The international politics of amour propre: Revisiting Rousseau's place in international relations theory (original) (raw)
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A forsaken and foreclosed utopia: Rousseau and international relations
In the field of international relations, Rousseau is generally considered an antiutopian and an exponent of the realist tradition. This view is based on his distrust of alliances and peace plans but also on the fact that he never offered any solution to how to lastingly ban war from the international scene. In this article, I argue instead that Rousseau's failure to propose any solutions in international politics lies rather in the utopian nature of his political philosophy. Rousseau intended to find remedies to the question of international law; if he never articulated them, it is, I submit, because the mere discussion of international relations would have undermined the lack of relationality which characterizes his model Republic. By envisioning the ideal state as self-sufficient and isolated (i.e. in the image of the unsociable man in the state of nature), Rousseau renders impractical the aspiration he had of resolving the question of sociability between states.
In the Social Contract, Rousseau declares that he has given up the idea of discussing the " external relations " of states. Yet numerous texts—including a recently reconstituted work about the law of war—show that he thought very seriously about the question of the nature and origin of war and of the possibility of making war subject to the rule of law. Rousseau, in contrast to Hobbes, links war's appearance to that of the sovereign states; the state of war is therefore the necessary result of international relations. Moreover, he considers the international law as chimerical. How can he then conceive a non-utopian theory of " just war " ? My hypothesis is that his conception of the law of war is deduced from principles of internal political law and arises from pragmatic necessity. The state that discredits itself in its manner of waging war weakens itself while believing that it is reinforcing itself.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne et sur sa réformation projettée was written in 1771 at the request of the confederates of Bar and published for the first time in 1782. It was published in a Polish translation by Maurycy Franciszek Karp in 1789. By far the best analysis of the sources and arguments of the Considérations remains Jerzy Michalski’s Rousseau i sarmacki republikanizm, published in 1977, which has until now made no significant impact on worldwide Rousseau studies. Michalski showed the extent and limits of the consanguinity between Rousseau’s doctrine and Polish-Lithuanian republicanism. The present article argues that Rousseau threw down a fundamental challenge to his readers: did Poles want to be themselves or did they want to be modern Europeans? He counselled a reconception of the Polish – and by extension any – nation on the basis of a fundamental rejection of enlightened and cosmopolitan modernity.
Governance and the Nation-State: Rousseau’s Relevance in the Era of Globalisation
Globalisation, a social vocabulary, came in wide-use in the 1980’s. Although explained with vivid imaginations, the term can be described simply as a socioeconomic and political process of expanded human interactions. During the past few decades, the process accelerated at an extraordinary speed because of unprecedented developments in science and technology, particularly in the area information and communication technology. The most visible outcome of these scientific and technological developments is phenomenal growth in worldwide economic transactions. While the process of globalisation has substantially enlarged the value of economic wealth and improved living standards in the industrially advanced countries, the developing world has lagged far behind in reaping its benefits. The reason, the international development community identified, is poor governance. The process of globalisation, it is argued, has dramatically changed the socioeconomic and political circumstances of governances. More specifically, the process has profoundly altered the traditional nation-state’s premises of politics as well as its ground-rules. Traditional local, national and international political institutions are no longer considered adequate to meet the challenges created by the process of industrial development. Therefore, governance of the nation-state needs new definition, which ought to include new actors, like national and multinational corporations, civil society organisations, public media etc. In this context of globalisation, the paper investigates the nation-state’s role under the assumption that the prevailing governance perception is ambiguous, unconvincing and impractical. Fixing the nation-state’s governance mechanism does not need accommodating new actors. All it needs is to effectualise the traditional model by compelling political actors adhere to the fundamental principles of democracy. In order to establish this idea, the paper uses Rousseau’s social contract theory, which underlines the main objective of democratic governance and clarifies fundamental relationship among citizens, body politic and government. Finally, the paper prescribes three measures for making the prevailing nation-state model more effective: (i) making electoral rule truly democratic, (ii) creating level-playing field in politics and (iii) formulating public policies ordained by the principle of democracy.
