Unpacking the politics of great power responsibility: Nationalist and Maoist China in international order-building
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Author | Beverley Loke |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066115611968 |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
European Journal of
International Relations
2016, Vol. 22(4) 847 –871
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066115611968
ejt.sagepub.com
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JR
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Unpacking the politics of
great power responsibility:
Nationalist and Maoist China
in international order-building
Beverley Loke
University of Oxford, UK
Abstract
Despite its prominence in the discourse of international politics, the concept of ‘great
power responsibility’ remains largely unmapped in International Relations. Existing
accounts tend to focus their analysis at a structural level and do not pay adequate
attention to agency and processes of deliberation, negotiation and contestation. Drawing
on constructivist insights to extend existing English School scholarship, this article
unpacks great power responsibility as a socially constructed and negotiated concept.
It develops a typology to further investigate the politics of great power responsibility
and focuses specifically on four categories: the location, object, nature and rationale
of responsibility (respectively, responsibility by whom, to whom, for what and why).
This conceptual framework is applied to China at two important international order-
building junctures: institutional construction during World War II and institutional
accommodation in the Cold War. In doing so, the article illuminates China’s historical
agency and uncovers the processes of both conflict and concordance that have shaped
Chinese engagements with the question of great power responsibility.
Keywords
China, great power responsibility, great power status, international order,
International Relations, society of states
Corresponding author:
Beverley Loke, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Manor Road
Building, Oxford, OX1 3UQ, UK.
Email: beverley.loke@politics.ox.ac.uk
611968EJT0010.1177/1354066115611968European Journal of International RelationsLoke
research-article2015
Article
848 European Journal of International Relations 22(4)
Introduction
Great power heralds great responsibility. By virtue of their status and entitlements in
international society, great powers have special responsibilities to provide leadership and
maintain international order. Over the course of international history, the idea of great
power responsibility has become common parlance in prescribing the foreign policy
behaviour of great powers since they arguably have the most capacity to influence the
direction of international order. Yet, despite its prominence in the discourse of interna-
tional politics, the concept of ‘great power responsibility’ remains relatively unmapped
in International Relations (IR). In many respects, the concept is largely taken as an
unproblematic given, with the politics surrounding great power responsibility often
neglected. A deeper inquiry into the notion and assumptions of great power responsibil-
ity, however, reveals fundamental ambiguities on the conceptual debate on great power
responsibility — what I refer to as the ‘responsibility problématique’. Unpacking the
concept of great power responsibility reveals significant ambiguity over what responsi-
bility entails, how it is being defined and redefined in political discourses over time, who
is engaged in this process, and for what purposes. These issues are significant because
they speak directly to questions of power and international order. As the manner in which
great powers exercise their power and responsibilities carries more moral weight and
directly influences international affairs, how they define and project, and the extent to
which international society acquiesces to, the notion of responsibility relate directly to
the ways in which the boundaries of society are constructed.
This opens up space for conceptual innovation and the article makes two conceptual
moves in this regard. First, it takes as its starting point the need to problematise the con-
cept of great power responsibility in IR. It argues that we need to unpack great power
responsibility as a socially constructed and negotiated concept. In interrogating ideas of
the ‘social’, however, this article seeks not only to highlight what is constructed, agreed
and shared. Rather, it also involves examining what might be negotiated, resisted and
contested, and how these ideas evolve over time. Most accounts of great power respon-
sibility are situated in the English School. This article shares a similar starting point but
also draws on a constructivist approach to further advance a conceptual understanding of
great power responsibility. Constructivism will be useful here because it seeks to illumi-
nate how those dimensions of international life that are often taken as natural, given or
embedded are inherently the product of agency and social construction (Hopf, 1998).
Second, the article then establishes a typology through which we can examine the politics
of great power responsibility. It focuses specifically on four categories — the location,
object, nature and rationale of responsibility (respectively, responsibility by whom, to
whom, for what and why). By mapping out the concept in a more systematic manner, this
article seeks to fill the conceptual gap in an under-studied but widely used area.
This conceptual inquiry is directed towards two important junctures in the context of
China and international order-building. International order is understood here as a purpo-
sive pattern that sustains the primary goals of international society (Bull, 1977: 8). Hence,
order-building periods ‘play a sort of constitutional function, providing a framework in
which the subsequent flow of international relations takes place’ (Ikenberry, 2011: 12)
and, in that context, provide important sites to examine how China has negotiated the
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