Theorizing state civil disobedience in international politics
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088215573092 |
| Published date | 01 June 2015 |
| Author | Antonio Franceschet |
| Date | 01 June 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Symposium: Rethinking states in international politics |
Journal of International Political Theory
2015, Vol. 11(2) 239 –256
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088215573092
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Theorizing state civil
disobedience in international
politics
Antonio Franceschet
University of Calgary, Canada
Abstract
Illegal state actions are sometimes interpreted as civil disobedience. Yet, liberal theorists
insist that, to count as such, states must intend to reform the systemic imperfections
of the international legal order. Moreover, states must have the capacity to engineer
such reforms responsibly. These requirements result in an elitist conception of
international civil disobedience because weaker states cannot refashion the key rules
of the international legal order. By introducing a broader conception of resistance than
found in existing theory, I show how weaker states can still engage in civil disobedience.
A conceptual framework of two types of power supports my argument: constituent
power and destituent power. If state action were expressed through these two types of
power, then more states and more types of illegal action would count as examples of
civil disobedience.
Keywords
Civil disobedience, international law, liberalism, power, resistance, states
Introduction
Civil disobedience has a distinguished place in liberal and progressivist narratives of
domestic politics. Some international political theorists argue that, under certain condi-
tions, illegal state actions are akin to civil disobedience within the international system.
Reasoning by analogy, they suggest that, if civil disobedience is justifiable by persons
within states, then it is possibly legitimate by states. If a Dr Martin Luther King or a
Mohandas K. Gandhi is each right to break unjust laws, then, in principle, we should
support the righteous illegality of states. If the United States civil rights and Indian
Corresponding author:
Antonio Franceschet, Department of Political Science, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW,
Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada.
Email: afrances@ucalgary.ca
573092IPT0010.1177/1755088215573092Journal of International Political TheoryFranceschet
research-article2015
Article
240 Journal of International Political Theory 11(2)
independence movements could, in their times, disobey unjust segregation and colonial
laws, then states – say those in the European Union (EU) or North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) – are not obligated to obey unjust United Nations’ (UN) rules that
outlaw humanitarian interventions.1
A curious inversion occurs when some international political theorists draw an anal-
ogy between paradigmatic cases of domestic civil disobedience and states breaking inter-
national laws. In scaling up from the individual in domestic politics to states in the
international order, theorists such as Robert Goodin (2005), Allen Buchanan (2001,
2004) and Robert W. Hoag (2007) think only of more powerful states as righteous resist-
ers. Weaker states are not viewed as potential civil disobedients in the face of unjust or
harmful international laws. Yet, this position overlooks the fact that civil disobedience is
typically a tactic of the weak, of those lacking the state’s coercive powers and authority,
in historically specific domestic political struggles. This inversion of the weak and the
strong informs the questions posed in this article: What counts as civil disobedience by
states? And what kind of states count in progressive narratives of illegal yet justice-
motivated action?
Existing theory on state civil disobedience adopts a narrow conception of what counts
as legitimate resistance. Key theorists insist that states must intend to reform the systemic
imperfections of the international legal order. Moreover, states must have the capacity to
engineer such reforms responsibly. These requirements result in an elitist conception of
international civil disobedience: Only the powerful and authoritative states in the interna-
tional system are candidates to revise international law through illegal actions (e.g. using
military force to institute a humanitarian protection regime). By contrast, because weaker
states cannot typically refashion the fundamental rules of the international legal order,
they are viewed as unlikely candidates for civil disobedience. By introducing a broader
conception of resistance to international law, this article shows that weaker states engage
in a different type of civil disobedience. Yet, this is unrecognized in most liberal accounts
of international justice because of the presumption that civil disobedience requires a gran-
diose intention and capacity to enact systemic, even constitutional changes to either
domestic or international politics. The historic practice of civil disobedience suggests oth-
erwise. As David Lyons (1998) argues, figures such as Gandhi and King did not always or
unambiguously seek to reform the systemic rules under which their peoples lived and
suffered. Rather, these iconic resisters sought primarily to end the experience of oppres-
sion, terrorism, and indignity sustained by British colonialism and the South’s Jim Crow
laws. Even where a weaker party has little or no prospect of reforming the overarching
legal order, its illegal actions should be categorized as civil disobedience. With this in
mind, a broader, non-elitist conception of state civil disobedience is possible.
In order to enlarge the theory of state civil disobedience, I argue that two distinct types
of power shape such resistance: constituent and destituent. Constituent power is well
known and underwrites the elitist conception of state disobedience theorized by Goodin,
Buchanan and Hoag. Destituent power is virtually unknown in international political
theory.2 It is useful, however, for theorizing the reality of weaker states breaking interna-
tional law for principled but not reformist reasons. By exercising destituent power, these
states seek to withdraw from the disadvantageous effects of certain international legal
obligations.
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