Journal of International Political Theory

Publisher:: Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:: 2021-09-06

ISBN:: 1755-0882

Issue Number

No. 20-2, June 2024

Latest documents

Mental pictures, structural constraints: Kenneth N. Waltz’s approach to theory
The aim of this article is to develop Kenneth N. Waltz’s conceptualization of system structures based on the distribution of capabilities to those described by two traits at system-level: the distribution of capabilities across states and states’ geographic positions with respect to each other, that is, the contiguity configuration. The development generates taxonomies of structures evaluated as mental pictures that guide, organize, and channel thoughts by identifying the ways system structures constrain international interactions. Mental pictures are argued to derive from a multiplicity of interrelated neurophysiological processes of the brain according to functionalism which is a monist doctrine of the philosophy of mind. Mental pictures establish structural constraints as products of an algorithm based on realism and system theory depicting a neo-Kantian view of how our minds impose order on sensory data.
Mining the past: The case for historical narratives in global justice theorizing
Debates on global justice, it is claimed, can be enriched in important ways by more explicitly historicizing our approach and using historical narratives, stories and debates to expand our conceptual vocabulary and theoretical purview. The claim is illustrated through a specific analysis of Paul Robeson’s relationship with the Welsh Miners. It is argued such a historical turn, grounded in a wider interdisciplinary engagement with subjects such as cultural studies may see at least three key benefits accrue in terms of our understanding of the field. Firstly, it can uncover philosophical and theoretical ideas and alternatives so far unconsidered; secondly, it can generate a shift in the empirical frame that accounts for and seeks to identify means for “real world” political change; lastly, it should encourage us to question the in/out dichotomy at the heart of the western debate, which projects global injustice as being “out there.”
Beyond the Eurocentrism of immigration ethics: Tanzania and pan-African Ujamaa
Immigration ethics debates remain deeply Eurocentric in their assumptions and focus. Due to the dominance of a universalising, liberal perspective, the thought and experience of the global south continues to be excluded, except as ‘senders’ or ‘transiters’ of people. Not only does the debate thereby misrepresent the majority of the world, it also necessarily excludes that majority from having anything useful to say about ethical approaches to immigration. In this way, it offers a partial, parochial, local theory that mischaracterises itself as international and universal. By making common cause with decolonising approaches from Latin America, this article seeks to challenge this Eurocentrism by drawing on an example of African immigration ethics: postcolonial Tanzania’s ‘open door’ era. Here, the combination of the OAU’s expanded definition of a refugee, alongside the ‘traditional’ indigenous values of Julius Nyerere’s pan-Africanism and native socialism (ujamaa), made for a generous, if highly restricted welcome for hundreds of thousands of people. This reveals the need for immigration ethics to dispense with the search for ‘universal’ norms that are limiting and exclusionary. Instead, it should explore pluriversality: the importance of local, creative, relational responses to mobile populations that are ongoing in the global south.
The peace/violence nexus: Fundamental, multiple, contingent
This paper finds its point of departure in Murad Idris’s argument about peace being a fundamentally violent ideal marked by an overarching logic of constitutive aggression. It responds to this categorical statement by reconstructing four distinct variants of the peace/violence nexus, each of which involves a different type of violence, performed by a different type of agent, with a different demeanor, at different times and intervals, and in relation to a different conception of peace. There is not one peace/violence nexus but at least four. What is more, a detailed examination of these peace/violence nexuses puts into doubt their fundamental nature, if by fundamental is meant intrinsic and inescapable. It draws attention to the contingency of their becoming a social and political reality, and thereby confirms that the imbrication of peace and violence may at least theoretically—and temporarily—be avoided.
Impartial third and disinterested judgment: Kojève and Arendt’s cosmopolitan phenomenologies of human rights as a response to Schmitt
