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21. How Norms Die: Torture and Assassination in American Security Policy

Author:
Christopher Kutz
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
A large and impressive literature has arisen over the past fifteen years concerning the emergence, transfer, and sustenance of political norms in international life. The presumption of this literature has been, for the most part, that the winds of normative change blow in a progressive direction, toward greater or more stringent normative control of individual or state behavior. Constructivist accounts detail a spiral of mutual normative reinforcement as actors and institutions discover the advantages of normative self- and other evaluation. There is also now much interesting research focused on the question of how to predict the emergence of future norms.
Political Geography:
America

22. The "Responsibility to Prevent": An International Crimes Approach to the Prevention of Mass Atrocities

Author:
Ruben Reike
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
On September 9, 2013, diplomats and civil society activists gathered in a ballroom in New York to welcome Jennifer Welsh as the UN Secretary-General's new Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). In her first public appearance in that role, Special Adviser Welsh explained that one of her top priorities would be “to take prevention seriously and to make it meaningful in practice.” “In the context of RtoP,” Welsh added during the discussion, “we are talking about crimes, and crimes have implications in terms of how we deal with them. You'll hear me say that a lot.” Welsh's approach of treating RtoP as a principle that is primarily concerned with prevention and is firmly linked to international crimes neatly captures the evolution of RtoP since its formal acceptance by states at the 2005 UN World Summit. Paragraphs 138 to 140 of the World Summit's Outcome Document not only elevated the element of prevention to a prominent place within the principle of RtoP but also restricted the scope of RtoP to four specific crimes under international law: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The crime and prevention–focused version of RtoP has subsequently been defended and promoted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and by UN member states. This article seeks to systematically explore some of the implications of linking RtoP to the concept of international crimes, with a particular focus on the preventive dimension of RtoP, the so-called responsibility to prevent. What, then, are the consequences of approaching the responsibility to prevent as the prevention of international crimes?
Political Geography:
New York

23. Against Relationalism in Global Justice Theory

Author:
Richard Arneson
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
After a period of somewhat chaotic construction efforts, the dust is starting to settle on global justice theory. The alternative theoretical options are gaining clear shape. Mathias Risse's excellent On Global Justice is a work of judicious consolidation. He develops a nuanced and complex position that he calls “pluralist internationalism.” Its starting point is the claim that there are several different grounds of justice, that is, reasons for identifying a certain population of people and holding that they have claims of justice against each other, the proper adjudication of which is settled by a certain type of principle. Different principles may apply to different groups of people identified in different ways.

24. Mathias Risse on Justice in Trade

Author:
Helena de Bres
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Many people believe that international trade, as it is currently conducted, involves serious injustice. But it is hard to know whether this belief is justified and, if it is, how exactly to characterize the injustice at issue. Until recently, someone who turned to the philosophical literature in the hope of finding answers to these questions would likely have been disappointed. Despite the recent surge in writing on global justice, work specifically on justice in international trade has been scarce. This gap is unfortunate, given the moral importance of the issue and the degree of public interest in it.

25. On Collective Ownership of the Earth

Author:
Anna Stilz
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
An appealing and original aspect of Mathias Risse's book On Global Justice is his argument for humanity's collective ownership of the earth. This argument focuses attention on states' claims to govern territory, to control the resources of that territory, and to exclude outsiders. While these boundary claims are distinct from private ownership claims, they too are claims to control scarce goods. As such, they demand evaluation in terms of distributive justice. Risse's collective ownership approach encourages us to see the international system in terms of property relations, and to evaluate these relations according to a principle of distributive justice that could be justified to all humans as the earth's collective owners. This is an exciting idea. Yet, as I argue below, more work needs to be done to develop plausible distribution principles on the basis of this approach.
Topic:
Development

