|
Introduction to Issue 1
Welcome to this inaugural issue of the IPT Beacon, the centrepiece
of the International Political Theory (IPT) website.
The IPT Beacon is an unusual
journal in several respects.
Its purely ethereal existence - with no printed paper directly
involved - is the least of these, since online publishing is well on the
way to becoming the norm for academic journals. More unusual is that this
publication features work from other journals. In fact, for its first few issues
there is a likelihood it will feature only work
from other journals. For while
submissions of original IPT articles are definitely encouraged, the IPT
Beacon, unlike a more conventional journal, is not entirely dependent on
submissions in order to fulfil its core aim. That aim, quite simply, is to showcase - in one place -
the best current work in IPT, whatever its source. (It is very much a secondary
consideration, from our point of view, what proprietorial claims might be
staked in any given article, even though we pay due heed to issues of
copyright.) What matters is
that readers can have ready access to articles of quality and significance
at the cutting edge of International Political Theory. This brings us to one further
respect in which this is an unusual journal, namely, that it is a
journal of International Political Theory. Although numerous journals from several
disciplines carry IPT articles, there is no other single journal
dedicated entirely to work in this field.
In the course of preparing this issue of the IPT Beacon
our Editorial Board surveyed forty different journals, and twenty on this
occasion contained articles deemed worthy of nomination for consideration
by our Panel for its final selection.
This process of nomination and selection has involved a
considerable collective effort. The distinguished members of our Editorial
Board have given generously of their time and expertise to peruse assigned
journals on behalf of the IPT Beacon. Thanks to them, every relevant
published article has been assessed for its suitability to appear here. The Selection Panel then had the
unenviable task of making some hard choices about which articles to
include. With the bar set as high as it has to be for this journal to
fulfil its mission, we eventually had to exclude some very good articles.
(So in the interests of being both fair too authors and informative to
readers, a brief report on these is appended as ÔA
Snapshot of International Political Theory in Spring 2006Õ.) But our task was also an enviable
one inasmuch as everything we read enhanced our understanding of contemporary
International Political Theory and heightened our appreciation of what is
happening at its cutting edge. Indeed, for myself, as general editor, the
whole process has been immensely rewarding.
At this point, therefore, I wish to record my
sincerest thanks to the members of our Editorial Board and Selection Panel
for their indispensible help and highly collegial support in bringing to
fruition this first issue of the IPT Beacon.
The Selection
What justification, if any, is there for preventive war?
Two important, highly nuanced, treatments of this question are
included. Whitley KaufmanÕs
timely article asks whether the threat of
terrorism requires revision of international rules on the preventive use of
force. It arrives at the interesting conclusion that although each state
retains the right of pre-emption in self-defence against an imminent
attack, the right of prevention can belong only to a central authority,
which in our system is the UN Security Council. The panel found this
article to be provocative and illuminating, deserving to be widely
read.
The same applies to Allen BuchananÕs.
Justifications for preventive war, he notes to start with, challenge the
Just War Norm (JWN), according to which war is permissible only in response
to an actual or imminent attack. However, he proposes that we should not
see the question here simply as whether to abandon the JWN in favour of a
more permissive norm, but as a choice between adherence to the JWN and the
creation of new institutions that would allow for a more permissive norm.
He argues that the validity of norms depends upon institutional context, so
that which norms should be applied depends on what institutional resources
for constraining war exist. Determining whether to try to create
institutions in which a more permissive norm would be valid requires
empirically based institutional analysis. Contemporary just war theorizing
is methodologically flawed, Buchanan claims, because it is insufficiently
empirical. Arguments for and against proposed use-of-force norms must
include factual premises about how various institutions work and about the
feasibility and costs of creating them. This methodological implication
means that a comprehensive Just War Theory cannot rely exclusively on
philosophical argument as it is usually understood. The integration of
moral philosophy and institutional analysis is required.
This last point arguably applies more
generally in the field of International Political Theory. A mark of much of the best work in
this field is that it combines philosophical acuity with a robust
appreciation of the empirical contexts within and to which it is applied.
