- Does the fact that different cultures have different views on ethics invalidate theories of universal
human rights?
- Is Rorty’s account of sentimental education a compelling response to the problem of relativism?
Core Reading
- Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, chs. 4-7 OR Nickel, Making Sense of Human
Rights, ch. 11
- Clifford Geertz, ‘Anti-Anti-Relativism,’ American Anthropologist, 86/2 (1984)
- Kurasawa, The Work of Global Justice
- Steven Lukes, Moral Relativism (Profile, 2007)
- Susan Moller Okin, ‘Feminism, Women’s Human Rights, and Cultural Differences,’ Hypatia, 13/2
(1998)
- Michael J. Perry, ‘Are Human Rights Universal? The Relativist Challenge and Related Matters,’
Human Rights Quarterly, 19/3 (1997)
- Richard Rorty, ‘Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality’ in Susan Hurley and Stephen Shute
(eds.), On Human Rights: The 1993 Oxford Amnesty Lectures (Basic, 1993)
Supplementary Reading
- Michael Bacon, Richard Rorty: Pragmatism and Political Liberalism (Lexington, 2007) [Defends Rorty]
- Jose-Manuel Baretto, ‘Rorty and Human Rights: Contingency, Emotions and How to Defend
Human Rights Telling Stories,’ Utrecht Law Review, 7/2 (2011)
- Daniel A. Bell, East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia (Princeton UP, 2000)
- Richard J. Bernstein, The Pragmatic Turn (Polity, 2001), esp. ch. 10 [A good introduction]
- Molly Cochran, Normative Theory in International Relations: A Pragmatic Approach (Camb. UP, 1997)
- John Cook, Morality and Cultural Differences (Oxford UP, 1999) [charts a subtle middle ground]
- Jack Donnelly, ‘The Relative Universality of Human Rights,’ Human Rights Quarterly, 29/2 (2007)
- Harri Englund, Human Rights and the African Poor (California UP, 2006) [an anthropologists account,
critical of abstract notions of human rights]
- Matthew Festenstein, Pragmatism and Political Theory: From Dewey to Rorty (Polity, 1997), chs. 4-6
- Matthew Festenstein & Simon Thompson (eds.), Richard Rorty: Critical Dialogues (Polity, 2001)
- Gilbert Harman and Judith Jarvis Thompson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (Blackwell, 1996)
[A sophisticated debate between a leading moral relativist (Harman) and a critic]
- David Hollinger, ‘How Wide the Circle of the “We”? American Intellectuals and the Problem of
the Ethnos since World War II,’ American Historical Review, 98 (1993)[Contextualises Rorty]
- Martin Hollis & Steven Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism (MIT, 1984) [a classic collection]
- Michael Krauz (ed.), Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (Notre Dame UP, 1989)
- Alastair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Duckworth, 2007) [Classic text]
- C. B. Miller, ‘Rorty and Moral Relativism, European Journal of Philosophy, 10 (2001)
- P. K. Moser and T.L. Carson, (eds.), Moral Relativism: A Reader (Oxford UP, 2001) [Collection of
classic essays by anthropologists and philosophers]
- Richard Rorty, ‘Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism,’ Journal of Philosophy, 80 (1983)
- Richard Rorty, ‘Ethics without Principles’ in Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (Penguin, 1999)
- Kelly Staples (2011) ‘Statelessness, Sentimentality and Human Rights: A Critique of Rorty’s Liberal
Human Rights Culture,’ Philosophy and Social Criticism, 37 (2011)
- John J. Tilley, ‘Cultural Relativism,’ Human Rights Quarterly, 22/2 (2000) [An analysis and critique]
- Bernard Williams, ‘The Truth in Relativism’ in Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge UP, 1981)
Challenging Human Rights
Sample Questions
- Why are post-colonial scholars often sceptical of human rights discourse?
- ‘Are Women Human?’ (Catherine Mackinnon). Discuss.
- If human rights are the product of western imperial history, does this invalidate them?
Core Reading
- Jean Cohen, ‘Sovereign Equality vs. Imperial Right: The Battle over the “New World Order,”’
Constellations, 13 (2006)
- Costas Douzinas, ‘The Paradoxes of Human Rights,’ Constellations, 20 (2013)
- Raymond Geuss, History and Illusion in Politics (Cambridge UP, 2001), esp. pp. 131-53
- Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights (Cornell UP, 2013), ch. 1
- Catherine MacKinnon, ‘Women’s Status, Men’s States’ in MacKinnon, Are Women Human and Other
International Dialogues (Harvard UP, 2007) [see also her brief ‘Are Women Human?’]
- Makau Mutua, ‘Savages, Victims, and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights,’ Harvard
International Law Journal, 42 (2001)
- James Tully, ‘Lineages of Contemporary Imperialism’ in Duncan Kelly (ed.), The Historical Roots of
British Imperial Thought (Oxford UP, 2009)
Supplementary Reading
- Giorgio Agamben, ‘Beyond Human Rights’ in Agamben, Means without Ends: Notes on Politics
(Minnesota UP, 2000)
- Talal Asad, ‘What Do Human Rights Do? An Anthropological Enquiry,’ Theory and Event, 4/4
(2000)
- Etienne Balibar, ‘On the Politics of Human Rights,’ Constellations, 20 (2013)
- Daniel Bell, East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia (Princeton UP, 2006)
- Wendy Brown, ‘Suffering Rights as Paradoxes,’ Constellations, 7 (2000)
- Costas Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire: The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (Routledge,
2007) [An elaborated version of the article listed above]
- Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics, pp. 60-70
- Siba N’Zatioula Grovogui, ‘Mind, Body, and Gut! Elements of a Postcolonial Human Rights
Discourse’ in Brawen Gruffyd Jones (ed.), Decolonizing International Relations (Rowman & Littlefield,
2006)
- David Kennedy, The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism (Princeton UP,
2004)
- Margaret Kohn, ‘Postcolonialism’ in Duncan Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics
- John Lechte and Saul Newman, ‘Agamben, Arendt and Human Rghts: Bearing Witness to the
Human,’ European Journal of Social Theory (2012)
- Susan Marks, ‘Human Rights and Root Causes,’ Modern Law Review, 74/1 (2011)
- Makau Mutua, Human Rights: A Political & Cultural Critique (U Penn Press, 2002)
- Makau Mutua, ‘Standard Setting in Human Rights: Critique and Prognosis,’ Human Rights Quarterly,
29/3 (2007)
- Anne Orford, Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law
(Oxford UP, 2003) [By a critical legal theorist]
- Anthony Pagden, ‘Stoicism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Legacy of Europe’s Imperialism,’
Constellations, 7 (2000)
- Jacques Ranciere, ‘Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?’ South Atlantic Quarterly, 103 (2004)
- Niamh Reilly, Women’s Human Rights: Seeking Gender Justice in a Globalising Age (Polity, 2009)
- Randall Williams, The Divided World: Human Rights and its Violence (Minnesota UP, 2010)
- Slavoj Zizek, ‘Against Human Rights,’ New Left Review, 34 (2005) [on an imperial theme]
Section III: The Ethics of War
This section explores some key issues in the contemporary debates on the ethics of war. Lecture 11
discusses how, and to what extent, ethical arguments apply in warfare, and in particular whether the
experience of war renders ethical discourse irrelevant. Lectures 12 and 13 outline the basic contours of
the Just War tradition, the main body of thought for thinking about the ethics of political violence in
the Western world. Lectures 14 and 15 examine a range of arguments about two pressing and
controversial areas: humanitarian intervention and terrorism.