26. Response to Arneson, de Bres, and Stilz

Author:
Mathias Risse
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
I must begin by expressing how gratifying it is that On Global Justice would receive such careful attention by three thoughtful colleagues. I will do my best to respond to their questions and objections. Let me start with Arneson. Since differences between us are large, I shall first say a few things about my basic outlook. Common humanity is one ground of justice. The distinctively human life generates claims, and their form is that of natural rights. However, explorations of how the distinctively human life generates obligations lead only to a rather limited set of rights—basic security and subsistence rights. Inquiries into another nonrelational ground also produce rather limited results. That ground is humanity's collective ownership of the earth. The principle of justice associated with it merely requires an equal opportunity to use natural spaces and resources for the satisfaction of basic needs. In particular, this result is incompatible with any kind of welfarist commitment. The sheer fact that anybody's welfare as such would be lowered or raised is not a matter of justice. If people share associations with each other (membership in a state, or being connected by trade, say) we can derive obligations from their shared involvement with these associations. But unless people do indeed share such associations, the obligations that hold among them will be rather limited.

27. Thomas Piketty's Capital and the Developing World

Author:
Nancy Birdsall
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a tour de force—a compelling and accessible read that presents an eloquent and convincing warning about the future of capitalism.* Capitalism, Piketty argues, suffers from an inherent tendency to generate an explosive spiral of increasing inequality of wealth and income. This inegalitarian dynamic of capitalism is not due to textbook failures of capitalist markets (for example, natural monopolies) or failures of economic institutions (such as the failure to regulate these monopolies), but to the way capitalism fundamentally works. Unless the spiral is controlled by far more progressive taxation than is now the norm, the political fallout could undermine the viability of the successful “social state” (p. 471) in the advanced economies, putting the democratic state itself at risk.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, and France

28. The Normative Terrain of the Global Refugee Regime

Author:
Alexander Betts
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The global refugee regime encompasses the rules, norms, principles, and decision-making procedures that govern states' responses to refugees. It comprises a set of norms, primarily those entrenched in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which defines who is a refugee and the rights to which such people are entitled. It also comprises an international organization, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has supervisory responsibility for ensuring that states meet their obligations toward refugees.
Topic:
United Nations, Refugees, Displacement, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Global Focus

29. The Ethical Imperative of Curbing Corporate Tax Avoidance

Author:
David Scheffer
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
If the future of human rights is dependent on the capacity of the state to fulfill them, then one must focus on how the private sector interfaces with public values—an interface that directly affects how billions of people survive both economically and with dignity. During the last few years reports about multinational corporations shielding phenomenal profits from meaningful taxation have troubled governments and individual taxpayers alike. But there has been little effort to associate such tax avoidance schemes with corporate abdication of responsibility f or advancing critical societal goals. Instead, much of the ensuing debate has centered on how to tax corporate profits fairly and more efficiently. While the ideas being marketed in this area are enlightening, there has been less discussion about why corporate taxation is a worthy public goal or what corporations should do voluntarily. The linkage between corporate tax avoidance and “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) has not yet been clearly drawn, but the moment has arrived to bridge the gap. That task may necessitate changing, fundamentally, the ethical framework within which corporate officers, boards of directors, shareholders, tax advisers, and stakeholders in general operate.
Topic:
Human Rights

30. Ad Fontes: The Question of Rebellion and Moral Tradition on the Use of Force

Author:
James Turner Johnson
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
"Stab, smite, slay!" These are not the words of Bashar al- Assad telling his forces how they should deal with the Syrian rebel movement, or indeed those of any other contemporary political leader, but rather the words of Martin Luther exhorting the German nobility to a harsh response to the peasants' rebellion of 1524–1525. His writings show that he sympathized with many of the peasants' grievances so long as these did not issue in rebellion, but when they turned to force of arms, he responded sternly. This was not a peculiarity of Luther. Consider the following from an English courtier, Thomas Churchyard, writing admiringly of the treatment of Irish rebels in 1579 by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, commander of the English army sent to put down the rebellion: "He further tooke this order infringeable, that when soever he made any ostyng [military campaign], or inrode, into the enemies Countrey, he killed manne, woman, and child, and spoiled, wasted, and burned, by the grounde all that he might, leavyng nothing of the enemies in saffetie, whiche he could possiblie waste, or consume."
Political Geography:
Germany and Syria