*International Ethics Section: Recent Books

THE POLITICS OF CONSTRUCTING THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT: NGOS, DISCOURSE, AND AGENCY

Michael J. Struett

Macmillan (May 2008)
http://us.macmillan.com/thepoliticsofconstructingtheinternationalcriminalcourt

About the book: The book analyzes the political process that led to the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC).  It argues that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) played an important role in shaping key provisions in the Court’s statute and in achieving early ratification of the ICC Statute.  NGOs were able to achieve this result through their use of principled, communicatively rational argument.  Thus in addition to accounting for the particular outcome of the ICC negotiations, the book also makes a contribution to our theoretical understandings of the ways that NGO discourse can transform the process of policy formation in world politics.

Members of the ISA Ethics section may be particularly interested in the books claim that the reason of NGO effectiveness in the ICC negotiations rested in part on their use of ethical and normative arguments, as understood in communicative action theory.

About the author:  Michael J. Struett is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University.  He completed his Phd in 2005 at the University of California, Irvine. He received his bachelor's degree in political science with honors from Cal- Berkeley in 1995. He also has a 1998 master's degree from George Washington University's Elliot School of International Affairs.  Much of Dr. Struett’s work focuses on the impact of non-governmental organizations in world politics, particularly the importance of their participation in processes of global governance.  He is generally interested in the evolution of norms in world politics, and the role of international organizations and international law in contributing to world order.

Contact: mjstruet@ncsu.edu

PEACEBUILDING: WOMEN IN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Elisabeth Porter

Routledge (2008)

www.routledgepaperbacksdirect.com/books/politics

About the book: This book clarifies some key ideas and practices underlying peacebuilding understood broadly as formal and informal peace processes that occur during pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict transformation. Applicable to all peacebuilders, Elisabeth Porter highlights positive examples of women’s peacebuilding in comparative international contexts. She critically interrogates accepted and entrenched dualisms that prevent meaningful reconciliation, while also examining the harm of othering and the importance of recognition, inclusion and tolerance. Drawing on feminist ethics, the book develops a politics of compassion that defends justice, equality and rights and the need to restore victims’ dignity. Complex issues of memory, truth, silence and redress are explored while new ideas on reconciliation and embracing difference emerge.

Many ideas challenge orthodox understandings of peace. The arguments developed here demonstrate how peacebuilding can be understood more broadly than current United Nations and orthodox usages so that women’s activities in conflict and transitional societies can be valued as participating in building sustainable peace with justice. Theoretically integrating peace and conflict studies, international relations, political theory and ethics, this book focuses on the lessons to be learned from best practices of peacebuilding situated around the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

About the author:  Professor Elisabeth Porter is a Lecturer in Politics and International Studies in the School of Communication, International Studies and Languages at the University of South Australia. Prior to this she was Head of School of International Studies at the University of South Australia. She has been a Research Director at the International Conflict Research Centre (INCORE) in Northern Ireland, a Centre linked with the UN University. She has also taught at Flinders University of South Australia, University of Ulster and Southern Cross University. She has published widely on women and politics, dialogue across difference and feminist ethics. Her books include Peacebuilding: Women in International Perspective (2008, 2007), Feminist Perspectives on Ethics (1999), Building Good Families in a Changing World (1995) and Women and Moral Identities (1991). Her co-edited books include Activating Human Rights (2006), Researching Conflict in Africa (2005) and Mediation in the Asia-Pacific Region: Transforming Conflicts and Building Peace (2009).

Contact: Elisabeth.Porter@unisa.edu.au

ONTOLOGICAL SECURITY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Brent Steele
Routledge (2008)

http://www.routledge.com/books/Ontological-Security-in-International-Relations-isbn9780415772761

About the book:  The book examines three forms of social action, sometimes referred to as ‘motives’ of state behaviour (moral, humanitarian, and honour-driven) and interprets them as fulfilling a nation-state's drive to secure self-identity through time. The anxiety which consumes all social agents motivates them to secure their sense of being, and thus the book posits that transformational possibilities exist in the ‘Self’ of a nation-state. The volume consequently both challenges and complements realist, liberal, constructivist and post-structural accounts to international politics. Using ontological security to interpret three cases - British neutrality during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Belgium’s decision to fight Germany in 1914, and NATO’s (1999) Kosovo intervention - the book concludes by discussing the importance for self-interrogation in both the study and practice of international relations. Ontological Security in International Relations will be of particular interest to students and researchers of international politics, international ethics, international relations and security studies.