General Reading for Section III
-
Hannah Arendt, On Violence (Mariner, 1970)
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Penguin Classics, 2001)
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 4th ed. (Basic
Books, 2006) [Earlier editions are also usable]
Paul Fussell, ‘Thank God for the Atom Bomb’ and subsequent exchange with Walzer in New
Republic (1981) [Reprinted in Fussell, Killing in Verse and Prose (1988)]
Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars (originally published in 1976), reformulates the just war tradition by
attempting to secularise it. It is the most influential recent discussion of the ethics of war. His debate
with Fussell focuses on whether it is possible for non-combatants to prescribe ethical limits to war.
Arendt’s short book offers a novel conceptual discussion of violence and power, as well as a critique of
certain forms of existential politics. Fanon’s volume, written in the context of colonial oppression, is a
powerful challenge to complacent western views on conflict, and it (in)famously defends violence as a
means to challenge domination.
Debating the Ethics of War
Sample Questions
- Do those who have experienced violence have a privileged position in discussing it?
- Is pacifism a coherent and defensible position?
- How does Walzer justify the validity of the just war tradition?
Core Reading
- Andrew Alexandra, ‘Political Pacifism,’ Social Theory and Practice, 29/4 (2003)
- Charles Jones, More than Just War: Narratives of the Just War and Military Life (Routledge, 2013), Part I
(pp. 1-45) [C]
- Karma Nabulsi, Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law (Oxford UP, 2005), ch. 4
- Patricia Owens, ‘The Ethics of War: Critical Alternatives’ in Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics
- Cheyney Ryan, ‘Self-Defense, Pacifism, and the Possibility of Killing,’ Ethics, 93 (1983)
- Cheyney Ryan, ‘The One Who Burns Herself for Peace,’ Hypatia, 9 (1994)
- Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, esp. chs. 1-3
Supplementary Reading
- Perry Anderson, ‘Arms and Rights: The Adjustable Centre,’ New Left Review, 1/231 (1998)
[reprinted in Anderson, Spectrum: From Left to Right in the World of Ideas (2005)]
- Richard J. Bernstein, Violence: Thinking Without Banisters (Polity, 2013) [includes analysis of Arendt,
Schmitt, Butler, Fanon]
- Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare (Granta,
1999)
-
Peter Brock, Varieties of Pacifism: A Survey from Antiquity to the Outset of the Twentieth Century (Syracuse
UP, 1998) [a good general survey]
Vittorio Bufacchi (ed.), Violence: A Philosophical Anthology (Palgrave, 2009) [a useful collection]
Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (Verso, 2004) [a work by a leading
gender theorist]
Adriana Cavarero, Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence (Columbia UP, 2011) [A dense work of
critical theory]
Martin Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War (Oxford UP, 1987)
Ian Clark, Waging War: A Philosophical Introduction (Oxford UP, 1988)
David Cortright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (Cambridge UP, 2008)
Neta Crawford, Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America's Post-9/11
Wars (Oxford UP, 2013)
Michael Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism and Socialism (Norton, 1997)
Cecile Fabre, Cosmopolitan War (Oxford UP, 2012)
Andrew Fialia, The Just War Myth: The Moral Illusions of War (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) [A pacifist
critique of the Just War tradition]
John Finnis, ‘The Ethics of War and Peace in the Catholic Natural Law Tradition’ in Terry Nardin
(ed.), The Ethics of War and Peace (Princeton UP, 1998) [By a leading Catholic thinker]
Elizabeth Frazer and Kimberley Hutchings, ‘On Politics and Violence: Arendt contra Fanon,’
Contemporary Political Theory, 7 (2008)
Helen Frowe, Defensive Killing: An Essay on War and Self-Defense (Oxford UP, 2014)
Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (Pimlico, 2001) [a powerful
philosophical meditation on the twentieth century]
Michael Gross, Moral Dilemmas of Modern War (Cambridge UP, 2010)
Robert Holmes, On War and Morality (Princeton UP, 1989) [on pacifism]
Kimberley Hutchings, ‘Feminist Ethics and Political Violence,’ International Politics, 44/3 (2007)
Hans Joas and Wolfgang Knobl, War in Social Thought: Hobbes to the Present (Princeton UP, 2013)
Larry May (ed.), War: Essays in Political Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 2008) [An excellent collection]
Thomas Nagel, ‘War and Massacre,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1 (1972) [A classic essay]
Terry Nardin (ed.), The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Princeton UP, 1996)
Richard Norman, Ethics, Killing and War (Cambridge UP, 1995)
Brian Orend, War and International Justice: A Kantian Perspective (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2000)
Patricia Owens, Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt
(Oxford UP, 2007) [Very good account of Arendt’s views]
Gregory Reichberg, M., Henrik Syse, and Endre Begby (eds.), The Ethics of War: Classic and
Contemporary Readings (Blackwell, 2006)
Daniel Philpott, Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation (Oxford UP, 2012)
Bruce Robbins, Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence (Duke UP, 2012)
David Rodin ‘The Ethics of War: State of the Art,’ Journal of Applied Philosophy, 23/3 (2006) [a useful
overview of contemporary philosophical trends]
Cheyney Ryan, War, Sacrifice, and Personal Responsibility (The Chickenhawk Syndrome) (Rowman &
Littlefield, 2009] [a pacifist critique]
Cheyney Ryan, ‘The One Who Burns Herself for Peace,’ Hypatia, 9 (1994) [on the extremes of nonviolent resistance]
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford UP, 2005) [An
extraordinary account of suffering and pain]
‘Special Issue: Just War in the Shadow of 9/11,’ European Journal of Political Theory, 11/2 (2012)
Uwe Steinhoff, On the Ethics of War and Terrorism (OUP, 2007) [A sophisticated discussion]
J. Teichman, Pacifism and the Just War: A Philosophical Examination (Blackwell, 1986)
James Turner Johnson, Morality and Contemporary Warfare (Yale UP, 2001)
The Jus ad Bellum and the Prevention/Pre-emption Distinction
Sample Questions
- Do new technologies render the traditional pre-emption/prevention distinction obsolete?
- Is Walzer’s attempt to ground the just war tradition on secular foundations successful?
- Should feminists reject the just war tradition?
