This article takes as its starting point the failure of the so-called normative wing of the English School to theorise the foundational determinants of value from which international society derives its normative character. In other words, they have not adequately thought through ‘the law behind the law’; that is, the underlying basis of obligation in international life. Thus, English School theorists are able to describe and to explain various norms but they cannot make sense of the reasons why any of these norms should be regarded as obligatory. Failure in this regard is attributable in large part to the way in which pluralist and solidarist conceptions of international life are typically understood as representing conflicting moral claims. This article seeks to move beyond these seemingly incommensurable claims, and the debate to which they give their names, by putting forward an account of obligation that reconciles the unity of human community and the freedom of international society in a single, intellectually coherent argument. The article concludes by arguing that a normative version of English School theory formulated in this way opens space for thinking through much of what still confounds the English School, including the normative character of political economy, the existence of a rational order of values, and the ever elusive meaning of world society.

Twenty-five years ago, theoretical reflection on International Relations (IR) was dominated by three broad discourses. In the United States the behavioural revolution of the 1950s and 1960s had helped to create a field that was heavily influenced by various assumptions allegedly derived from the natural sciences. Of course, variety existed within the behaviourist camp. Some preferred the heavily quantitative approach that had become especially influential in the 1960s, while others were exploring the burgeoning literature of rational and public choice, derived from the game theoretic approaches pioneered at the RAND corporation. Perhaps the most influential theoretical voice of the late 1970s, Kenneth Waltz, chose neither; instead he developed his Theory of International Politics around an austere conception of parsimony and systems derived from his reading in contemporary philosophy of science.

The year 2004 marked the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. A significant landmark in the development of a coherent strategy for the promotion and protection of women’s human rights, it established the principle that for women to enjoy equal rights, they needed an extra layer of ‘protection’. More importantly, it detailed states’ legal obligations in the area of women’s rights. Since then, the development of women’s human rights has continued to challenge the boundaries between the public, the private and the international. It was in this context that the Beijing women’s conference (1995) created a climate of expectation among women’s groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that the project to advance women’s human rights in practice might gather and sustain momentum. Yet, it is evident that there remains an enormous gap between the rhetoric and realities of women’s human rights, whereby women’s rights continue to be contested in countries across the world and governments are often unwilling to fulfil their international obligations.

Torture has been widely practiced by US forces as an officially-sanctioned information gathering strategy in the war on terrorism. At the same time, public attitudes have exhibited a growing tolerance towards the torture of terrorist suspects. This article examines the role of elite political discourse in constructing and sustaining the conditions necessary for the acceptance and normalisation of torture. It argues that a focus on elite discourse is crucial for understanding how torture comes to be practised because discourses set the logic and parameters of policy formulation and create the wider social legitimacy that is required to enact policy, thereby facilitating the construction of a broader torture-sustaining reality. The study’s findings highlight the role of ideational factors in policy analysis and have important normative implications.

This article examines Tony Blair’s policy and posture on Iraq through the prism of the special relationship in which he was reared. At the same time, it examines his policy and posture on the special relationship through the prism of Iraq. In this context it proposes a Vietnam analogy of a kind, with reference to Blair’s white-hot predecessor Harold Wilson: a curious affinity of fate – disenchantment, disgrace, and moral ruination.

Two rival accounts have come to dominate discussion of the origins and character of the contemporary international system. One, closely associated with the English School and the traditional account, places its origins with the appearance, and acceptance, of the centralised authority of the modern state. We might call this ‘the Westphalia version’. In this account, the modern state system is often represented in terms of what it is not. It is not a feudal regnum with a multiplicity of functionally distinct authorities. It is not a theocratic imperium where one power aimed at ‘the control and protection of Christendom’. It is a society of sovereigns, of de jure equals, each of whom accorded the others’ right to exist, and whose common ideological quantum is low. The rival is located within democratic transition theory. It postulates the modern state system as an extension of the liberal democratic state. The liberal state is not sovereign in the Westphalian sense: liberal authority is diffuse. Moreover, the liberal state produces its own, distinctive, international impulses that distance it in significant ways from the Westphalian pattern. Both see the state system as ‘produced’ by the state, as an immanent effect of stateness, but the account of the state’s trajectory differs radically.

I develop a framework to account for torture, which I argue should be understood with reference to international relations. I show that torture is intended as a tool to ensure the security, stability and legitimacy of elites, often transnationally, but there is often a disjuncture between its intended and actual outcomes. Despite dominant claims that torture is used to defeat security threats, most torture is intended to deter political opposition and secure legitimacy for elites. I conclude that torture should be renounced, both on moral grounds, and because it is not necessary for the functions it is intended to serve.

