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Ethics of coexistence: the international theory of Terry Nardin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Chris Brown
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Extract

Normative international theory addresses the moral dimension of international society and the logic of ‘ought’ statements in international relations. The traditional content of normative international theory has been dominated by such issues as: the nature of international law and the moral basis of the rights and duties it imposes on states and individuals; the ethics of pacifism and the theory of the 6just war’ the morality of intervention; and, most fundamentally, the nature of the ethical requirements that need to be met if a system of inter-state relations can justly be characterized as an ‘international society’. While such issues have never disappeared from academic study, the dominant modes of international relations theorizing in the 1960s and 1970s—whether realist, neo-realist, pluralist or structuralist—were at one, if for different reasons? in keeping them at the bottom of the agenda paper. And yet, the 1980s has seen a revival of normative international theory. The reasons for this renewal of interest are two-fold. On the one hand, the traditional agenda of normative theory, as outlined above, has never lost its salience in the real world even if unfashionable in academia; since it is in the nature of fashions to change some sort of revival of interest in the old questions was to be expected. But of rather more importance has been the emergence of a new range of normative issues: demands from the ‘south’ for a New International Economic Order have placed the politics of redistribution on the international agenda for the first time—revisionist states in the 1980s no longer make territorial demands but appeal to status quo oriented states to make concessions on the basis of economic justice. In today's world normative statements are as likely to be about the debt crisis as they are to be about the conduct of the Gulf War or the US intervention in Grenada. Mainstream international relations theory has generally refused to ask or answer moral questions, but this strategy of avoidance has not succeeded. Questions such as ‘what ought to be our attitude to poverty in the South?’ or ‘how ought the world' financial system respond to the debt problems of Brazil or Zambia?’ cannot be wished away—as anyone who has taught international political economy will be well aware. Normative theory cannot answer questions like this but it can help each individual to provide his or her own response—and no more important task exists for the discipline of international relations.

Type
Discussions
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , July 1988 , pp. 213 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1988

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References

1. See, for example, Beitz, Charles, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, 1979)Google Scholar; Donelan, Michael (ed.), The Reason of States (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Frost, Mervyn, Towards a Normative Theory of International Relations (Cambridge, 1986);CrossRefGoogle ScholarGoodwin, Geoffrey (ed.), Ethics and Nuclear Deterrence (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Hare, J. E. and Joynt, C. B., Ethics and International Affairs (London, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoffman, Stanley, Duties Beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of Ethical International Politics (New York, 1981)Google Scholar; Linklater, Andrew, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations (London, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pettman, Ralph (ed.), Moral Claims in World Affairs (London, 1979)Google Scholar; Vincent, R. J., Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; and Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars (Harmondsworth, 1980)Google Scholar. A useful survey of recent work is Hoffman, Mark, ‘Normative Approaches’, in Light, Margot and Groom, A. J. R. (eds.), International Relations: A Handbook of Current Theory (London, 1985)Google Scholar. Of course, many of the authors cited above have sustained an interest in normative theory over a long period; the term ‘revival’ refers more appropriately to the reception given to this work by the rest of the academic community.

2. Beitz,. op. cit. Part Three. Beitz is more royalist than the king; Rawls, , A Theory of Justice (London, 1972)Google Scholar does not consider his general conception of justice to be suitable for international relations.

3. Frost, op. cit. Frost's ‘constitutive theory of individuality’ has affinities to the work discussed in this paper; in view of the influence of Hegal on Oakeshott this is not surprising, but Frost takes the view that the individuality of states is only realized when the nature of the state is such that ‘citizens experience the well-being of the state as fundamental to their own well being’ (p. 179) while Nardin sets no such implausible limits to the recognition of diversity.

4. Princeton, 1983.

5. (Oxford, 1975). See also Rationalism in Politics (London, 1972)Google Scholar; and On History and Other Essays (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar. The essay on ‘The Rule of Law’ in the latter collection is, perhaps, the best introduction to Oakeshott's political philosophy.