Core Reading
- Michael Doyle, Striking First: Preemption and Prevention in International Conflict (Princeton UP, 2008),
esp. pp. 3-96
- National Security Strategy of the United States (2002)
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/
- Nicholas Rengger, ‘The Ethics of War: The Just War Tradition’ in Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics
- Neta C. Crawford, ‘The Justice of Preemption and Preventive War Doctrines’ in Mark Evans (ed.),
Just War Theory: A Reappraisal (Edinburgh UP, 2005)
- David Luban, ‘Preventive War,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 32 (2004)
- Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech (2009):
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/obama-lecture_en.html
- Laura Sjoberg, ‘Why Just War Needs Feminism Now More than Ever,’ International Politics, 45
(2008)
- Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, esp. chs. 1-7
- Michael Walzer, ‘The Triumph of Just War Theory – and the Dangers of Success,’ Social Research,
69 (2002) [Reprinted in Walzer, Arguing About War (Yale UP, 2004)
Supplementary Reading
Historical & Comparative Dimensions:
- Alex Bellamy, Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq (Polity, 2006)
- Alia Brahimi, Jihad and Just War in the War on Terror (Oxford UP, 2010)
- Torkel Brekke (ed.), The Ethics of War in Asian Civilizations (Routledge, 2009)
- John Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Harvard UP, 2007)
- John Kelsay & James Turner Johnson (eds.), Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on
War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (Greenwood, 1991)
- James Turner Johnson, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry
(Princeton UP, 1981)
- James Turner Johnson, Ideology, Reason and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts, 12001740 (Princeton UP, 1975)
- Richard Sorabji and David Rodin (eds.), The Ethics of War: Shared Problems in Different Traditions
(Ashgate, 2006)
- Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to
Kant (Oxford UP, 1999)
Recent Theoretical Accounts of the Just War Tradition:
- Deborah Bergoffen, ‘The Just War Tradition: Translating the Ethics of Human Dignity into
Political Practices,’ Hypatia, 23 (2008) [a feminist analysis]
- Nigel Biggar, In DEfence of War (Oxford UP, 2013) [by a leading theologian, defending Iraq]
- Allen Buchanan, ‘Institutionalizing the Just War,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 34/1 (2006)
- Allen Buchanan and Robert O. Keohane, ‘The Preventive Use of Force: A Cosmopolitan
Institutional Proposal’, Ethics & International Affairs 18/1 (2004)
- C. A. J. Coady, Morality and Political Violence (Cambridge UP, 2008) [A major secular account]
- Deen Chatterjee (ed.). The Ethics of Preventative War (Cambridge UP, 2013) [a strong collection]
-
Neta Crawford, ‘Just War Theory and the US Counterterror War,’ Perspectives on Politics, 1 (2003)
Mark Evans (ed.), Just War Theory: A Reappraisal (Edinburgh UP, 2005) [Useful set of essays]
Jean Bethke Elshtain, (ed.), Just War Theory (Blackwell, 1992) [A collection of classic texts]
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (Basic
Books, 2003) [See the round-table in International Relations, 21 (2007)] [A prominent American JW
theorist defends the War in Iraq]
Cecile Fabre & Seth Lazar (eds.), The Morality of Defensive War (Oxford UP, 2014)
Elizabeth Frazer and Kimberley Hutchings, ‘Revisiting Ruddick: Feminism, Pacifism and Nonviolence,’ Journal of International Political Theory, 10 (2014)
Charles Guthrie & Michael Quinlan, Just War: Ethics in Modern Warfare (Bloomsbury, 2007) [The
former head of the British Army and the civilian head of the Ministry of Defence]
Eric Heinze and Brent Steele (eds.), Ethics, Authority, and War: Non-State Actors and the Just War
Tradition (Palgrave, 2009)
David C. Hendrickson, ‘In Defense of Realism: A Commentary on Just and Unjust Wars,’ Ethics and
International Affairs, 11 (1997) [A realist responds to Walzer]
Larry May, War Crimes and Just War (Cambridge UP, 2007) [Addressed from a legal angle]
Jeff McMahan, ‘Just Cause for War,’ Ethics and International Affairs, 19 (2005)
Oliver O’Donovan, The Just War Revisited (Cambridge UP, 2003) [a recent theological argument]
Cian O’Driscoll, The Renegotiation of the Just War Tradition and the Right to War in the Twenty-First
Century (Palgrave, 2008) [on the post 9/11 uses and abuses of the just war]
Paul Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Responsibility (Scribner’s, 1968) [a theological account]
Nicholas Rengger, ‘The Judgement of War,’ Review of International Studies, 31 (2005)
N. J. Rengger, Just War and International Order: The Uncivil Condition in World Politics (Cambridge UP,
2013) [influenced by Michael Oakeshott; v. critical of recent Just War scholarship]
Laura Sjoberg, Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq: A Feminist Reformulation of Just War Theory
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)
Henry Shue and David Rodin (eds.), Preemption: Military Action and Moral Justification (Oxford UP,
2007) [an excellent collection of essays]
Jus in Bello and Jus Post Bellum
Sample Questions
- Who should be responsible for post-war reconstruction?
- Should we collapse the distinction between the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello? Discuss with
reference to the moral status of combatants.
- Are the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) ever legitimate?
Core Reading
- Carol Cohn and Sara Ruddick, ‘A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons of Mass Destruction’
in Sohail Hashmi & Steven Lee (eds.), Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction (Cambridge UP, 2004)
[Note that this essay outlines a general feminist position, relevant beyond WMDs]
- Cecile Fabre, ‘War Exit,’ Ethics, 125 (2015)
- James Pattison, ‘Jus Post Bellum and the Responsibility to Rebuild,’ British Journal of Political Science
(2014)
- Stefano Recchia, ‘Just and Unjust Postwar Reconstruction: How Much External Interference can
be Justified?’ Ethics & International Affairs, 23/2 (2009)
- Cheyney Ryan, ‘Democratic Duty and the Moral Dilemmas of Soldiers,’ Ethics, 122 (2011)
- Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, esp. chs. 8-13, 16
- Maja Zehfuss, ‘Targeting: Precision and the Production of Ethics,’ European Journal of International
Relations 17 (2011)
- Compare: Jeff McMahan, ‘Gaza: Is Israel Fighting a Just War?’ Prospect Magazine (August 2014);
Michael Walzer, ‘Israel Must Defeat Hamas, But Also Must Do More to Limit Civilian Deaths,’
New Republic (July 2014); F. M. Kamm, ‘Taking Just War Seriously in Gaza,’ Boston Review (July
2014) [all available on-line]
Supplementary Reading
- Gary Bass, ‘Jus Post Bellum,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 32/4 (2004)
- Alex Bellamy, Massacres and Morality: Mass Atrocities in an Age of Civilian Immunity (OUP, 2013)
- David Estlund, ‘On Following Orders in an Unjust War,’ Journal of Political Philosophy, 15 (2007)
- Helen Frowe & Gerald Lang (eds.), How We Fight: Ethics in War (Oxford UP, 2014)
- Thomas Hurka, ‘Proportionality in the Morality of War,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 33 (2005)
- Helen M. Kinsella, The Image before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and
Civilian (Cornell, 2011) [a powerful critical study of the distinction]
- Seth Lazar, ‘Scepticism about Jus Post Bellum’ in Larry May and Andrew Forcehimes (eds.) Morality,
Jus Post Bellum, and International Law (Cambridge UP, 2012)
- Steven Lee, Morality, Prudence, and Nuclear Weapons (Cambridge UP, 1993)
- Alison McIntyre, ‘Doing Away with Double Effect,’ Ethics, 111 (2001)
- Joseph Nye, Nuclear Ethics (Macmillan, 1986) [A standard account]
- Brian Orend, ‘Is there a Supreme Emergency Exemption?’ in Mark Evans (ed.), Just War Theory: A
Reappraisal (Edinburgh UP, 2005)
- James Pattison, The Morality of Private War: The Challenge of Private Military and Security Companies
(Oxford UP, 2014)
- Igor Primoratz (ed.), Civilian Immunity in War (Oxford UP, 2010) [state of the art essays]
- David Rodin, War and Self-Defence (Oxford UP, 2002) [a sophisticated ‘cosmopolitan’ critique]
- David Rodin & Henry Shue (eds.), Just and Unjust Warriors: The Moral and Legal Status of Soldiers
(Oxford UP, 2008) [an excellent collection on the in bello]
- Carsten Stahn et al (eds.), Jus Post Bellum: Mapping the Normative Foundations (Oxford UP, 2014)
- P. A. Woodward (ed.), The Doctrine of Double Effect: Philosophers Debate a Controversial Moral Principle
(Notre Dame UP, 2001)
On Humanitarianism and Humanitarian Intervention
Sample Questions
- What differentiates humanitarian intervention from liberal imperialism?