This article revisits some of the theoretical debates within the field of IR since Ashley and Cox challenged the mainstream. But in so doing it attempts also to show that the proposed alternatives have their own blind spots that are subjected in the second part to discursive criticism. Neither Ashley’s celebration of the wisdom of old realists nor their ‘silence’ on economics, nor the notion of ‘internationalisation of the state’ and of the world order are adequate for understanding politics in the era of globalisation. Instead, a critical theory has to examine the political projects that were engendered by the Hobbesian conception of order and rationality. Highlighting the disconnect between our present political vocabularies and the actual political practices, I argue that a critical theory has not only to ‘criticise’ existing approaches but has to rethink and re-conceptualise praxis, which is ill served by the analytical tools which are imported to this field from ‘theory’.

The central aims of this article are twofold: first to debate whether or not women’s human rights can underpin a universal feminist project; second to defend women’s human rights as a useful political tool that can be used to challenge injustice and discrimination against women. The first section of the article briefly sets out the universality/particularity debate in both human rights theory and in feminist theory. This serves as a point of departure for the subsequent discussion of universality and particularity in relation to women’s human rights specifically. Section one of the article is entitled ‘debating’ women’s human rights as a universal feminist project, because this is, indeed, a matter of dispute (as evidenced by the contributions to this forum). That women’s human rights are universal is contested by some feminists although the reasons for their scepticism are quite different from those advanced by ultra-conservatives and religious fundamentalists.

As debate continues over the conduct, the legality and the morality of the war in Iraq, this article addresses how and why Prime Minister Blair decided on the British road to war in Iraq. The article argues that Tony Blair was working within a mindset at both the domestic and international levels that meant he was predisposed to use military force against Iraq and indeed against other perceived threats to the West. His mindset arose, we will argue, through fear rather than arrogance, through the experiences of the past two decades as much as contemporary events, and this meant that he systematically over-estimated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. We postulate that Blair was not pressured into invading Iraq by President Bush. Rather, he believed that it was the right path for Britain to take, and that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was actually the logical outcome of the ‘Doctrine of the International Community’ outlined in his Chicago speech in 1999. We go on to make the claim that by concentrating on supporting the United States in its grand strategy, Tony Blair misunderstood the pattern of politics at home and perhaps more seriously of the ‘threat’ to the domestic security of the United Kingdom. This was not a danger from Iraqi WMD or even from ‘foreign’ terrorists as had happened on 9/11 but from home-grown suicide bombers, some of whom claimed to be inspired by opposition to Blair’s wars. This was the blowback that mattered – and will continue to do so – for the UK.

This essay examines the complex relationship between international law and the balance of power which Hedley Bull claims is paradoxical. Bull argues that the balance of power is an ‘essential condition’ of international law and that the actions required to preserve the balance ‘often involve’ violation of international law. It is shown that what seems to be a paradox is not a paradox but essentially a normative problem related to the difficulties in regulating power within international society, and that the perceived paradox does more to obscure than to clarify the fundamental normative problem to be dealt with.

This article argues that reconstruction is an emerging discourse of international politics that merges security and development discourses in powerful and troubling ways. We focus on Iraq as a site for articulating and institutionalising a particular version of reconstruction, uncovering five narratives that constitute Iraqi reconstruction discourse. We conclude by suggesting that reconstruction repackages security and development into a singular, technical, and bureaucratic worldview. This view obscures working and reliable solutions to poverty and instability by treating development as a central justification for war, and war as a promising way to develop a state and society.

This article analyses the complex interplay between domestic systemic transformations in post-communist Europe and the reintegration of these countries in the global political economy, through a study of the relationship between successive Romanian governments and the international financial institutions in the 1990s. Conceptually, it seeks to overcome the dichotomies of realist and rationalist approaches to international relations by deploying fields, habitus and practices conceptual framework inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The article captures both the symbolic and material-structural dimensions of the interaction between domestic field-creation and the reproduction of global economic and political fields. It suggests that practices aimed at the reproduction of power hierarchies are also modulated by symbolic requirements, to save face and to avoid whenever possible open conflict, related to the logic of honour.

In this article I argue that the very meaning of ‘inter-national relations’ is emerging as a focus of debate in International Relations, particularly among the critical traditions in the discipline. No longer seen as a mere study of peace and war, IR is viewed as a component of general pan-disciplinary theories or order and change. The international sphere is perceived, accordingly, no longer as a system in its own right, but rather as a gigantic transmission belt, and a huge communication device transmitting and diffusing ideas, practices, rules, norms and institutions throughout the world. The article examines the implications of such an approach on IR theory. In addition, the article revisits the works of Hegel, Marx and the French School of Regulation to demonstrate how they developed an empirical theory of international diffusion.

