Australia,the security council and the Iranian crisis of 1946: Liberal internationalism in practice

In the early months of 1946 Dr H.V. Evatt made a concerted effort to shape the newly formed Security Council as a security tribunal. He wanted the Security Council to be governed by the principles of the United Nations Charter, to adopt regular procedures, to have an investigatory function and to make determinations on the facts of each case, not on the basis of power politics. Evatt attempted to implement his policy during the Iranian crisis despite the opposition of all the great powers, including the United Kingdom. This episode reveals the commitment to liberal internationalism that marked Australian foreign policy during this period and demonstrates both the possibilities and limits of an ‘idealist’ foreign policy.     

Slaves, servants and wage earners: Free and unfree labour, from Grotius to Blackstone

This article provides an intellectual history of the status of wage earners as conceptualized within the natural law paradigm by European writers both on the Continent and in Britain. Historians of political discourse have mostly investigated the consequences of such a status for the political rights of labourers. This article shows that the crucial moves were made by different authors analysing the relation of servant to master either in the domestic sphere or in private contracts. The article further contends that that resulting deeply ambiguous analyses implied a far from complete personal freedom for wage earners. This had a decisive impact on different visions of commercial society in early modern times, and left a significant legacy for moderns.     

Liberal nationalism and the sovereign territorial ideal1

ABSTRACT. Even if most liberals nowadays recognise that liberalism depends on some nationalist justification of popular sovereignty and state boundaries, they still underestimate the consequences of the fact that the sovereign territorial ideal is at the heart of the modern state. Therefore, their normative stance either oscillates between fairness and stability requirements (Kymlicka) or is built on a distinction between self‐rule and self‐determination that contradicts the normative import of the modern idea of the nation (Tamir). However, there exist counter‐traditions that may be helpful in challenging the assumption on behalf of the sovereign territorial state. National cultural autonomy is one of these; it is used here to show how starting from different premises, one may escape the ‘statist assumption’ and work out a political framework which would be fairer to minorities.     

International order after the financial crisis

The Great Recession has brought a structural break in international economic and political order. The geography of power is at present being dramatically transformed, notably by the rapid economic rise of China. What makes international order legitimate in a world in which political and economic foundations are rapidly shifting? This article examines analogies and lessons from a previous transition, from a world order centered on Britain, to a US dominated global order. That transition saw two moments of crisis, or turning points, the 1931 financial crisis at the height of the Great Depression, and the diplomatic and military catastrophe of Suez. The article looks at two interpretations of the transition, one by E. H. Carr focusing on the destruction in the Great Depression of a liberal economic and political order and its replacement by a world of brutal Great Power politics; the other by Charles Kindleberger, stressing the need for a benevolent hegemonic power to provide public goods for the world economy and the world political system. China is beginning to behave in the way expected of a Kindleberger hegemon, but also sees the possibilities of asserting power in a world that in the aftermath of 2008 looks much more like the chaotic and crisis‐ridden interwar period as interpreted by E. H. Carr. The challenge for the management of the new international order will lie in the ability of China to embrace the universalistic vision that underpinned previous eras of stability, in the nineteenth century and in the late twentieth century.     

Hazardous Liaisons: Risk, Power, and Politics in the Liberal State

This article presents a new approach to interpreting and analyzing technological risks and evaluating their impact on policymaking in liberal societies. I argue that risks must be seen first as emergent phenomena that resist reduction for either explanatory or policy purposes to the individual persons, events, or decisions that constitute them. Second, risks are intrinsically political things, involving aspects of power and interest in ways that also make policy decisions difficult. As emergent and political phenomena, then, modern technological risks pose unique policy difficulties for societies steeped in the epistemological and political individualism of classical liberalism.     

Industrial Policy: Conservative, Liberal and Radical Views

Books reviewed in this articles:
Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America
Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, Fiscal 1982 Budget Revisions
Ira C. Magaziner and Robert B. Reich, Minding America's Business; The Decline and Rise of the American Economy
Robert B. Reich, The Next American Frontier     

‘Iustitiam non includo’: Carl Schmitt, Hugo Grotius and the Ius Publicum Europaeum

Through a discussion of Hugo Grotius’ conception of just war, this essay shows that within his critique of liberalism, Schmitt clashed with the very intellectual tradition he claimed to represent. Both historically and philosophically Schmitt's concept of the Ius Publicum Europaeum was a mirage. Indeed, his concept of the political was a rejection of the moral and civil philosophy that sees politics as the world of active citizens and commonwealths arguing with each other about fundamental questions of justice and equity.     