- Have the reasons for humanitarian intervention changed over time, and if so, what does this tell us
about the character of the international system?
- What is ‘humanitarian reason’ (Didier Fassin) and does the idea help to shed light on the
phenomenon of humanitarian intervention?
Core Reading
- Didier Fassin, ‘Humanitarianism as a Politics of Life,’ Public Culture, 19/3 (2007)
- Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Cornell UP, 2003)
- Luke Glanville, ‘Humanitarian Intervention and the Problem of Abuse after Libya’ in Don Scheid
(ed.), The Ethics of Armed Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge, 2014)
- Mahmood Mamdani, ‘Responsibility to Protect or Right to Punish?’, Journal of Intervention and
Statebuilding, 4 (2010)
- Fernando Téson, ‘The Liberal Case for Humanitarian Intervention’ in J. Holzgrefe et al. (eds.),
Humanitarian Intervention : Ethical, Legal and Political Dilemmas (Cambridge UP, 2003)
- Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, ch. 6
- Michael Walzer, ‘The Politics of Rescue,’ Social Research, 62 (1994) [Reprinted in Walzer, Arguing
About War (Yale UP, 2004)]
Supplementary Reading
- William Bain, Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and the Obligations of Power (Oxford UP, 2003)
- David Campbell, ‘Why Fight: Humanitarianism, Principles and Poststructuralism,’ Millennium, 27
(1998) [a post-structuralist defence of intervention, i the context of the Bosnian war]
- Deen Chatterjee and Don Scheid (eds.), Ethics and Foreign Intervention (Cambridge UP, 2003)
- Neta Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian
Intervention (Cambridge UP, 2002) [Mixing political theory and constructivist IR]
- Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (California UP, 2011)
- J. Holzgrefe & Robert Keohane (eds.), Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal and Political Dilemmas
(Cambridge UP, 2003), chs. 1,2,3,4 & 8
- Anthony Lang, Agency and Ethics: The Politics of Military Intervention (SUNY Press, 2002)
- Catherine Lu, Just and Unjust Interventions in World Politics: Public and Private (Palgrave, 2008)
- Rama Mani and T. Weiss (eds.), Responsibility to Protect: Perspectives from the Global South (Routledge,
2011)
- Anne Orford, Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law
(Oxford UP, 2003) [By a critical legal theorist]
- James Pattison, Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility To Protect (Oxford UP, 2010)
- Brendan Simms and D. J. P. Trim (eds.), Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge UP, 2011)
[On why humanitarian intervention isn’t really a new phenomenon]
- Fernando Tesón, Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality, 2nd ed. (Transnational
Publishers, 1997) [A prominent liberal defence of intervention]
- John Vincent, Non-Intervention and International Order (Princeton UP, 1974) [English School arg.]
- Michael Walzer, ‘The Case Against our Attack on Libya,’ New Republic (20 March 2011) [on-line]
- Thomas Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention (Polity, 2007) [A good short introduction to the topic]
- Nicholas Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford UP, 2003)
Danilo Zolo, Invoking Humanity: War, Law, and Global Order (Polity, 2002)
The Ethics of Terrorism
Sample Questions
- What exactly is wrong with terrorism?
- What can feminist theorists add to debates about the ethics of terrorism?
- Does Fanon offer a defensible justification for the use of violence?
Core Reading
- Faisal Devji, The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics (Hurst, 2010)
- Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, ch. 1 [and Sartre’s ‘Preface’]
- Virginia Held, ‘Terrorism’ in Bell (ed.), Ethics and World Politics
- Alison M. Jaggar, ‘What Is Terrorism, Why Is It Wrong, and Could It Ever Be Morally
Permissible?’ Journal of Social Philosophy, 36 (2005)
- Samuel Scheffler, ‘Is Terrorism Morally Distinctive?’ Journal of Political Philosophy, 14 (2006)
- Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, chs. 11, 12
- Michael Walzer, ‘Terrorism: A Critique of Excuses’ in Walzer, Arguing About War (Yale UP, 2004)
- Ayse Zarakol, ‘What Makes Terrorism Modern? Terrorism, Legitimacy, and the International
System,’ Review of International Studies, 37 (2011)
Supplementary Reading
- Fritz Allhoff, Terrorism, Ticking Time-Bombs, and Torture (Chicago UP, 2011) [a defence of torture]
- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (multiple editions), chs. 12-13.
- G. Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago
UP, 2003)
- Bob Brecher, Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Blackwell, 2007)
- Susan Buck-Morss, Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left (Verso, 2003)
- Claudia Card, Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, and Genocide (Cambridge UP, 2010)
- C.A.J. Coady, ‘Terrorism, Morality, and Supreme Emergency,’ Ethics, 114 (2004)
- G. A. Cohen, ‘Casting the First Stone: Who Can, and who Can’t, Condemn the Terrorists,’ Royal
Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 58 (2006)
- Richard English, Terrorism: How to Respond (Oxford UP, 2009) [An excellent brief volume]
- Matthew Evangelista, Law, Ethics, and the War on Terror (Polity, 2008)
- Yuval Ginbar, Why Not Torture Terrorists? Moral, Practical, and Legal Aspects of the ‘Ticking Bomb’
Justification for Torture (Oxford UP, 2010)
- Carol Gould, Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights (Cambridge UP, 2004), ch. 12
- Robert Goodin, What’s Wrong with Terrorism? (Polity, 2006)
- Ian Hacking, ‘The Suicide Weapon,’ Critical Inquiry, 35/1 (2008)
- Virginia Held, How Terrorism is Wrong: Morality and Political Violence (Oxford UP, 2008)
- Ted Honderich, After the Terror, 2nd edn. (Edinburgh UP, 2003)
- Nasser Hussain, ‘Beyond Norm and Exception: Guantánamo,’ Critical Inquiry, 33/1 (2007)
- Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Princeton UP, 2005)
- Bonnie Mann, Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessnons from the War on Terror (Oxford UP, 2014)
- Leslie McPherson, ‘Is Terrorism Distinctively Wrong?’ Ethics, 117 (2007)
- Tamar Meisels, The Trouble with Terror: Liberty, Security, and the Response to Terrorism (Cam. UP, 2008)
- Seamus Miller, Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Ethics and Liberal Democracy (Blackwell, 2006)
- Stephen Nathanson, Terrorism and the Ethics of War (Cambridge UP, 2010)
- Igor Primoratz (ed.), Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues (Palgrave, 2004)
- Igor Primonatz, Terrorism: A Philosophical Investigation (Polity, 2012)
- David Rodin, ‘Terrorism without Intentions,’ Ethics, 114 (2004)
- Uwe Steinhoff, On the Ethics of War and Terrorism (Oxford UP, 2007), ch. 5
- Jeremy Waldron, Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs (Oxford UP, 2010), chs. 2, 3
Part II: Modules (Lent 2016)
Module I: Military Intervention and Political Violence
Lecturer: Dr. Stefano Recchia
Lecture 1: Why seek multilateral approval? Justice and legitimacy in
contemporary uses of force
Sample questions:
Does military intervention have to be authorized by the United Nations Security Council in
order to be legitimate?