In 2004 the French National Assembly and Senate passed legislation which makes it illegal for Muslim women to wear headscarves (the hijab) within French public schools. To be precise the legislation refers to the banning of ostentatious religious symbols within the secular domain of the public school system, but is clearly aimed primarily at Muslim women, following a long-running dispute over this issue. Similar debates are taking place in other European countries such as Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. A bill modelled on the recent French legislation has been tabled in the Belgian senate, whilst various court cases have been brought in other European countries by Muslim women who have been banned from wearing headscarves by employers or schools. Following a ruling of the German Supreme Court that a Muslim teacher should be allowed to wear a headscarf, as this did not contravene current legislation, the state of Baden-Wuerttenberg acted to introduce legislation to ban headscarves, and this legislation is likely to be copied by six other German states.

The International Labour Organisation’s Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work of 1998 formalised an approach to global labour issues known as the Core Labour Standards (CLS). The CLS have privileged a specific set of labour standards as possessing the kinds of universalistic qualities associated with ideas of ‘human rights’; the abolition of forced and child labour, equality of opportunity, and trade union rights. But what does this ‘human rights’ approach mean from the point of view of those women workers who dominate employment in some of the most globalised, and insecure, industries in the world? In this article, I make the case for critical feminist engagement with the gender-blind, and neoliberal-compatible, approach to economic rights as set out in the CLS. Not least, this article raises wider concerns about the insufficiency of approaches to economic rights that are designed to work within the (gendered) structures of a neoliberal economic development paradigm. It is suggested that the CLS have endorsed a voluntarist approach to labour standards that views the promotion and regulation of human rights by global corporations as unproblematic. The article challenges this perspective, drawing upon the work of number of feminist scholars working in the area of women’s employment and corporate codes of conduct. These feminist writings have specifically avoided the language of human rights; thus questions need to be asked concerning the possibilities and the limitations that the CLS opens up for women’s human rights activism.

This article critically examines the question of whether poverty has been reduced in recent years, and if so, whether this is a result of neoliberal and/or globalisation friendly policies. The first section problematises at least some claims made for poverty reduction and the second section questions any causal link between ‘pro-globalisation’ policies and poverty reduction. The third and final section considers in detail the nature of the contemporary global economy, and in examining the evidence concerning capital flows shows how, contrary to the claims made by neoliberals and some globalisation theorists, capital is not dispersing throughout the world. Moreover, even when the ‘correct policies’ are adopted, this is unlikely to happen. I then conclude by suggesting why ‘actually existing globalidation’ does not alleviate, and may indeed intensify, global inequalities.

The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq coupled with the increased militarisation of international relations as part of the ‘war on terror’ has led to the development of a ‘blood for oil’ thesis that posits the centrality of oil and the economic interests of US oil corporations to American intervention in the Third World. This article argues that this thesis, whilst correct in identifying the importance of energy to US intervention, is not sufficiently attentive to the dual nature of American resource interventions whereby the American state seeks not only to ensure US oil supplies but also to maintain sufficient oil supplies for the global economy as a whole. American intervention is thus driven by oil to a large extent, but in different ways to those commonly suggested by ‘blood for oil’ theorists. In contrast to this thesis I argue that recent energy security moves to diversify oil acquisition away from the Middle East towards new areas such as South America, the Caspian region and Africa continue to be subject to this dual logic. Moreover, counter-insurgency warfare is increasingly being deployed to insulate oil-rich states from internal pressures which is in turn having a profound effect on human rights, social justice and state formation in the global South.

All critical theories lay claim to some kind of account not only of the present of international politics and its relation to possible futures, but also of the role of critical theory in the present and future in international politics. This article argues that if critical international theory is to have a future that lives up to its revolutionary ambition, then it needs to listen more carefully to the voices of postcolonial and feminist critics and take on board the heterotemporality of international politics.

The sub-field of International Communication within International Relations is insufficiently cognisant of the social foundations of communication. Through a selective interpretation of three prominent interwar thinkers’ works, it will be argued that International Communication is a largely social, even ideological, field. The advantage of reading interwar international theory lies in their eclectic appreciation of the power of public opinion and leadership without undue fixation with realist and idealist labels. By reading Edward Carr, Norman Angell and Walter Lippmann, one can tease out the following three themes for organising the study of International Communication: human nature assumptions; opinion as power; and leadership in foreign policy in terms of public education.