About the author: Brent J. Steele is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas.  His primary research interests cover a wide array of international relations topics, including international ethics, international political theory, United States foreign policy, Just War theory, ontological security theory and international security.  In addition to his first book, Ontological Security in International Relations, he has published articles in journals such as International Relations, International Studies Review, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of International Relations and Development, Millennium and Review of International Studies.  He also has an edited volume (with Eric A. Heinze) titled Ethics, Authority and War: Non-State Actors and the Just War Tradition, forthcoming with Palgrave.

Contact: bjsteele@ku.edu

PROTRACTED DISPLACEMENT IN ASIA: NO PLACE TO CALL HOME

Howard Adelman
Ashgate (October 2008)

http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=9942&edition_id=10908

About the book:  In a protracted displacement situation, refugees are sequestered in camps without right of mobility or employment; their lives remain on hold and stagnate in a state of limbo for a long period. This book reviews the situation and results of research and policies that have left refugees as a forgotten group in protracted situations.

The work features case studies by experts who conducted field work examining long-term protracted refugee situations in Nepal, Thailand and Bangladesh, the protracted internally displaced (IDP) situation in Sri Lanka, and the refugee and IDP situation in Afghanistan. Also discussed is an emerging protracted refugee and IDP problem in Iraq. The volume concludes with an analysis of the lessons learned and the applications for policy, and incorporates a valuable bibliography detailing research in this hugely important area. This is a critical resource for academics and policy makers concerned with migration and governance issues.

About the author:  Howard Adelman is currently completing a three year term as Research Professor at the Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.  After leaving York five years ago, he became first a Sr. Research Fellow and, in the subsequent year, a Visiting Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Howard Adelman was previously a Professor of Philosophy at York University in Toronto from 1966-2003 where he founded and was the first Director of the Centre for Refugee Studies and Editor of Refuge until the end of 1993. He has written or co-authored 9 books and edited or co-edited 20 others. He has authored 73 chapters in edited volumes, 96 articles in refereed journals, and 30 professional reports. He recently served as an Associate Editor of the Macmillan 3 volume Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. In addition to his numerous writings on refugees, he has written articles, chapters and books on the Middle East, multiculturalism, humanitarian intervention, membership rights, ethics, early warning and conflict management.  In 1999, he and Astri Suhrke co-edited The Path of a Genocide: the Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press. Professor Adelman is currently completing a coauthored book entitled Rites of Return for submission to Princeton University Press, another on Military Intervention and Non-Intervention in the Twenty-First Century: An Australian Perspective for Routledge, and a co-edited volume with Pierre Anctil entitled, Religion, Culture and State: Canada and Québec: Reflections on the Bouchard-Taylor Report for the University of Toronto Press.  Adelman is also currently completing a three year appointment as Deputy Convenor for the governance research network in Australia and in that role has been active in creating a networked-linked international consortium of governance researchers. Within that area he focused attention on health governance and co-founded the International Consortium for Research on the Global Health Workforce (ICR-GHW), HealthNet Australia, and the Canadian Consortium for Research on the Health Workforce.  In an earlier phase of his career, when working on conflict management and early warning, he designed and helped create the early warning systems in the Horn of Africa for IGAD called CEWARN and the one for ECOWAS in West Africa called WARN.

Contact:  howardadelman@rogers.com

EMBEDDED COSMOPOLITANISM: DUTIES TO STRANGERS AND ENEMIES IN A WORLD OF ‘DISLOCATED COMMUNITIES’

Toni Erskine
Oxford University Press (July 2008)

http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780197264379

About the book:  Toni Erskine's vision of 'embedded cosmopolitanism' responds to the charge that conventional cosmopolitan arguments neglect the profound importance of community and culture, particularity and passion. Bringing together insights from communitarian and feminist political thought, she defends the idea that community membership is morally constitutive - while arguing that the communities that define us are not necessarily territorially bounded and that a moral perspective situated in them need not be parochial.

Erskine employs this framework to explore some of the difficult moral dilemmas thrown up by contemporary warfare. Can universal principles of restraint demanded by conventional laws of war be robustly defended from a position that also acknowledges the moral force of particular ties and loyalties? By highlighting the links that exist even between warring communities, she offers new reasons for giving a positive response - reasons that reconcile claims to local attachments and global obligations.  Embedded Cosmopolitanism provides a powerful account of where we stand in relation to 'strangers' and 'enemies' in a diverse and divided world; and provides a new theoretical framework for addressing the relationship between our moral starting point and the scope of our duties to others.