Why do powerful states value multilateral approval and the resulting legitimacy?
Can the approval of regional international organizations such as NATO substitute for the lack of
UN approval?
Core reading:
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Tom Farer, ‘A Paradigm of Legitimate Intervention’, in Lori Fisler Damrosch, ed.,
Enforcing Restraint (Council on Foreign Relations, 1993). [Emphasizes and explains the
importance of multilateral authorization and oversight.]
Martha Finnemore, ‘Changing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention’, in Finnemore, The
Purpose of Intervention (Cornell UP, 2003). [How changing legitimacy norms regulate and
shape humanitarian intervention; highlights the growing importance of multilateralism.]
Robert O. Keohane, ‘The Contingent Legitimacy of Multilateralism’, in E. Newman, R.
Thakur, and J. Tirman, eds., Multilateralism Under Challenge? (United Nations UP, 2006).
[Questions the legitimacy of ‘statist’ multilateral organizations].
Sarah Kreps, ‘Multilateral Military Interventions: Theory and Practice’, Political Science
Quarterly, 123/4 (2008) [Discusses various forms of multilateralism and develops a new, if
controversial, definition].
Alexander Thompson, ‘Coercion Through IOs: The Security Council and the Logic of
Information Transmission’, International Organization 60:1 (2006) [Powerful states such as
the USA seek multilateral approval in order to reassure foreign citizens and leaders.]
Supplementary reading:
-
Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Age of Liberal Wars’, Review of International Studies 31 (2005)
[Modern wars need to be ‘liberal’ in order to be legitimate.]
Joseph S. Nye, ‘Soft Power and American Foreign Policy’, Political Science Quarterly, 119:2
(2004) [Introduces the seminal concept of ‘soft power’ and discusses how unilateral U.S.
interventions might deplete America’s soft power].
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Robert Pape, ‘Soft Balancing against the United States’, International Security 30: 1, 2005.
[Even powerful states need to legitimize their actions if they want to avert potentially
harmful ‘soft balancing’ by their international partners].
Stefano Recchia, ‘The Payoffs of Multilaterally Authorized Intervention: Averting Issue
Linkage vs. Appeasing Congress’, International Relations, forthcoming. [Critique of Alex
Thompson’s argument; the USA seeks multilateral approval for domestic political
reasons.]
Alex Bellamy, ‘The UN Security Council and the Use of Force’, in Bellamy, Global Politics
and the Responsibility to Protect (Routledge, 2011) [Discusses recent military interventions
authorized by the UN Security Council].
Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, ‘The Responsibility to Protect’, Foreign Affairs, 81:
6 (2002) [Key document outlining the ‘R2P’ doctrine; discusses the importance of
multilateral authorization.]
Kenneth W. Abbott and Duncan Snidal, ‘Why States Act Through Formal International
Organizations’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 42: 1 (1998) [Good overview of the different
reasons why states may channel military interventions through the UN or NATO].
Richard K. Betts, ‘Confused Interventions’, in Betts, American Force (Columbia UP, 2012),
[If you choose to intervene, avoid half-measures and support one side decisively—
unilaterally if needed. Hard-nosed analysis by a leading realist scholar.]
Katharina P. Coleman, International Organizations and Peace Enforcement (Cambridge UP,
2007). [Intervening states, whether Nigeria, South Africa, or the US, seek international
organization approval to legitimize their actions and avoid international opprobrium.]
Bruce Cronin, ‘The Paradox of Hegemony: America’s Ambiguous Relationship With the
United Nations’, European Journal of International Relations, 7:1 (2001) [America has the
‘hardware’ to intervene abroad—yet hegemony requires more than that.]
Michael Doyle, 'The Ethics of Multilateral Intervention', Theoria , 53: 109 (2006), pp. 28–
48[Goes back to J.S. Mill to discuss the ethics of contemporary military intervention.]
Stanley Hoffmann, ‘The Politics and Ethics of Military Intervention’, Survival 37:4
(Winter 1995). [Cautious endorsement of multilateral humanitarian intervention by an
‘old-school’ liberal internationalist.]
Ian Hurd, After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council (Princeton
UP, 2007). [Rigorous constructivist analysis of how politics at the UN Security Council
has shaped our understanding of legitimacy].
Friedrich Kratochwil, ‘On Legitimacy’, International Relations, 20: 3 (2006) [Legitimacy is a
conceptual minefield – Kratochwil attempts to introduce some clarity.]
Samuel Moyn, ‘John Locke on Intervention, Uncertainty, and Insurgency’, in Stefano
Recchia and Jennifer Welsh, eds., Just and Unjust Military Intervention: European Thinkers from
Vitoria to Mill (Cambridge UP, 2013). [John Locke, Moyn argues, can help us better
understand the normative challenges related to identifying a ‘just cause’ for intervention.]
Michael Walzer, ‘The Politics of Rescue’, Social Research 62:1 (Spring 1995) [Multilateral
intervention is OK to stop acts that ‘shock the moral conscience of mankind.’]
Jennifer Welsh, ‘Authorizing humanitarian intervention’, in Richard Price and Mark
Zacher, eds., The United Nations and Global Security (Palgrave, 2004). [Explores the role of
the UN Security Council as a collective legitimizer].
Lecture 2: NATO’s Humanitarian War over Kosovo
Sample questions:
Did the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo meet the threshold for military intervention?
NATO’s military intervention worsened the plight of Kosovar civilians. Discuss.
What were the costs of channeling the Kosovo intervention through NATO?
Core reading:
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Adam Roberts, ‘NATO’s “Humanitarian War” Over Kosovo’, Survival, 41:3 (1999),
[Excellent overview of the principal ethical and legal challenges].
Samantha Power, A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (Basic Books, 2002),
ch. 12. Ebook: http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=|eresources|81208. [Good
discussion of U.S. foreign policy making from a committed humanitarian standpoint].
David N. Gibbs, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia
(Vanderbilt UP, 2009), ch. 7 [Trenchant critique; argues that NATO’s military
intervention probably made matters worse].
Alan K. Hendrikson, ‘The Constraint of Legitimacy: The Legal and Institutional
Framework of Euro-Atlantic Security’, in Pierre Martin and Mark R. Brawley (eds.),
Alliance Politics, Kosovo, and NATO’s War: Allied Force or Forced Allies? (Palgrave, 2000).
[Asks whether regional organizations like NATO can be a substitute for UN
authorization].
Nicholas Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society, ch. 8.
[Focuses especially on the role of the UN Security Council].
Supplementary reading:
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Alex J. Bellamy, Kosovo and International Society (London: Palgrave, 2002), chs. 3-6.
[Detailed analysis of European and U.S. diplomatic initiatives in the run-up to the war].
Steven L. Burg, ‘Coercive Diplomacy in the Balkans: The U.S. Use of Force in Bosnia
and Kosovo’, in Robert J. Art and Patrick M. Cronin, The United States and Coercive
Diplomacy (USIP, 2003). [Investigates whether limited force can be used effectively to
achieve ambitious policy objectives].
Richard K. Betts, ‘Compromised Command: Inside NATO’s First War’, Foreign Affairs
80:4 (2001) [Highlights the challenges involved in fighting a modern multi-national air
campaign].
