CIAO DATE: 11/2008
Volume: 22, Issue: 2
Summer 2008
This issue features Campbell Craig on the resurgent idea of world government; James Pattison on just war theory and the privitization of military force; a symposium on the rights of irregular migrants, with a lead essay by Joseph Carens and responses from Christina Boswell, David Miller, Bridget Anderson, and Marit Hovdal Moan; and a review essay by Fionnuala Ní Aoláin on expanding the boundaries of transitional justice. It also includes book reviews and a "Briefly Noted" section, which covers recent books in the field of international relations.
The Resurgent Idea of World Government (PDF)
Campbell Craig
The idea of world government is returning to the mainstream of scholarly thinking about international relations. Will the world-government movement become a potent political force, or will it fade away as it did in the late 1940s?
Just War Theory and the Privatization of Military Force (PDF)
James Pattison
Private military companies are taking over a growing number of roles traditionally performed by the regular military. This article uses the framework of just war theory to consider the central normative issues raised by this privatization of military force.
The Rights of Irregular Migrants
Joseph H. Carens
This article considers the question of what legal rights should be possessed by those who reside and work in a democratic state without the legal authorization of the state, given the background assumption that the state is morally entitled to exclude such migrants. I argue that irregular migrants are morally entitled to a wide range of legal rights, including basic human and civil rights, but also rights to wages, workplace protections, and even rights to public education for their children. In order for these rights to be realized in practice, I argue, states ought to create a firewall between those charged with protecting and enforcing these rights and those charged with enforcing immigration laws.
The Elusive Rights of an Invisible Population
Christina Boswell
This is a rich and stimulating piece, which—characteristically of Joseph Carens's work—challenges us to rethink certain suppositions about appropriate responses to migration. Of particular interest is Carens’s suggestion for a so-called firewall protecting irregular migrants' basic rights. This suggestion, which I would like to term the "dualist" position, requires the state to guarantee certain rights of unauthorized migrants while at the same time retaining its prerogative to deny such migrants legal residency. While I find this prima facie a compelling idea, I will suggest that it creates serious problems of coherence and feasibility for the legal and political systems of host countries. I shall also question whether it is ethically tenable on liberal universalist grounds. The key problem for the dualist position, I shall argue, is the basic contradiction between guaranteeing access to rights while denying a right to be present to access such rights.
Irregular Migrants: An Alternative Perspective
David Miller
Professor Carens's paper displays all of the qualities that make him one of the most interesting applied political philosophers writing today. It is unfailingly lucid, engages with a significant issue in real-world politics, and does so from a liberal and humane perspective that makes it hard to dissent from many of his practical proposals for the treatment of unauthorized immigrants. I wonder, nevertheless, whether he has framed the issue in quite the right way, and whether there are not deeper questions of political philosophy that go unaddressed. At any rate, I shall try to suggest an alternative perspective that would make some practical difference at the level of policy, although it would not mean rejecting all of Carens's concrete proposals.
Migrants and Work-related Rights
Bridget Anderson
Professor Carens is concerned with finding a way to move beyond the intensely politicized and apparently irreconcilable positions that characterize much of the discussion on the rights of "irregular migrants." These migrants tend to be cast either as victims or as villains: victims of unjust immigration laws and exploitative employers, or abusers who "play" the system to their advantage. In order to overcome this dichotomous approach, Carens begins by accepting the premise that states have a right to control entry into their territories, and goes on to explore whether, this being the case, it is morally acceptable to deny certain types of rights to this particular group of residents.
While this approach is useful for his discussion of human rights, it is somewhat more problematic when Carens turns his attention to work-related rights.
Immigration Policy and "Immanent Critique"
Marit Hovdal Moan
Professor Joseph Carens, in his thought-provoking and eloquently written essay "The Rights of Irregular Migrants," defends the view that irregular migrants have a moral claim to a broad range of rights in a liberal democratic state that goes beyond their claim to basic procedural and liberty rights. I want to reflect here on the method that Carens uses to extract the reasons that may support, or ground, this assertion—namely, that of immanent, or internal, critique. This is an approach to normative ethical reasoning that grounds moral prescriptions on the not yet realized normative purpose of the institution or practice for which change is sought—in this case the immigration policies of liberal democratic states.
Expanding the Boundaries of Transitional Justice
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
Justice as Prevention: Vetting Public Employees in Transitional Societies, Alexander Mayer-Rieckh and Pablo de Greiff, eds. (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2007), 548 pp., $35 paper.
What Happened to the Women? Gender and Reparations for Human Rights Violations, Ruth Rubio-Marin, ed. (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2007), 334 pp., $30 paper.
Transitional justice is a field of ever-expanding scope. While the character of the field remains broadly the same—defined by an interaction of national and international political concerns, as well as the core tension of dealing with the human rights abuses perpetrated by a previous regime—transitional justice is moving beyond its early preoccupation with criminal trials or the alternative truth-commission format. The field has expanded over the past few decades to encompass issues of legal reform, the reshaping of political structures, minority and group rights, reparations, vetting, and cross-cutting questions about gender parity in societies experiencing profound change.
International Legitimacy and World Society - by Ian Clark (PDF)
Jennifer Mitzen
Clark seems caught not just between two concepts—international and world society—but between his two goals: the historical goal of recovering the politics of world society, and the analytical goal of specifying the concept.
Bioethics and Armed Conflict: Moral Dilemmas of Medicine and War - by Michael L. Gross (PDF)
Frances V. Harbour
This book is important as an analysis of some of the least-discussed dilemmas related to warfare. But its value extends beyond its novel subject matter to include its innovative methodology.
Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? - Edited by Thomas Pogge (PDF)
James P. Sterba
All the contributors to this impresssive volume agree that freedom from poverty is a basic human right, but they differ in how best to argue in its support. In general, there are two ways. One is to ground the right in a negative right, while the other is to ground it in a positive right.
Martin Bunzl
Part of what makes Roberts and Parks's argument unusual and original is not the end point—that ultimately we will all need to radically cut carbon output—but the causal role that they think fairness and talk of fairness play in getting there.
The One and the Many: Reading Isaiah Berlin (PDF)
Kei Hiruta
This is a collection of 13 essays, all but two of which are newly commissioned, covering Berlin's multifaceted oeuvre as much as a single book can. The authors are specialists in different fields who do not seem to have much in common except one belief: Berlin matters.
This section contains a round-up of recent notable books in the field of international affairs.