About the author: Toni Erskine is Senior Lecturer in International Politics at Aberystwyth University and Senior Research Fellow in Global Ethics (2008-2011) at the Globalism Research Centre, RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include the following:  the moral agency and responsibilities of formal organizations such as states, intergovernmental organizations, and transnational corporations; the ethics of war, including issues of non-combatant immunity, torture, and intelligence collection; communitarian and cosmopolitan conceptions of duty; the changing nature of norms of restraint in world politics, such as the prohibitions against torture and preventive war; and assumptions of agency within International Relations (IR) theory. Embedded Cosmopolitanism is her first monograph.  She is editor of the following books:  (with Richard Ned Lebow) Tragedy and International Relations (forthcoming, 2009); Responding to Delinquent Institutions: Blaming, Punishing and Rehabilitating Collective Moral Agents in World Politics (forthcoming, 2009); and, Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).  She is currently working on a monograph entitled, Who is Responsible? Institutional Moral Agency and International Relations. Toni received her PhD from Cambridge University, where she was also British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow.

Contact: tae@aber.ac.uk

THE RENEGOTIATION OF THE JUST WAR TRADITION AND THE RIGHT TO WAR IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

 
Cian O'Driscoll
Palgrave Macmillan (Apr 2008)

http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalog/product.aspx?isbn=0230605834

About the book:  This book examines the manner by which the just war tradition has been invoked, engaged, and developed in the context of the war on terror. It pays particular attention to the questions of anticipatory war, humanitarian intervention, and punitive war, and looks to compare current thinking on these issues to classical ideas about when and how war might be justified.  In doing so, it draws our attention to the renegotiation of the right to war that is taking place in the post-9/11 world, while also illuminating the stories of change, continuity, and contestation that underpin the ongoing development of the just war tradition.      

About the author:  Cian O’Driscoll is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Glasgow and has been a member of the Ethics Section since 2008.  He completed his PhD in 2006 at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.  Prior to this he studied at the University of Limerick, Dalhousie University, and the University of Oslo.  Cian has published a number of articles on the just war tradition, contributing to The Cambridge Review of International Affairs, International Relations, and the Journal of Military Ethics.  Cian currently convenes the MSc in International Politics at the University of Glasgow.

Contact:  c.o'driscoll@lbss.gla.ac.uk

PUNISHMENT, JUSTICE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: ETHICS AND ORDER AFTER THE COLD WAR

Anthony F. Lang
Routledge (Apr 2008)

http://www.routledgepolitics.com/books/Punishment-Justice-and-International-Relations-isbn9780415439077

About the book:  This book examines the international political order in the post-Cold War era, arguing that this order has become progressively more punitive. This is seen as resulting from both a human-rights regime that emphasizes legal norms and the aggressive policies of the United States and its allies in the ‘War on Terror’.  While punishment can play a key role in creating justice in a political system, serious flaws in the current global order militate against punishment-enforcing global norms. The book argues for the necessary presence of three key concepts - justice, authority and agency - if punishment is to function effectively, and explores four practices in the current international system: intervention, sanctions, counter- terrorism policy, and war crimes tribunals. It concludes by suggesting ways to revise the current global political structure in order to enable punitive practices to play a more central role in creating a just world order. This book will be of much interest to students of International Law, Political Science and International Relations.

About the author:  Anthony F. Lang, Jr. is Past Chair (2002-2003) of the International Ethics Section and Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. He focuses on international political theory, with attention to questions of international law, intervention, foreign policy, national security, global governance and Middle East politics. He received his BA in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 1990 and his MA and PhD in political science from the Johns Hopkins University in 1996.  From 1996-2000, Tony was an assistant professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. From 2000-2003, he served as a program officer at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York City.  While at the Council, Tony ran programs on religion and international affairs and ethics and the use of force.  During the academic year 2003-2004, he was an assistant professor of political science at Albright College. He has been at the University of St Andrews since 2004.  His other publications include Agency and Ethics: The Politics of Military Intervention (SUNY, 2002) and a number of edited volumes, journal articles and book chapters.

Contact: al51@st-andrews.ac.uk