Stefano Recchia, ‘Soldiers, Civilians, and Multilateral Humanitarian Intervention’, Security
Studies 24/2 (2015) [Highlights the role of a risk-averse US military leadership in steering
American intervention policy towards multilateralism. Uses Kosovo as a case study.]
Independent International Commission on Kosovo (IICK), The Kosovo Report (OUP,
2000). [Influential report, concluded that the intervention was ‘illegal but legitimate’.]
Katharina P. Coleman, International Organizations and Peace Enforcement (Cambridge UP,
2007), ch. 6. [Argues that the U.S. sought NATO’s endorsement to legitimize the use of
force in international society.]
Ivo H. Daalder and Michael E. O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo
(Brookings, 2000). [Still the most detailed analysis of western and especially American
policy making on the Kosovo War].
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Richard Falk, ‘Humanitarian Intervention After Kosovo’, in Julie Mertus and Jeffrey W.
Helsing (eds.), Human Rights & Conflict (USIP, 2006). [NATO’s intervention was both
legally and morally objectionable].
Timothy Garton Ash, ‘Kosovo: Was It Worth It?’ The New York Review of Books 47 (14),
September 2000.
David G. Haglund, ‘Allied Force or Forced Allies? The Allies’ Perspective’, in P. Martin
and M. Brawley, eds., Alliance Politics, Kosovo, and NATO’s War (Palgrave, 2000).
Daniel Keohane, ‘The debate on British policy in the Kosovo conflict’, Contemporary
Security Policy, 21: 3 (2000) [Good overview and discussion of the British policy debate.]
Alan J. Kuperman, ‘The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the
Balkans’, International Studies Quarterly 52 (2008) [Explains how talk of humanitarian
intervention can embolden ethnic separatists, thereby making matters worse].
Eric Moskovitz and Jeffrey S. Lantis, ‘Conflict in the Balkans’, in Karl F. Inderfurth and
Loch K. Johnson, eds., Fateful Decisions: Inside the National Security Council (Oxford UP,
2004). [Concise overview of U.S. policy making on Kosovo].
David Rieff, ‘A New Age of Liberal Imperialism?’ World Policy Journal, 16:2 (1999)
[Critique of the Kosovo intervention as an instance of Western neo-imperialism].
Lecture 3: The U.S. Invasion of Iraq, 2003: Was it a Just War?
Sample questions:
Why did the United States and Britain invade Iraq?
Why did Washington and London fail to secure UN approval for the Iraq War?
Is preventive war ever justified?
Core reading:
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Alex J. Bellamy, Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq (Polity, 2006), esp. ch. 8 on the legitimacy of
pre-emptive and preventive war.
Philip H. Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro, Allies At War: America, Europe, and the Crisis Over
Iraq (McGraw Hill, 2004), chs. 4-5 [Good description and analysis of the transatlantic
crisis over Iraq].
Robert Jervis, ‘Understanding the Bush Doctrine’, Political Science Quarterly, 118: 3 (2003),
[Excellent analysis of the belief system behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq, by one of
America’s foremost international relations scholars.]
Adam Roberts, ‘Law and the Use of Force After Iraq’, Survival, 45: 2 (2003) [Reviews
various possible justifications for the Iraq War].
Fernando R. Tesón, ‘Ending Tyranny in Iraq’, Ethics & International Affairs, 19:2 (2005)
[Justifies the 2003 Iraq War as a humanitarian intervention].
Supplementary reading:
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Melvyn Leffler, ‘The Foreign Policies of the George W. Bush Administration: Memoirs,
History, Legacy’, Diplomatic History 37:2 (2013) [Good overview of the causes of the Iraq
War, based on a critical reading of the memoirs of former administration officials.]
James Cockayne and David Malone, ‘Iraq, 1990-1991 and 2002-2003’, in V. Lowe, A.
Roberts, J. Welsh and D. Zaum, eds, The Security Council and War (Oxford UP,
2008)[Good overview of a decade of UN Security Council initiatives on Iraq].
Michael C. Desch, ‘America’s Liberal Illiberalism: The Ideological Origins of
Overreaction in U.S. Foreign Policy’, International Security, 32:3 (2007/08). [Argues that
America’s peculiar reception of the liberal Enlightenment tradition leads it to overestimate international threats and consequently to over-react].
Stefano Recchia, ‘Chirac Said “Non” – Or Did He? Revisiting US-UN Diplomacy on the
2003 Iraq War’, Political Science Quarterly, forthcoming. [Challenges the argument that
Washington and London failed to secure UN approval because of France’s veto threat.]
Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas, ‘How Saddam Happened: America helped make
a monster’, Newsweek, 23 September 2002. [How the demonization of Saddam Hussein
came to severely limit U.S. policy options on Iraq].
Jane K. Cramer and A. Trevor Thrall, eds., Why Did the United States Invade Iraq?
(Routledge, 2012) [Useful collection of essays, see esp. chaps. 2, 3, 5].
Christian Enemark and Christopher Michaelsen, ‘Just War Doctrine and the Invasion of
Iraq’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 51:4 (2005) [Using traditional just war theory,
the authors conclude that the 2003 Iraq War was unjust].
James Turner Johnson, ‘Humanitarian Intervention after Iraq’, Journal of Military Ethics, 5:
2 (2006) [Thoughtful analysis by a leading just war theorist.]
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Terry Nardin, ‘Humanitarian Imperialism’, Ethics & International Affairs, 19: 2 (2005).
[Critique of Nardin’s argument that the Iraq War can be justified as a humanitarian
intervention].
Kenneth Roth, ‘Was the Iraq War a Humanitarian Intervention?’ Journal of Military Ethics
5:2 (2006) [Careful analysis by the head of the international NGO ‘Human Rights
Watch’. Answers the question in the negative].
Ramesh Thakur, ‘Iraq and the Responsibility to Protect’, Global Dialogue, 7: 1-2 (2005).
[Did the Iraq War meet the R2P criteria?].
Alexander Thompson, ‘Why Did Bush Bypass the UN in 2003?’ White House Studies, 11: 3
(2011) […because he thought it would be unnecessary. Useful, detailed analysis].
Albert L. Weeks, The Choice of War: The Iraq War and the Just War Tradition (Praeger, 2007)
[Evaluates the 2003 Iraq War against the criteria of traditional just war theory.]
Ruth Wedgwood, ‘The multinational action in Iraq and international law’ in Ramesh
Thakur and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu (ed.), The Iraq Crisis and World Order (UNUP,
2006). [Controversial study arguing that the Iraq War was justified under international
law].
Bob Woodward, excerpts from his book ‘Plan of Attack: Cheney Was Unwavering in
Desire to Go to War’, The Washington Post, April 20, 2004. [Fascinating account that takes
us inside the Bush administration leading up to the war].
Lecture 4: After War: Jus Post Bellum and International Trusteeship
(Bosnia, 1995-present)
Sample questions:
Is international trusteeship a necessary evil to stabilize war-torn countries?
Is the imposition of democracy likely to help or hinder postwar peacebuilding?
Was Bosnia a ‘genocidal state’ in 1995, and if so, does it matter?
Core reading:
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Gary J. Bass, ‘Jus Post Bellum’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 32:4 (2004) [May outsiders
legitimately transform the domestic political structure of war-torn societies?]