Daniel M WeinstockÕs article bears this
mark. Like CB Macpherson, whose book title he parenthetically revises,
Weinstock is as much concerned with what (global) democracy means Ôin the
real worldÕ as in more purely conceptual theory. He argues that in
democratic theory the predominant account of what makes democracy valuable
differs from the account which best makes sense of actually existing
democracy. The former is agency-based and the latter interest-based. The
real world of transnational democracy, he maintains, should be understood
in terms of all
those various institutions that serve in one way or another to be
responsive to peopleÕs interests.
Participation in politics - the defining feature of democracy on the
competing account - will be an interest of some, Weinstock grants, and
should be catered for, but he argues that it is not only practically
unfeasible, but also normatively unwarranted, to lay emphasis on making
participation possible for everyone as the primary democratic
principle. He maintains that
globally there are good reasons for adopting the interest account as the
normative foundation of democracy. This article will doubtless stimulate
some lively debate.
Meanwhile, the real world of global
democracy as institutionalized is a very imperfect and incomplete state of
affairs. Institutions do not bring themselves into existence; and nor, when
in existence, are they necessarily just. So even with regard to its
interest-respecting functions, global democracy has a very long way to go.
Even a normative account of how global obligations are generated is still a
matter of debate. A growing number of cosmopolitan theorists have recently
been challenging the assumption that obligations of justice hold only
between those living under a common constitution within a single political
community. But translating
what Charles Beitz has called Ômoral cosmopolitanismÕ into an effective
Ôpolitical cosmopolitanismÕ is itself a major challenge.
Iris Marion Young takes up part of this
challenge by inviting us to take a fresh look at how we, even as
individuals, view our responsibilities and obligations with regard to the
promotion of globally just institutions. Obligations of justice arise
between persons by virtue of the social processes that connect them;
political institutions are the response to these obligations rather than
their basis. Claims that obligations of justice extend globally for some
issues can be grounded in the fact that some structural social processes
connect people across the world without regard to political boundaries. So
how ought moral agents, whether individual or institutional, conceptualize
their responsibilities in relation to unjust global social processes? In
response to this question Young proposes a Òsocial connection modelÓ of
responsibility, according to which all agents who contribute by their
actions to the structural processes that produce injustice have
responsibilities to work to remedy these injustices. She distinguishes the
social connection model from a more standard, ÔliabilityÕ, model of
responsibility. She suggests
that her model is an improvement in at least five significant
respects. This is a
constructive proposal which fills in some of the thinking that would flesh
out ideas of, for example Thomas Pogge, about how individuals have responsibilities in relation
to unjust institutions. The proposal deserves further discussion.
The question of global justice is also the
subject of our featured Debate.
Last year, Thomas Nagel published a carefully reasoned, and none too
sanguine, article about how the pursuit of global justice really is a problem. He sees the possibility of
political cosmopolitanism is at best a distant prospect and suggests we
should expect a period of history in which things get worse before they get
better. For, whatever
normative arguments cosmopolitans might advance, they cannot hope these
will hold sway against political realities without a process of upheaval in
which cosmopolitan norms are paid little heed. While NagelÕs argument is
nuanced, its message is stark. Nagel would have us not shy away either from
the fact that the idea of cosmopolis is the idea of a world state or from
the consequences of this fact. If there is to be global authority, this can
only develop first as international authority, he believes, and this cannot
be expected to meet cosmopolitan criteria of justice and legitimacy. In fact, in opposition to a
cosmopolitan conception of justice Nagel posits what he calls a political
conception, one which cosmopolitans will find too close to statism and Realpolitik to be palatable.
His article has already attracted a good deal of critical attention, and we
include two of the responses that have been published so far. I somehow
doubt they will be the last. The articles of A.J.Julius and of Joshua Cohen
and Charles Sabel both show that there is a lot still to think about even
with regard to what the problem of global justice is, let alone about
ways to address it.
International Political Theory has its work cut out.
Tim Hayward
May 2006
|