Taking sides: cosmopolitanism,internationalism and ‘complex solidarity’ in the work of Fred Halliday

Fred Halliday's life and work were intimately associated with the theory and practice of internationalism. In his later writings, the notion of ‘complex solidarity’ emerges as a key component of Halliday's worldview. This article explores the conceptual interconnections between different historical expressions of internationalism, cosmopolitanism and solidarity. It considers the intricate relationship between these categories and their place in our understanding of international affairs, emphasizing the divergence between liberal and revolutionary conceptions of internationalism and cosmopolitanism. The article discusses diverse understandings of ‘solidarity’ in International Relations, arguing that beyond the cosmopolitan and communitarian approaches, there exist other ‘Grotian’ and ‘republican’ ideas of solidarity. Halliday drew on these to present his own defence of universal human rights and solidarity, arguably developing a distinctive brand of republican internationalism. The latter part of the article gives content to ‘complex solidarity’ by suggesting it is built on three inter‐related components: a methodological internationalism, an egalitarian reciprocity and a critique of global capitalism. Overall, these guiding features of complex solidarity deliver a unique rendition of internationalism which reflect Halliday's eclectic combination of radical liberalism with a residual historical materialism.     

Culture and power: the rise of Afrikaner nationalism revisited*1

ABSTRACT. Outside parliament, the story of Afrikaner nationalism is largely a story of political (and sometimes economic) activists establishing language and cultural organisations. In a preliminary attempt to systematise the intentions and achievements of these extra‐parliamentary components of the Afrikaner movement, this article critiques and refines Joep Leerssen's model of nationalism as ‘the cultivation of culture’ (Nations and Nationalism 12, 4: 559–78). Drawing on the examples of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaanders and the Afrikaner‐Broederbond, I revisit the relationship between cultural and political nationalism – both as concepts and as actual movements – and question the notion of a dichotomy.     

Palace Fundamentalism and Liberal Democracy: Oil,Arms and Irrationality

With the end of the Cold War, some students of international affairs have suggested that the next field of conflict will be defined in cultural terms, between West and East, and particularly between liberal democracy and Islam. In this essay, it is argued that constructing a dichotomy between ‘rational’ Western democracy and ‘irrational’ Islam is not only dangerous but hypocritical. Support for the most backward and fanatical forms of Islamic fundamentalism has long been an element in the global geopolitical strategies of Western democracies. The trade in oil and arms has had particularly perverse social and political effects, which must be confronted in order to provide greater opportunities for the development of a modern civil society in the Arab world.     

Radicalization revisited: violence,politics and the skills of the body

For more than a decade, ‘radicalization’ has been a keyword in our understanding of terrorism. From the outset, radicalization was conceived of as an intellectual process through which an individual would increasingly come under a spell of extremist ideas. This ideological understanding of radicalization still prevails. In a 2015 speech on extremism, British Prime Minister David Cameron, for instance, claimed that the ‘root cause of the threat we face is the extremist ideology itself’. But the way we understand radicalization has specific consequences for the way we manage and fight the scourge of terrorism. Considering recent events, including the November 2015 Paris attacks, the present article sets out to reassess the above‐mentioned intellectualist understanding of radicalization and come up with new suggestions as to how radicalization may be understood today. Initially, the article suggests that ideology is not necessarily a precondition for violence, but that a prior experience with violence is more often a precondition for engaging an extremist ideology. Such experience with violence can be both domestic and international, obtained in Europe or Syria and other conflict zones. In the second part of the article it is argued that although radicalization is often conceived of as an individual process, pathways towards terrorism are inherently social and political. Finally, the article argues that by stressing the importance of ideology and ideological processes, concepts of radicalization have abstracted away from another factor that is pivotal for understanding pathways towards terrorist violence: the skills and capacities of the body.     

民初“自由”报刊的自由观

在近代中国,尽管不能断言标名“自由”的报刊必定奉行自由主义,也有主张自由主义的报刊不以“自由”为标签,但那些自称为“自由”的刊物,显然应是考察近代中国自由主义历史轨迹的重要凭借。清季自由观念逐渐传播普及,以自由为名号的人士日渐增多。继《申报》开辟“自由谈”栏目,民初至少出现了9家标名为“自由”的报刊,主要分为两类,其一为自由党系统在各地的机关报,其二为以游戏文章追求思想、言论、出版三大自由的报刊。二者在反对各地政权的舆论压制时坚决维护言论自由,但政治上并未高揭自由主义的旗帜,其形象的社会观感亦不甚佳。此后直到抗日战争爆发,才再度出现以“自由”为名的报刊数量激增的情形,自由主义成为部分报刊的思想旗帜和政治目标。     

Renewing the Political Perspective: Reflections on James Ceaser,Political Science,and Liberal Democracy

Abstract

This is a response to the contributions to the symposium on David Walsh's trilogy on modernity: After Ideology (1990), The Growth of the Liberal Soul (1997), and The Modern Philosophical Revolution (2008). After expressing appreciation for the careful reading the work has received, it enters into a reflection on the underlying unity of the studies. This is intended to address the common concerns that center on the issue of how the modern world is to be understood. It emphasizes the impossibility of separating the attempt to understand modernity from the need to take responsibility for it. This is the perspective that has illuminated the totalitarian catharsis, the durability of liberal political regimes, and the existential turn within modern philosophy. In the latter part of the essay, a response is offered to specific objections and characterizations that individual symposiasts raise.