Review: The Global Covenant
| Author | Roger Epp |
| Date | 01 September 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200105600326 |
| Published date | 01 September 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
Reviews
THE
GLOBAL
COVENANT
Human
conduct
in
a
world
of
states
Robert
H.
Jackson
Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press,
2000,
xvi,
464
pp,
$59.95,
ISBN
0-
19-829625-8
F
or the
past
decade
and
a
half,
Robert
Jackson
has
charted
an
almost
iconoclastic
scholarly
path
outside
the
mainstream
of
international
relations
in
North
America.
With
this
ambitious
book,
he means
to
make
that
path
accessible
and
relevant
both
to
a succes-
sor
generation
in
the
universities
and
to
contemporary
political
argu-
ment about
such
issues
as
humanitarian intervention.
Rooted
in
the
so-called
'classical'
or
'English school'
tradition
of
Martin
Wight
and
Hedley
Bull,
Jackson
draws
on
political
philosophy, history,
and
international
jurisprudence
as
central
sources
for
the
study
of
interna-
tional
relations,
which
he
reclaims
as
a
'human' rather
than
a
behav-
ioural
or
policy
science.
His
method
is
interpretive,
attentive
to lan-
guage
and
practice,
concerned
with
meaningful
human
conduct,
and,
as
such,
able
to
account
theoretically
for
normative
considerations,
not
as
an
adjunct
or
an
after-thought,
but
as
profoundly constitutive
of
the subject
itself.
This
book's
skilful
rendering
of
the
rise
of
Westphalian
interna-
tional
society
as
a
principled order,
a
'global
covenant,'
a
realm
of
'international
freedom'
founded
on
notions
of
sovereign
equality,
non-interference,
pluralism,
and
anti-paternalism,
deserves
a
wide
reading.
Its
spirited
defence
of
international
society
as
the
best
of
all
possible worlds
runs
against
the
grain
of
globalization
theorists,
human
rights
activists,
democrats,
and
'armed
humanitarians.'
Jackson
acknowledges
the
ways
in which the
core
value
of
security has
international,
human,
and
global-environmental
dimensions,
and
in
which political
actors
correspondingly
now
justify
their
actions
and
are
also
held
to
account
in
those
terms. But
he
is
clearly
a
sceptic
on
the
subject
of
intervention,
a
position
he
develops
at
length with
respect
to
Kosovo.
This
is,
in
short,
a
book
of
impressive
sweep,
great
clarity,
and high-
ly
stimulating
argument
precisely
where
its
considered
judgments
-
and,
at
times,
its
brisk
dismissals
-
provoke
disagreement.
Roger
Epp/Augustana
University
College
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
Summer2001
553
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