CIAO DATE: 2/08
Journal of International Relations and Development
Volume 10, Issue 3 (September 2007)
Articles
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Civilization vs toleration: the new UN Human Rights Council and the normative foundations of the international order
Sibylle Scheipers
This article aims to explain the institutional design of the new United Nations (UN) human rights organ, the Human Rights Council (HRC). During the negotiation phase, it was contested between the North and the South: while the former opted for an exclusive body with a high membership threshold, the latter pressed for an inclusive structure and cooperative mechanisms. The eventual institutional design of the HRC features a moderate membership threshold. Both hegemonic stability theory and domestic-level approaches have difficulties explaining that outcome. I will argue that the institutional design of the HRC can be explained as the outcome of a discursive struggle between the North that promoted the paradigm of civilization and the South that endorsed the paradigm of toleration. The institutional design of the HRC, it will be argued, can be interpreted as a compromise between both paradigms in that it features a reflexive structure: the membership rules of the HRC contain the proviso that its members have to live up to the very standards that the HRC seeks to promote before they can legitimately place other states under scrutiny.
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From agents and structures to minds and bodies: of supervenience, quantum, and the linguistic turn
Oliver Kessler
This article argues that 'middle-ground' constructivism is based on an uneasy tension between mental causality and rump materialism that shows itself as a conflict between upward determination of ideas and their downward causation on the material world. Even Alexander Wendt's recent turn to quantum and a holographic model of society does not solve this problem. Instead, his turn shows that the more mental causality and thus an autonomy of 'consciousness' is granted, the more an ontologically based constructivism becomes implausible. In clarifying differences and similarities between different strands of constructivism, this article argues for a reorientation of our focus on the mindbody problem. From this perspective, however, constructivism presents itself not as some middle ground, but is rather characterized by its attempt to overcome Cartesian categories.
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'Eavesdropping on honored ghosts': from classical to reflexive realism
Brent J Steele
While the practice of reinventing realism is by no means novel, recent reinventions have taken a decidedly reflexive turn. This article examines how three particular scholars Anthony Lang, Michael Williams, and Richard Ned Lebow have revived some important and relatively obscured principles from classical realists, thereby recovering some practical ethics important for contemporary world politics. The article outlines the principles held in common by this scholarship. Reflexive realism has also resurrected and re-emphasized a once obscured critical voice of realists like Hans Morgenthau. In the process, it has served as a launching pad for a serious critique of eschatological-based philosophy, including neoconservatism. Several avenues for the future development of reflexive realism are also identified.
Rejoinder to the debate on Friedrich Kratochwil's 'Tartu lecture'
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A response to Friedrich Kratochwil: why shooting the messenger does not make the bad news go away!
Colin Wight
In this short reply to Friedrich Kratochwil I respond to some of his criticisms of my interpretation of his 'safe bet' article published in this Journal. Two important issues seem to be at stake. First is the role that the real world plays in theory choice and second in whether material factors play any role in social explanations. I argue that the real world plays an irreducible role in theory choice and assessment, although it is not the only factor and it is certainly not determinate in the last instance. Second, I argue that material factors may play a role in some social explanations although when and how much I do not know. But although I do not think that they can be totally disregarded, it cannot be inferred that I believe that they play the only role or are determinant in the last instance. The article concentrates on demonstrating just how Kratochwils response exposes the weaknesses of his 'safe bet', while at the same time demonstrating how it relies on a realism that is essential to all communicative exchange, and indeed all social practice. Put simply, his theoretical treatment is not sustained in his practice.
Book Review
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The Politics of Regional Identity: Meddling with the Mediterranean
Ana Bojinović
Routledge, London, New York, 2006, 241pp.
ISBN: 0-415-33396-2
Michelle Pace -
Debates on European Integration. A Reader
Daunis Auers
Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2006, 511pp.
ISBN: 1-4039-4104-1
Mettee Eilstrup-Sangiovanni (ed.) -
Culture and Security: Symbolic Power and the Politics of International Security
Pinar Bilgin
Routledge, London and New York, 2007, 172pp.
ISBN: 0-415-33397-0
Michael C. Williams -
Agents, Structures and International Relations
Michal Koran
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006, 340pp.
ISBN: 10 0-521-67416-6
Colin Wight