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Norms and Values: Rethinking the Domestic Analogy1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Friedrich Kratochwil
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Abstract

Kratochwil argues that a social-scientific study of the behavior of regimes, and how they exercise power, is a useful method to challenge the exaggerated view of international relations as a “normless anarchy.” By showing how “expectations” dictate action in international affairs, his method asserts the existence of a universal force among nations.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 1 , March 1987 , pp. 135 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1987

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References

2 For a good discussion of the idealist position in international relations, see Hinsley, F.H., Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

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4 This point has been eloquently made by Claude, Inis L., Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962)Google Scholar.

5 According to the “consensus-definition” in the special issue of International Organization on international regimes, regimes are “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area of international relations.” See Krasner, Stephen, “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” in Krasner, Stephen, ed.Google Scholar, International Regimes, special issue of International Organization 36 (1982) 186Google Scholar.

6 See Kratochwil, Friedrich, “The Force of Prescriptions,” International Organization 38 (1984) 685–708CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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10 Such a conceptualization of a cosmic order was provided by Stoic natural law. For a discussion of the historical development of international law and its emancipation from the natural law tradition, see Nussbaum, Arthur, A Concise History of the Law of Nations (New York: Macmillan, 1947)Google Scholar.

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14 I have argued elsewhere that since utility calculations become possible only against the background of such generalized attitudes, these calculations cannot be the reason for the existence of norms, as rule-utilitarianism makes it appear. To that extent certain rules are transcendental in a logical sense, since they are constitutive of the “self and therefore of the interests this self conceives and pursues. For a further discussion, see Friedrich Kratochwil, “Rules, Norms, Values and the Limits of Rationality,”Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

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42 I am grateful to John Ruggie for pointing out to me that in the original regime discussion free trade provided the justifying “principle” since in the postwar era decision makers believed its effects would lead to peace as well as to prosperity. “Most-favored nation” treatment and other more specific rules seemed then to follow logicallyGoogle Scholar.

43 These problems arise perhaps most forcefully in constitutional cases when liberty has to be weighed against equality, or when the protection of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” has to be defended through the fight against crime while not violating the rights of the accused. See, for example, Summers, R.S., “Naïve Instrumentalism and the Law,” in Hacker, P.S. and Rasz, J., eds., Law, Morality, and Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) chap. 6Google Scholar.

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48 See, for example, Article 60 of the Vienna Convention on Treaties (defining “material breach”). For a further discussion of the legal remedies involving unilateral countermeasures, see Zoller, Elizabeth, Peacetime Unilateral Remedies (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Publishers, 1984)Google Scholar.

49 On this point, see Kratochwil, Friedrich, “Rules, Norms, and Limits of Rationality,” op. citGoogle Scholar.

50 On the importance of sentiments, see Nicole Fermon, “The Politics of Sentiment: Rousseau's Teachings on the Family and the State,” Ph.D. dissertation (in progress) at Columbia University. For a good discussion of Rousseau's political teachings, see Hoffmann, Stanley, “Rousseau on War and Peace,” in Hoffmann, Stanley, The State of War (New York: Praeger, 1965) chap. 3Google Scholar.

51 See, for example, Karl Marx's remarks on “die vergesellschafte Menscheit” in his Theses on Feuerbach, and his comments on the “new man” who is to emerge from the abolition of alienation in the German Ideology. Both are reprinted in The Marx-Engels Reader, Tucker, Robert C., ed. (New York: Norton, 1972) 107–62Google Scholar.

52 For a discussion of utopianism and its failures to admit and deal with conflict, see Manuel, Frank, ed., Utopias and Utopian Thought (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966)Google Scholar.

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55 The solution of both problems is crucial for the establishment of a collective identity, as Rousseau realized in his teachings of the general will and in his educational projects such as Emile. See also his remarks that “a child opening his eyes should see nothing but his fatherland (patrie),” and that it should “imbibe with the mother's milk the love of the fatherland.”Rousseau's Political Writings, Vaughn, C.E., ed., 2 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962) vol. 2, 437Google Scholar.

56 To that extent, reformist activists attempt to propagate the idea of a global citizenship as an alternative to the identification with only national interests. See a critique of U.S. foreign policy along these lines by Johansen, Robert, The National and the Human Interest (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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58 See the various official certification procedures and evaluations of the human rights record of foreign governments, particularly during the Carter administration, as well as the “watch” of such private organizations as Amnesty International and The Commission of Jurists. The domestic debate on intergenerational issues is evident even in advertising: in one ad a young boy accuses an older person in front of a jury of minors of having squandered the resources and left the children with nothing but debtsGoogle Scholar.

59 For an extensive evaluation of such judicial pronouncements, see Schachter, Oscar, “Towards a Theory of International Obligation,” Virginia Journal of International Law 8 (1968) 300–10Google Scholar.