Florian Bieber, ‘Power-sharing and International Intervention: Overcoming the Postconflict Legacy in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, in Marc Weller and Barbara Metzger,
eds., Settling Self-determination Disputes: Complex Power-sharing in Theory and Practice (Martinus
Nijhoff, 2007). [Good analysis by someone who knows the Balkans very well].
Stefano Recchia, ‘Just and Unjust Postwar Reconstruction: How much external
interference can be justified?’ Ethics & International Affairs, 23:2 (2009). [The degree of
external interference needs to be strictly proportional to local impediments to self-rule.]
Richard Caplan, ‘Who Guards the Guardians? International Accountability in Bosnia and
Herzegovina’, International Peacekeeping 12:3 (2005) [Highlights and discusses the problem
of accountability for international state-builders.]
Elizabeth Cousens, ‘From Missed Opportunities to Overcompensation: Implementing
the Dayton Agreement on Bosnia,’ in Stephen Stedman, Donald Rothchild and Cousens,
Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Lynne Rienner, 2002).
Supplementary reading:
- Michael Barnett, ‘Building a Republican Peace: Stabilizing States After War’,
International Security 30:4 (2006) [Outsiders should promote new institutions that
facilitate inter-ethnic deliberation, rather than full-fledged liberal democracy].
- Michael Doyle, ‘Postbellum Peacebuilding’ in Doyle, The Question of Intervention (Yale UP,
2015).
- Roberto Belloni, State Building and International Intervention in Bosnia (Routledge, 2008).
[Comprehensive and balanced analysis].
- Florian Bieber, ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1990’, in Sabrina Petra Ramet, ed., Central
and Southeast European Politics since 1989 (Cambridge UP, 2010).
- William Bain, ‘Saving Failed States: Trusteeship as an Arrangement of Security’, in Bain,
ed., The Empire of Security and the Safety of the People, (Routledge, 2006). [Critical historical
and normative analysis.]
- Sumantra Bose, ‘The Bosnian State a Decade After Dayton’, International Peacekeeping, 12:
3 (2005)
- Richard Caplan, 'Devising Exit Strategies', Survival, 54: 3 (2012) [Discusses the challenges
of ending complex international peace operations.]
- Richard Caplan, International Authority and State Building: The Case of Bosnia (Oxford UP,
2004). [Detailed analysis of the international state-building operation in Bosnia].
- David Chandler, Faking Democracy After Dayton (Pluto, 2000). [The international statebuilding project in Bosnia is a not-so-veiled instance of neo-imperialism].
- James Fearon and David Laitin, ‘Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States’,
International Security, 28:4 (2004)
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Stephen Krasner, ‘Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing
States’, International Security, 29: 2 (Fall 2004), pp. 85-120.
Arend Lijphart, ‘Constitutional Design for Divided Societies’, Journal of Democracy, 15: 2
(2004), pp. 96-109. [Seminal argument on ethnic power sharing as a solution to the
problem of political instability in divided societies].
James Mayall, ‘The European Empires and International Order: Model or Trap?’ in J.
Mayall and R. Soares de Oliveira, eds., The New Protectorates: International Tutelage and the
Making of Liberal States (London: Hurst, 2011).
Patrice C. McMahon and Jon Western, ‘The Death of Dayton: How to Stop Bosnia
From Falling Apart’, Foreign Affairs, 88: 5 (September/October 2009), pp. 69-83.
Oisin Tansey, ‘Democratic Regime-Building in Bosnia’, in Tansey, Regime-Building:
Democratization and International Administration (OUP, 2009). [Explores the role of
international territorial administration in promoting democratic governance].
Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge UP, 2004),ch. 6.
Stefano Recchia, ‘Beyond International Trusteeship: EU Peacebuilding in Bosnia and
Herzegovina’, Occasional Paper No. 66 (Paris: EU Institute for Security Studies, 2007).
[Shows that the prospect of EU accession can stimulate important political reforms].
Philip G. Roeder and Donald Rothchild, ‘Power Sharing as an Impediment to Peace and
Democracy’, in Roeder and Rotchild.eds., Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil
Wars (Cornell UP, 2005), pp. 29-50. [Ethnic power sharing is part of the problem.]
Dominik Zaum, The Sovereignty Paradox: The norms and politics of international statebuilding
(OUP, 2007), chaps. 2, 3. [Detailed analysis of the socially constructed norms
underpinning international state-building projects, with a focus on Bosnia].
Lecture 5: Strike and Retreat? Supporting Local Insurgents from the Air
(Libya, 2011)
Sample questions:
Does humanitarian intervention require military occupation in its aftermath?
Was the Libya intervention legitimate? Was it legal?
What does the Libya experience tell us about the future of humanitarian intervention?
Core reading:
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Jeffrey H. Michaels, ‘Able but Not Willing: A Critical Assessment of NATO’s Libya
Intervention’, in Kjell Engelbrekt, Marcus Mohlin, and Charlotte Wagnsson, eds., The
NATO Intervention in Libya (Routledge, 2014) [Good overview of NATO’s decision
making from the outbreak of the crisis to the fall of Qaddafi.]
Christopher Chivvis, ‘Libya and the light footprint’, in Chivvis Toppling Qaddafi. Libya and
the Limits of Liberal Intervention (Cambridge UP, 2014). [Argues that the Libya intervention
was a success—up to a point.]
Richard Andres, Craig Wills, Thomas Griffith, ‘Winning With Allies: The Strategic Value
of the Afghan Model’, International Security 30:3 (2005) [Claim that Western reliance on air
power and special forces, rather than large contingents of ground troops, facilitates the
transition to stability and democracy by empowering indigenous allies].
Alan Kuperman, ‘A Model Humanitarian Intervention? Reassessing NATO’s Libya
Campaign’, International Security 38:1 (2013) [Provocatively argues that NATO’s military
intervention made matters significantly worse.]
Derek Chollet and Ben Fishman, ‘Who Lost Libya? Obama’s Intervention in Retrospect’,
Foreign Affairs 93:2 (2015) [Response to Kuperman. Cautious defense of the intervention,
argues there were no ‘good’ alternative options.]
Supplementary reading:
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Michael Walzer, ‘The Case Against Our Attack on Libya’, The New Republic, March 20,
2011 [Claims that Libya didn’t meet the threshold for humanitarian intervention.]
Michael W. Doyle, ‘Libya, the Responsibility to Protect, and the New Moral Minimum’,
in Doyle, The Question of Intervention (Yale UP, 2015)
Erica D. Borghard and Costantino Pischedda, ‘Allies and Airpower in Libya’, Parameters
42 (2012) [Argue that although precision airpower by itself is unlikely to bring about
regime change, its ‘cumulative attrition effect’ can enable rebel victories.]
Robert Pape, “When Duty Calls: A Pragmatic Standard of Humanitarian Intervention,”
International Security 37:1 (2012) [Outsiders should intervene only with a workable strategy
to establish long-term security; uses Libya as a case study.]
Ramesh Thakur, ‘R2P after Libya and Syria: Engaging Emerging Powers’, The Washington
Quarterly, 36:2 (2013) [Explains why emerging powers will play a growing role in
decisions of whether and when the ‘international community’ should intervene on
humanitarian grounds.]
Luke Glanville, ‘Intervention in Libya: From Sovereign Consent to Regional Consent’,
International Studies Perspectives 14:3 (2013) [Highlights the support of regional multilateral
bodies as a key factor legitimating the intervention.]