6. This summary is necessarily inadequate; in particular space does not allow for consideration of Oakeshott's conception of ‘conduct’ (as opposed to ‘behaviour’). Conduct is intentional action by thinking agents; this, and not behaviour, understood as action produced by the operation of casual laws, is essential to Oakeshott's conception of the citizen (‘cives’). See Nardin, op. cit., pp. 29–34 and Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, chapter 1.

7. It should be noted that the practical/purposive distinction does not correspond to minimalist/ maximalist conceptions of international order. The latter dichotomy would imply that the distinction between practical and purposive association is ultimately a matter of degree; not so, the presence or absence of common purpose constitutes a qualitative difference between the two forms of association.

8. Such practices can be established initially by Treaty, but Nardin's conception of international law is, at root, based on an analogy with the Common Law and stresses its customary origins.

9. See Nardin, op. cit. Part 1, chapter 5 for a fascinating elaboration of this counter-intuitive position.

10. The problem here is that a state may not wish to see itself as a member of international society but as, for an obvious example, a religious community reflecting the will of God active in the world. However, it is noticeable that even when states blatantly violate the law of diplomatic immunity they generally do so on explicitly ‘exceptional’ grounds and, at least in their rhetoric, do not reject the practice as a practice.

11. Walzer, op. cit., p. 51, Nardin, op. cit., pp. 279–97. Peace-with-rights is a condition of justice, peace and security, to be distinguished from the simple absence of war. The right to defend such a condition goes beyond the simple right of self-defence.

12. Walzer, op. cit., p. 231. This is an extraordinary amendment to the moral absolutism of Fiatjusticia mat caelum (do justice even if the heavens fall); apart from any other consideration, how are we to know if the heavens are really about to fall? Nardin is surely right to argue that casuistic thought experiments—torturing a child to discover a bomb in a school etc.—have but slight relevance for moral judgement and conduct (p. 296/7).

13. Conservative perhaps, but certainly not ‘realist’ in the sense in which that term is used in some international relations theorizing. The existence of binding, authoritative practices is quite contrary to the assumptions of ‘power-realism’.

14. Beitz's argument for Rawlsian distributive justice is based on the proposition that ‘interdependencehas removed the self-sufficiency of states and thus that international society can now be treated on the same basis as domestic society, i.e. as a co-operative venture for mutual advantage (Beitz, op. cit., pp. 35–50). This, surely, is to overstate the case and to misunderstand the nature of state sovereignty: sovereignty is about the relationship between a territory, a people and a political system and not, at root, about prudential constraints on decision-making created by the international economy—constraints which have, in any event, existed in one form or another for several hundred years without destroying the state.

15. The general point is that rules are not authoritative because they serve the purposes of those governed by them or consenting to them: if that were the basis of legal obligation then states could decide whether or not to be bound on a case-by-case basis, and thus there would be no authoritative practices (see Nardin, chapter 8).

16. There is, of course, no reason to believe that Nardin is personally unsympathetic to the aspirations of the poor and downtrodden.

17. It ought not to be necessary to stress that the point of this argument is not to suggest that poor states have no right to participate in international society, or to argue that they should meet some externally imposed criteria before they are allowed to do so. Rather, it is that desperate poverty precludes effective participation and creates a situation where undeniable rights exist but cannot be exercised.

18. The Brandt Report, North-South: A Programme for Survival (London, 1980)Google Scholar and similar programmes for the development of the South generally hint at the citizenship argument but place more emphasis on instrumentalist concerns—e.g. that the economic problems of the North can only be solved by simultaneously solving the problems of the South or, a version popularized by Mr McNamara in his World Bank days, that poverty in the South will lead to wars and conflict that will spill over and destroy the peace of the privileged sections of international society. There is no reason to believe that these arguments are empirically well-founded; possibly they are advanced on the principle that such reasoning is more likely to strike a chord with Northern governments and Northern publics than would a more abstract case for assistance to the South. If this is so then perhaps a new rhetoric would be helpful, given the record of failure associated with these arguments.

19. Krasner, Stephen D., Structural Conflict (London, 1985)Google Scholar; Thomas, Caroline, In Search of Security (Brighton, 1987)Google Scholar.