Professor
Nicholas Onuf
Description
Sovereignty and non-intervention are said to be related principles in constituting and regulating the so-called Westphalian order, at least until recent decades. The first part of the course considers the early modern origins of state sovereignty and its implications for the use of force in international relations. It also evaluates plausible explanations for the Westphalian order’s persistence despite chronic great-power intervention. The course then reviews the rise of humanitarianism as a transnational social movement in early 19th century liberal cultures, the rise of multi-functional international organisations in response to global upheavals in the first half of the 20th century, the rise of the human rights movement in the century’s last half, and the recent revival of cosmopolitan ethics. After assessing the impact of world wars and genocidal violence on liberal cultures and Westphalian arrangements, the course focuses on global governance manifested in collective intervention in complex humanitarian emergencies and the codification of principles directing states to take responsibility for the protection of other peoples than their own. Finally, the course asks if global governance today signals a pooling or erosion of sovereignty and whether liberal values suffice for a cosmopolitan ethics sensitive to the needs of imperiled strangers.
Course requirements
Keep a diary or notebook with reflections, questions and critical notes on readings and class discussions (need not by typed, for instructor’s unannounced inspection).
Write a 10-20 page essay (typed, double space, due 1 June) on the near future of sovereignty, intervention and/or humanitarianism. Don’t hesitate to situate your essay in a theoretical frame of reference, but do not feel obliged to do so.
Lead at least one class discussion and participate actively in all class discussions. Students will select sessions in which they will take responsibility for class discussion on 30 March.
Course Readings
All course readings are available from the course web page at http://graduateinstitute.ch/political-science/courses/spr-11/sovereignty-intervention-humanitarianism-2011.html
To access the readings, first log in to the course web page using the log-in and password distributed the first day of class. If you cannot immediately find the “login” link, it is at the bottom of the course web page on the far right. Once you have logged in, a sub page will appear on the left side of the page below “Sovereignty, intervention, and humanitarianism” entitled “Additional material.” Click on this sub page. A new web page will display with links to the readings for each week. If you have difficulties accessing any of the readings please contact Jon, the assistant for the course, at jon.strandquist@graduateinstitute.ch.
Class schedule and course syllabus
23 February. Introductory formalities. What is a state?
No readings
2 March. The Westphalian moment
READ
Leo Gross, ‘The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948,’ American Journal of International Law, Vol. 42 (1948), pp. 20-41
Nicholas Onuf, ‘Sovereignty: Outline of a Conceptual History,’ Alternatives, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Fall 1991), pp. 425-446/Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, The Republican Legacy in International Thought (1998), ch. 5
Stephen D. Krasner, ‘Westphalia and All That,’ in Robert O. Keohane and Judith Goldstein, eds., Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change (1993), ch. 9
Friedrich Kratochwil, ‘Sovereignty as Dominium: Is There a Right of Humanitarian Intervention,’ in Michael Mastanduno and Gene Lyons, Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention (1995), ch. 2
Jens Bartelson, The Genealogy of Sovereignty (1995), ch. 4
Andreas Osiander, ‘Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth,’ International Organization, vol. 55 (2001), pp. 251-87
Jordan Branch, ‘Mapping the Sovereign State: Technology, Authority, and Systemic Change,’ International Organization 65, (2011): 1-36.
Jordan Branch, ‘“Colonial Reflection”’ and Territoriality: The Peripheral Origins of Sovereign Statehood,’ European Journal of International Relations 20, no.10 (2010): 1-21.