Justin Morris, ‘Libya and Syria: R2P and the spectre of the swinging pendulum’,
International Affairs 89:5 (2013) [Argues that NATO’s expansive interpretation of UNSC
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Resolution 1973 over Libya subsequently made it more difficult to invoke the R2P
doctrine effectively over Syria.]
Aidan Hehir, Robert Murray (eds.), Libya, the Responsibility to Protect and the Future of
Humanitarian Intervention (Palgrave, 2013. [Useful collection of essays discussing the ethics
of NATO’s intervention and the role of multilateralism.]
Paul D. Williams and Alex J. Bellamy, ‘Principles, Politics, and Prudence: Libya, the
Responsibility to Protect, and the Use of Military Force’, Global Governance 18:3 (2012),
[Claim that the R2P norm ‘produced’ intervention in Libya.]
Jason Ralph and Adrian Gallagher, ‘Legitimacy Faultlines in International Society: The
Responsibility to Protect and Prosecute after Libya’, Review of International Studies 41:3
(2015)
Jennifer Welsh, ‘Civilian Protection in Libya: Putting Coercion and Controversy Back
into RtoP’, Ethics & International Affairs 25:3 (2011)
Simon Chesterman, ‘Leading from Behind: The Responsibility to Protect, the Obama
Doctrine, and Humanitarian Intervention after Libya’, Ethics & International Affairs 25:3
(2011)
Lecture 6: Freedom Fighters or Terrorists? The Ethics of Guerrilla Warfare
(Iraq, 2003-present)
Sample questions:
Is ‘just guerrilla warfare’ an oxymoron?
Can there ever be exceptions to the rule against attacking civilians?
Does foreign intervention create insurgencies?
Core reading:
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Michael L. Gross, The Ethics of Insurgency: A Critical Guide to Just Guerrilla Warfare
(Cambridge UP, 2015), chaps. 1, 2, 3, 7. [Applies liberal just war principles to the ethics
of guerrilla warfare.]
James D. Kiras, ‘Irregular Warfare: Terrorism and Insurgency’, in John Baylis, James J.
Wirtz, and Colin S. Gray (eds.), Strategy in the Contemporary World, 4th ed. (Oxford UP,
2013). [Good overview of the main ethical and legal issues.]
Giuseppe Mazzini, ‘Rules for the Conduct of Guerrilla Bands’ and ‘Towards a Holy
Alliance of the Peoples’ in Stefano Recchia and Nadia Urbinati (eds.), A Cosmopolitanism of
Nations: Giuseppe Mazzini’s Writings on Democracy, Nation Building, and International Relations
(Princeton UP, 2009). [Justification of guerrilla warfare from a liberal nationalist
standpoint.]
Ahmed S. Hashim, Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq (Cornell UP, 2006), esp. ch. 2.
[Explains the origins of the Iraq insurgency].
Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman, Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide
Terrorism and How to Stop It (Chicago UP, 2010), chs. 1-2, pp. 19-86. [Suicide terrorism as a
form of resistance to foreign military occupation.]
Supplementary reading:
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Jean-Paul Sartre, Colonialism and Neocolonialism, trans. by Steve Brewer, Azzedine Haddour,
Terry McWilliams (Routledge, 2006). [Sartre’s famous and controversial justification of
anti-colonial violence.]
Carl Schmitt, ‘The Theory of the Partisan’, trans. A. C. Goodson, 1962. Available at:
http://obinfonet.ro/docs/tpnt/tpntrex/cschmitt-theory-of-the-partisan.pdf [Schmitt, a
brilliant though controversial thinker, views the partisan or guerrilla fighter as a
traditionalist who nevertheless contributes to the breakdown of the traditional political
order.]
Hannah Arendt, ‘A Special Supplement: Reflections on Violence,’ New York Review of
Books (February 27, 1969): 25. [Arendt famously distinguished ‘power’ from ‘violence’—
here she uses the distinction to explain the success of modern revolutionary movements.]
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove/Atlantic, 2007). [Influential, qualified
defense of anticolonial violence from a Marxist standpoint].
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (Basic Books, 1977), chap. 11 on ‘Guerrilla War’.
Toby Dodge, ‘What were the causes and consequences of Iraq’s descent into violence
after the initial invasion?’ Analysis submitted to the UK Iraq Inquiry, 2009. Available at:
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/37045/dodge-submission.pdf
James D. Fearon, ‘Iraq’s Civil War’, Foreign Affairs 86 (2007) [Iraq’s civil war can only be
ended by Iraqis themselves, but it will take a long time to reach a viable ethnic powersharing arrangement and it will be bloody]
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Alan J. Kuperman, ‘The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the
Balkans’, International Studies Quarterly 52 (2008) [Claims that talk of humanitarian
intervention emboldens secessionist insurgents.
Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, rev. and expanded ed. (Columbia UP, 2006), pp. 1-45.
[Very good conceptual and historical overview]
Charles Tilly, ‘Terror, Terrorism, Terrorists’, Sociological Theory 22: 1 (2004) [Tilly brings
some much-needed conceptual clarity to the debate about terrorism.
Dipak K. Gupta, Understanding Terrorism and Political Violence (Routledge, 2008), chap. 3
[Highlights the desire to belong to a group as a motivating factor for terrorists.
Michael Walzer, ‘Terrorism: A critique of excuses’, [Terrorism cannot be excused, not
even as a last resort]; and “After 9/11: Five Questions about terrorism,” [Why killing
terrorist leaders is morally justified]. In: Michael Walzer, Arguing About War (Yale UP,
2004)
Bruce Hoffman, ‘Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq’, Studies in Conflict &
Terrorism 29/2, (2006)
Paul Rogers, Iraq and the War on Terror: Twelve Months of Insurgency (I.B. Tauris 2006).
Module 2: Human Rights
TBC
Exam briefing note:
There will always be at least 3 questions for each of the 3 Sections of Part I. Note that
this means that in any given year there will not be an exam question on every one of the
15 topics covered in Part I.
Sample Exam
Answer 3 Questions in 3 hours. You must answer 2 questions from Section A and 1
question from Section B
Section A
1. Does utopian political theory have conservative implications?
2. Cosmopolitanism is the class ideology of ‘frequent travellers’ (Craig Calhoun). Discuss
3. What are the differences between constitutional patriotism and civic nationalism?
4. How does Thomas Pogge justify the Global Resources Dividend?
5. Are human rights best conceptualised as the latest variant of natural rights?
6. Does Richard Rorty offer a compelling account of human rights?
7. What is the ‘right to have rights’ (Hannah Arendt)?
8. Should non-Christians accept the claims of the just war tradition?
9. Assess Michael Walzer’s argument about ‘supreme emergency’
10. Is ‘state terrorism’ an oxymoron?
11. Was NATO’s aerial bombing in Kosovo an acceptable means of humanitarian military
intervention?
12. Would the 2003 Iraq war have been justified, had it been authorized by the UN Security
Council?
13. Can military intervention without the approval of relevant multilateral organizations like
the UN Security Council or NATO approval ever be legitimate?
14. Should liberal countries support just insurgencies through military intervention?
15. Does China need ‘Asian Values’?
16. Has the ‘war on terror’ demonstrated that human rights are subordinate to state
interests?
17. Are freedom of expression and freedom against discrimination fundamentally
irreconcilable? Discuss with reference to the ban on the Burqa and the veil in France, or
the Danish Cartoons affair, or both.
18. Is the UN Human Rights Council an improvement upon its predecessor?