This chapter investigates France’s relationship to R2P in the post-Libya era, and more specifically during Hollande’s presidency (May 2012 – May 2017). It argues that Hollande and his various executives were strong promoters of the international norm normatively, diplomatically and militarily. However, it also explains that France’s strong involvement was not always beneficial. It then investigates the reasons behind this strong support. It argues that it can partly be explained by the fact that R2P was beginning to be internalised by France to a certain extent, but explains that this internalisation did not mean that the domestic norm became obsolete, as it remained very influential during Hollande’s presidency. Finally, the chapter reflects on the shift in France’s strategy to intervene for humanitarian purposes. It argues that despite a strong unilateral presence in Africa, it would be mistaken to argue that a return to Françafrique or a shift away from multilateralism was taking place.

This chapter provides a comprehensive picture of how dialogue and negotiations between the Irish and the British led to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Here Michael Lillis describes his relationship with British official David Goodall and the process of engagement that led to agreement

This chapter explores how the Irish worked to shape the course of Sunningdale, what went wrong, what happened afterwards and how relations developed between Dublin and the British, moving towards the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the increased role of Irish involvement in the affairs of Northern Ireland.

In her closing essay for the volume, Ayelet Shachar begins by briefly restating her concept of the “shifting border.” She then moves on to address the three core issues raised by her interlocutors, which she labels as follows: 1) shapeshifting migration control and illiberal leeway; 2) legal institutions, social change, and constraints on governmental power; 3) the emancipatory power of ideas and political agency. Shachar concludes by observing that we cannot wait for perfection before we turn to counter preventable harm, death, and injustice. At the same time, we should not be afraid to contemplate robust, long-term solutions to the vexing problems of unfettered power, systemic exclusion, and official indifference to migrants’ rights, safety, and dignity.

In her response to Ayelet Shachar's lead essay, Noora Lori commends Shachar for providing the conceptual language to critique the contemporary migration-enforcement practices of liberal states while developing a framework for countering the illiberal effects of these policies. Lori notes, however, that while Shachar explains that the shifting border contracts and expands into time as well as space, most of her empirical examples focus on spatial mobility. Dividing her response into two parts, Lori begins by elaborating on the temporal aspects of Shachar’s argument, notably legal maneuvers that deploy time to police the boundaries of the national body politic. These separate the chronological advancement of the clock from the counting of time under the mantle of the law: what matters is not how much time a person has resided in a territory but rather how that time is counted by the state. By pegging rights to a specific legal status, and counting the time of different statuses differently, states can suspend, slow down, or speed up chronological time in order to exclude, delay, or hasten the inclusion of particular non-citizens. The second part of Lori's response takes a step back to assess the larger implications of Shachar’s findings for our understanding of the political continuum between liberal democracies and authoritarian or autocratic states. Lori observes that, like the enterprises of colonialism and imperialism during previous periods, the practices associated with contemporary migration enforcement highlight the contradictions between democratic ideals and the actual practices of liberal states.

In her lead essay for the volume, Ayelet Shachar introduces the concept of the "shifting border." Whereas borders are traditionally understood to exist at a country's territorial edge, prosperous countries are increasingly utilizing sophisticated legal tools to selectively restrict mobility and access by detaching the border and its migration-control functions from a fixed territorial marker. The shifting border extends the long arm of the state to regulate mobility half the world away, while also stretching deeply into the interior, creating what have been referred to as “constitution free” zones or “waiting zones” where ordinary constitutional rights are partially suspended. To understand this development, Shachar proposes a change in perspective from studying the movement of people across borders to critically investigating the movement of borders to regulate the mobility of people. Looking at cases in the European Union, the United States, Canada, and Australia, she reveals a paradigmatic and paradoxical shift in the political imagination and implementation of the sovereign authority to screen and manage global migration flows in a world filled with multiple sources of law. When it comes to controlling migration, states are abandoning traditional notions of fixed territoriality, but when it comes to granting rights and protections, the same states snap back to a narrow and strict interpretation of spatiality which limits their responsibility and liability. Shachar concludes her essay by exploring whether there are limits on such authority, and if so, how to activate them and who should do so.

This chapter investigates France’s conception and contribution to human protection from 1987 to 1993. It first discusses the emergence of France’s domestic norm of human protection. It then analyses the extent of the role played by France in the emergence of humanitarian intervention and argues that France was a norm entrepreneur between 1987 and 1991 before helping to consolidate the international principle through its practice from 1992. Finally, it investigates the French involvement in Bosnia and Herzegovina – France’s main intervention at the time – in order to illustrate the evolution of France’s conception and contribution to human protection during that period.

This chapter details the dialogue with republicans that led to the IRA ceasefire of 1994 and how the formative stages of the peace process took shape through confidential contacts and channels

Steffen Mau, in his response to Ayelet Shachar's lead essay, begins by recapping the historical development of border control. Before the twentieth century, it was possible to cross many national borders in continental Europe without travel documents or controls. Comprehensive systems for suppressing “informal” and non-authorized mobility are a relatively recent invention. Moving on to Shachar's essay itself, Mau acknowledges the value of her approach, which introduces a functional definition of borders. He identifies four key developments: increased selectivity and visa policies, internationalization of border regimes, macroterritorialization, and digitization and new border technologies. While Shachar includes these in her analysis, Mau argues that they can only be partially subsumed under the concept of the shifting border, and may in fact have a different momentum. In the final part of his response, Mau addresses Shachar's suggestions for developing an institutional-legal design that can match the change in border controls, offering a number of criticisms. While agreeing with her about expanding legal obligations in the area of humanitarian migration, he notes that the discussion should be extended to cover labor migration and tourism too. He also points out the mounting problems posed by the establishment of “smart borders." His final objection relates to the question of political feasibility. As necessary and normatively convincing as Shachar’s call for corresponding legal responsibility and shifting border control might be, it seems highly improbable that this will actually come to pass.