9 March. Bodin, Grotius and Hobbes
READ
F. H. Hinsley, Sovereignty, 2nd ed. (1986), ch. 4
Tanaka Yasuaki, ‘State and Governing Power,’ and Yanagihara Masaru, ‘Dominium and Imperium,’ in Onuma Yasuaki, ed., A Normative Approach to War: Peace, War, and Justice in Hugo Grotius (1993), ch. 4-5
Jens Bartelson, The Genealogy of Sovereignty, ch. 5
Jens Bartelson, ‘On the Indivisibility of Sovereignty’ (preprint, 2010)
Harry D. Gould, The Legacy of Punishment in International Law (2010), ch. 2
16 March. Republicanism
READ
Onuf, The Republican Legacy in International Thought, ch. 2-4
23 March. Sovereignty and intervention after Vienna
READ
F. H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the History of Relations between States (1963), ch. 10
Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763-1838 (1994), ch. 12-17
J. Samuel Barkin and Bruce Cronin. ‘The State and the Nation: Changing Norms and the Rules of Sovereignty in International Relations,’ International Organization, vol. 48, no. 1 (1994), pp. 107-130
30 March. Roots of humanitarianism
READ
Martha Finnemore, ‘Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention,’ in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (1996), ch. 5
Nicholas Onuf, ‘Humanitarian Intervention: The Early Years,’ Florida Journal of International Law, Vol. 16, No. 4 (December 2004), pp. 753-787
Michael Barnett and Thomas G Weiss, ‘Humanitarianism: A Brief History of the Present,’ and Craig Calhoun, ‘The Imperative to Reduce Suffering: Charity, Progress, and Emergencies in the Field of Humanitarian Action,’ in Barnett and Weiss, eds., Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics (2008), ch. 1, 3
6 April (reschedule). Modernist functional arrangements
READ
Leonard S. Woolf, International Government: Two Reports, 2nd ed. (1916)
Dorothy Ross, Modernist Impulses in the Human Sciences, 1870-1930 (1994), ch. 1, 8
Nicholas Onuf, ‘The Ambiguous Modernism of Seyla Benhabib,’ Journal of International Political Theory, Vol. 5 (2009), pp. 125-137
James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1998), ch. 3, 4
Hans J. Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (1946), ch. 2-4
13 April. Collective security as collective intervention
READ
League of Nations Covenant; United Nations Charter, ch. 7, 8
Inis L. Claude, Jr., Power and International Relations (1962), ch. 4-5
Nicholas Onuf, ‘Intervention for Common Good,’ in Mastanduno and Gene Lyons, Beyond Westphalia?, ch. 3/Onuf, The Republican Legacy in International Thought, ch. 6
20 April. Human rights
READ
Nicholas Onuf and Peter Onuf, Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War (2006), ch. 2
Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (2007), ch. 4, 5
Richard A. Falk, Achieving Human Rights (2008), TBA
Bruce Frohnen and Kenneth L. Grasso, eds., Rethinking Rights: Historical, Political, and Philosophical Perspectives (2009), pp. 1-33
4 May. Social movements and global civil society
READ
Jean L. Cohen and Anthony Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (1992), ch. 1-3
Onuf, The Republican Legacy in International Thought, ch. 10
Randall Germain and Michael Kenny, eds., The Idea of Global Civil Society: Politics and Ethics in a Globalizing Era (2005), ch. 4
Brent J. Steele and Jack Amoureux, ‘NGOs and Monitoring Genocide: The Benefits and Limits of a Human Rights Panopticon,’ Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 34 (2005), pp. 403-432
Nikolas M. Rajkovic, ‘ “Global Law” and Governmentality: (Re)Conceptualizing the “Rule of Law” as Rule “through” Law,’ European Journal of International Relations, vol. 17, (2010):1-24
11 May. Humanitarian intervention after the Cold War
READ
Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention and International Society (2000), ch. 5-8
Anthony F. Lang. Jr., ed., Just Intervention (2003), ch. 1, 2
David Kennedy, The Dark Side of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism (2004), ch. 1-3
18 May. Global governance
READ
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, ‘Introduction,’ in Joseph S. Nye and John D. Donahue, eds., Governance in a Globalizing World (2000), pp. 1-44
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. The Responsibility to Protect. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001 (http://www.iciss.ca/pdf/Commission-Report.pdf)
Craig N. Murphy, ‘Global Governance: Poorly Done and Poorly Understood,’ International Affairs, vol. 76, no. 4 (2000): 789-803
Alex J. Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect (2009), ch. 2, 3
Hannes Peltonen, ‘Modelling International Collective Responsibility: The Case of Grave Humanitarian Crises,’ Review of International Studies, vol. 36, no. 2 (2010), pp. 239–255
25 May. Whither sovereignty?
READ
Thomas G. Weiss and Jarat Chopra, ‘Sovereignty under Siege: From Intervention to Humanitarian Space,’ and James N. Rosenau, Sovereignty in a Turbulent World,’ in Michael Mastanduno and Gene Lyons, Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention (1995), ch 5, 9
Saskia Sassen, Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization (1996), ch. 1
Jörg Friedrichs, ‘The Neomedieval Renaissance: Global Governance and International Law in the New Middle Ages.’ In Ige E. Dekker and Wouter G. Werner, eds. Governance and International Legal Theory (2004), pp. 3-36
1 June. Cosmopolitan ethics
READ
Seyla Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism (2006), pp. 13-80
Eric A. Heinze, Waging Humanitarian War: The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Humanitarian Intervention (2009), ch. 1, 2