Revisiting French diplomacy in the age of globalization
French Politics, 2010
There are a number of good reasons why foreign policy matters to political scientists, most of them related to the dynamics of conflict and cooperation among states and international actors, and to the changing patterns of interaction within the international system. The issues at stake are obviously important and complex enough to justify some form of division of labor, and analysis of foreign policy is logically conducted in the vast majority of cases by scholars of International Relations. However, there is another angle of foreign policy that is critical for a more general understanding of politics, and that should not be ignored by political scientists outside the field of International Relations. Beyond the routines of international institutions and everyday diplomacy, foreign policy and its aftermaths is often critical to determine the structure of political regimes and institutions. Most state collapses and most foundations of new nations occur as an issue of war. Peace is also a prerequisite for the selection and design of new institutions. Through critical junctures brought about by regime changes, the consequences of foreign policy definitely shape state borders and a broad sense of national identity, as well as longlasting trends of ideologies, political cleavages and institutions suitable to accommodate them. France is no exception to this rule. While the academic debate about Europe in the recent years rightly focused on Europeanization, a longer perspective, like the one adopted to consider the 50 years of the Fifth Republic, brings back the relations between France, Germany, the United Kingdom and other powerhouses of the international system. Maybe more importantly, it is worth reminding what the adoption of the new constitution establishing the Fifth Republic owes to the context of decolonization and access to independence for Algeria. When foreign policy is considered we therefore directly or indirectly touch upon the reality of state structures. Of course, foreign policy does not end in constitutional change every day. I mention these elements to indicate that the domestic issues that are at stake with foreign
Classical theory in international relations
Classical political theorists such as Thucydides, Kant, Rousseau, Smith, Hegel, Grotius, Mill, Locke and Clausewitz are often employed to explain and justify contemporary international politics and are seen to constitute the different schools of thought in the discipline. However, traditional interpretations frequently ignore the intellectual and historical context in which these thinkers were writing as well as the lineages through which they came to be appropriated in International Relations. This collection of essays provides alternative interpretations sensitive to these political and intellectual contexts and to the trajectory of their appropriation. The political, sociological, anthropological, legal, economic, philosophical and normative dimensions are shown to be constitutive, not just of classical theories, but of international thought and practice in the contemporary world. Moreover, they challenge traditional accounts of timeless debates and schools of thought and provide new conceptions of core issues such as sovereignty, morality, law, property, imperialism and agency.
Contexto Internacional, 2018
This article reviews three classic texts of the French, American-Realist and English schools in International Relations, namely Tout Empire Périra (Duroselle 1992), Politics Among Nations (Morgenthau 1948), and Power Politics (Wight 1978). I argue that Wight's approach can be regarded as a middle course between those of Duroselle and Morgenthau, and that Wight adopted this position in order to associate himself with important assumptions by both Duroselle and Morgenthau. In particular, there are similarities between Wight's concept of 'international revolution' and Duroselle's notion of the 'unbearable. ' Both are critical of behavioural methods, and both search for recurrences in international relations. As regards Morgenthau, Wight shares with him a Realist view of international anarchy, a classical understanding of 'national interest, ' and an understanding of ideologies as the legitimation of government actions.
Political thought, international relations and a tale of two modernities
In their book Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri develop a narrative about the transition from the mediaeval to the modern, secular, world, showing that there were two projects of modernity at first, but that one prevailed over the other. The prevailing modern worldview did not do away with a transcendental form of control. Instead, it offered a post-mediaeval view of transcendence, which was then imported into politics, leading to the state as a transcendental apparatus of control. This article applies their thesis to the analysis of the development of political thought on international relations. It is argued that modern international thought was constrained and enabled by the project of modernity which prevailed. It is far from clear whether contemporary international thought can rid itself of the notion of the Westphalian state as the transcendental apparatus of control, yet it is reluctant to accept the notion of a world state as the ultimate, natural, implication of the transcendental grounds for the modern state.