This article proposes that Hannah Arendt and Alexandre Kojève’s responses to Carl Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty, when combined, provide a historical and normative basis for a cosmopolitan view on human rights. I argue that by systematically merging Kojève’s theory of the “disinterested and impartial third” and Arendt’s theory of “disinterested judgment,” legal institutions, economic redistribution, and intersubjective normativity can be combined to create a robust response to Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty. To demonstrate this, I examine their efforts to resolve the contradiction between universal rights and national sovereignty from a phenomenological standpoint. Arendt’s idea of the “common world” is analyzed, showing how it upholds the idea of a non-sovereign public realm as a normative source of human rights but fails to consider the institutional and economic factors required for their realization. I then explore Kojève’s theory of impartial international legal institutions and his critique of economic colonialism to confront these factors. Additionally, Arendt’s theory of disinterested judgment is shown to address the limitations of Kojève’s phenomenological view of disinterestedness. This convergence between Kojève and Arendt provides a comprehensive response to the practical challenges of Arendt’s theory, while also highlighting the importance of “world opinion” in transforming sovereignty.
Dialectical Insights for Global IR: Forum on Snapshots from Home
This contribution to a symposium on Karin Fierke’s 2022 book, Snapshots from Home, reflects on the dialectical aspects of her analysis, her contribution to Global IR, and the implications of her work for the field of International Relations.
A human right to political membership & the right to territory
The global justice debates frame the right to political membership and territorial rights by focusing on stateless individuals/refugees as claimants of the former and sovereign states as the claimants of the latter. Kant’s Right to Hospitality is often employed to reinforce this mode of framing rights. However, this mode of framing rights can lead to possible neglect of a people as an equally important right claimant. I employ a context-oriented interpretation of Kant’s right to Hospitality to highlight the non-state people’s claims to political membership and territory. I suggest that in Kant, while the non-state people are not in a civil condition, we can nevertheless recognize their provisional claims to the territory, which are forceful enough to exclude outsiders. Furthermore, the non-state people cannot be forced into a political membership with us or each other because we do not know the nature of obligations they may have towards each other. Recognizing these limits of our understanding can encourage philosophically thought-out modes of reframing indigenous people’s claims in our theoretical debates. In practice, it can promote an insightful attitude in negotiating their terms of political membership and land claims against the sovereign states.
The Role of Actionless Action in Generating Quantum Social Change: Forum on Snapshots from Home
This article considers an alternative paradigm for responding to the climate emergency. Drawing on Fierke’s ideas on quantum complementarity and wuwei, or actionless action, it considers what quantum social science and Eastern philosophies can offer to a fragmenting, polarized world where responses to climate change appear to be limited and ineffective. The wisdom of actionless action involves engaging differently with difference, emphasizing a spontaneous and ethical quality of agency that both disrupts the patterns that maintain the drivers of climate change and contributes to social and cultural norms, rules, regulations, and institutions that are equitable and sustainable. In contrast to doing nothing, actionless action may one of the keys to generating quantum social change.
Introduction to the forum on: Karin Fierke, Snapshots from Home: Mind, Action and Strategy in an Uncertain World (Bristol University Press, 2022)
Karin Fierke situates Snapshots from Home at the intersection of two bodies of scholarship: one directed toward globalizing the study of world politics and the other drawing from quantum theory’s insights to study the social world. The first body of scholarship has a long history. That it did not make a mark on the study of world politics until the mid-2010s has to do with the narrow notion of “science” that dominated the study of world politics, also known as disciplinary International Relations (IR). By way of showing the obsolescence of the narrow notion of “science” that IR has modeled itself on, the body of efforts that draw from quantum theory’s insights has the potential to make more room for the first one. Fierke’s book, by way of exploring the parallels between quantum physics and Asian philosophies, allows us to identify this potential. The contributors to this special forum each elaborate on different aspects of this potential.
Will a desirable apparatus always return a desirable end? My hope for Snapshots from Home: Mind, Action, and Strategy in an Uncertain World (Bristol University Press, 2022)
Will a desirable apparatus always return a desirable end? This short engagement expresses my hope for Karin M. Fierke’s Snapshots from Home: Mind, Action, and Strategy in an Uncertain World (Bristol University Press, 2022).