World Politics E-Book

James Mayall

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Themes for the 21st Century Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 226

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

At the end of the Cold War, there was much talk of a new world order in which the sovereign state would be held to democratic account, fundamental rights would be respected, and conflict would be replaced by cooperation based on the rule of law. At the start of the new millenium most of this optimism has evaporated.

This book examines why it is so difficult to improve standards of international behaviour and explores the pre-conditions for any realistic attempt to do so. It discusses three major issues that have dominated international debate over the past decade: the tension between sovereignty and national self-determination; the problems associated with the attempt to spread democracy around the world; and the desirability of external intervention in ethnic and religious conflicts.

Rejecting both the unfounded optimism of the early 1990s and the cynical pessimism of more recent years, Professor Mayall points to the strong elements of continuity in international life. He concludes that international society is unlikely to be successfully reformed if governments continue to will progressive ends whilst evading responsibility for their actions.

Leseprobe

World Politics

Progress and its Limits

JAMES MAYALL

Polity

Copyright © James Mayall 2000

The right of James Mayall to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2000 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd

Reprinted 2005, 2007

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Maiden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN: 978-0-7456-2589-8

ISBN: 978-0-7456-2590-4(pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-7456-6777-5(eBook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Plantin

by SetSystems, Saffron Walden, Essex

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Marston Book Services Limited, Oxford

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk

For my grandchildren

Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Prologue

Part I: International Society

1   Origins and Structure

2   The Modernization of International Society

3   A New Solidarism?

Part II: Sovereignty

4   Nationalism

5   Self-determination

6   Reappraisal

Part III: Democracy

7   Historical Antecedents and Cultural Preconditions

8   International Law and the Instruments of Foreign Policy

9   Pluralism and Solidarism Revisited

Part IV: Intervention

10 Intervention in Liberal International Theory

11 Humanitarian Intervention in the 1990s

Epilogue

Notes

Index

Acknowledgements

In writing even so short a book as this I have accumulated more debts than I can acknowledge here. Work on the book was begun while I was a member of the International Relations Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where successive generations of graduate students helped me to work out my approach to its subject matter. I am also particularly indebted to three LSE friends, Michael Donelan, Roger Holmes and the late Philip Windsor, with whom I have argued about the state of the world and its discontents for over thirty years. The book was finished at the Centre of International Studies in the University of Cambridge. There too my colleagues and students have been a constant source of stimulation and encouragement.

Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 9 are developed from an earlier version which appeared as ‘Sovereignty, Nationalism and Self-determination’ in Political Studies, 47/3 (special issue, 1999) © Political Studies Association. Earlier versions of chapters 7 and 8 appeared as ‘Democracy and International Society’ in International Affairs, 76/1 (January 2000), and of Chapters 10 and 11 as ‘The Concept of Humanitarian Intervention Re-visited’, in Albrecht Schnabel and Ramesh Thakur (eds), Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention: Selective Indignation,Collective Action and International Citizenship (Tokyo, United Nations University Press, 2000). I am grateful to the publishers for allowing me to reproduce passages from these essays.

Finally, I should like to thank Sidney Sussex College for welcoming me into the Fellowship in 1998, Albertina Cozzi for providing me with a refuge in Legnano, without which the final editing would never have been completed, and my wife, Avril, for providing me with constant support while refusing to take me too seriously. The defects of the book are mine alone.

Abbreviations

CMAGCommonwealth Ministerial Action GroupECOMOGECOWAS Monitoring GroupECOWASEconomic Community of West African StatesEPLFEritrean Peoples’ Liberation FrontGATTGeneral Agreement on Tariffs and TradeIRAIrish Republican ArmyKLAKosovo Liberation ArmyMFNMost Favoured NationNATONorth Atlantic Treaty OrganizationNGONon-Governmental OrganizationOAUOrganization of African UnityOSCEOrganization for Security and Co-operation in EuropeRPFRwandan Patriotic FrontSALTStrategic Arms Limitation TreatyUNHCRUnited Nations High Commissioner for RefugeesUNITAFUnited Nations International Task ForceUNOUnited Nations OrganizationUNOSOMUnited Nations Operation in SomaliaUSAUnited States of AmericaUSSRUnion of Socialist Soviet RepublicsWTOWorld Trade Organization

Prologue

It is fashionable to be sceptical about the significance of the new Millennium. The computer technicians, who now rule so many aspects of our lives, did their work with exemplary efficiency. Those who holed themselves up against the apocalypse need not have bothered. When the debris was cleared away after the celebrations – 20 tons of empty champagne bottles from the streets of London alone – the world looked much the same as it had the night before. Both the problems facing humanity, and its prospects, remained unchanged.

Yet the Millennium is as good a point as any from which to try to take stock of the state of world affairs. We could not give any intelligible account of either human problems or prospects, without reference to a calendar. In most cultures, people punctuate the year with celebrations at set times. In most cultures also, those who can manipulate the calendar, with the aid of the stars or a theory of numbers, command a huge following, presumably because we all secretly yearn for an insight into our destiny. Rulers, from Julius Caesar to Indira Gandhi and Ronald Reagan, have been as prone as the rest of us to employ soothsayers. But we also need the calendar for mundane reasons. We could no more organize our social and personal lives without it than we could do without roads to move about on or houses to live in. There is no need to apologize, therefore, for using the onset of the Millennium as a vantage point from which to look at the development of international society and its present aspirations and discontents.