Search

The paper argues that the so-called "new wars" pose a fundamental challenge to international humanitarian law (IHL). Although not historically new, this type of war differs in crucial respects from the conception of war which underlies the traditional "paradigm of compliance" of IHL - the set of assumptions and expectations that inform the provisions for the implementation and enforcement of IHL. Most of these assumptions, which relate to the warring parties, their interests and the institutional context of the conflict, lose their plausibility in the "new wars". The paper argues that the emphasis on holding individuals criminally responsible has not only been insufficient to remedy the shortcomings of the traditional paradigm of compliance, but has also distracted attention from other dimensions of the "new war" challenge, in particular the lack of any incentives to respect the law when the parties' objectives are not limited to the one aim - military victory - that IHL sanctions, but encompass objectives outright prohibited by IHL, such as ethnic cleansing or the exploitation of natural resources. The paper advocates a new paradigm of compliance, which puts greater emphasis on the enforcement of international humanitarian law by peacekeeping forces and the protection of civilians than on individual responsibility. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores how processes of government, and in particular international lawmaking processes, are themselves governed. It approaches this problematique through a conceptual and empirical analysis of the effects of law in international lawmaking, an ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In International Relations as in most social sciences, pressing real world problems and confusion as to how best to solve them usually further the prominence of theories that do not merely mirror reality in the “neutral signs of scientific language”, but adopt a critical perspective on the processes at hand. At the beginning of the 21st century, the phenomenon arguably most in need of such a critical theoretical treatment is the process of “globalization“. What is surprising, however, is that one of the first attempts to develop a critical perspective of the world order and globalization in international relations theory – Neogramscianism – has been widely neglected by mainstream IR theorists. The present paper argues that the dismissal of Neogramscianism by most IR scholars can be explained by three characteristics of the approach: its inconvenience, its incommensurability and its insufficiency. Its inconvenience to mainstream scholars lies in its critical engagement with some of the blind spots and biases of mainstream IR theory. On the other hand, the Neogramscians’ unconventional terminology and the historical rather than theoretical formulation of their concepts has contributed to a perceived incommensurability with other IR theories – a perception that seems quite unfounded, especially in relation to social constructivism. Finally, the theory’s appreciation has certainly been diminished owing to its significant theoretical insufficiencies: The reluctance to systematically develop a normative framework as a basis for its critique makes the Neogramscians’ rejection of the “prevailing order” seem an expression of political preference rather than of principled judgement, and so the theory is easily dismissed by its opponents; but, what is most important, the failure to make explicit its normative foundations precludes the formulation of a consistent and theoretically satisfying critical theory of globalization. In the second part of the paper, I will therefore attempt a new beginning in critical theorizing about globalization. I will strive to avoid the pitfalls of Neogramscianism by developing the architecture of my theory with utmost transparency and consistency. As I argue, a normative theory that wants to be more than a statement of political preference has to limit its normativity to those principles which can be derived from the fact that only the subjects of the international community themselves can legitimately decide how they want to organize themselves internally and in their relation to others. The critical theory I present starts from this premise. I will develop my argument in the following steps. Firstly, I will justify the normative premise of the theory, namely that the collective autonomy of the subjects of the international community is the only source of legitimacy in the international system. Secondly, I will discuss who the “subjects” of the international community are and how their “autonomy” can be conceptualized. I will then go on to outline the principles which can be derived from the normative premises and which serve as the normative standard of the theory. Finally, I will apply the normative framework to actual norms, institutions and processes. This critique, however, can be no more than a sketch at this point. In the conclusion, I will point to the major tasks ahead. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]