‘Why did they do that?’ is one of the most common questions in International Relations. However, we cannot access other people’s reasons for action the same way that we perceive our own; we cannot introspect the reasons of other actors. This paper provides a unifying framework that delineates different types of knowledge claims regarding reason attribution. There are three possible methodological responses: (1) assume a possible reason and explain behavior in terms of that reason; (2) avoid the direct attribution of reason to individuals and locate explanatory leverage at an analytical level beyond the individual actor reason; and (3) use empirical evidence to adjudicate between possible reasons. Excessive skepticism of evidence of reasons lessens our understanding of the causes of action. When using empirical evidence, contrary to existing arguments, the paper shows that private settings do not systematically favor the true revelation of reasons. The paper also proposes a general principle, consilience, that allows evaluation of empirical claims of reason attribution that subsumes several existing methodological considerations, organizes them, and gives a consistent means of choosing between alternative reason attributions.

In this article I seek to expand our understanding of the output legitimacy of international organizations (IOs). At the conceptual level, I refute the widespread view that output legitimacy is just a synonym for organizational effectiveness or efficiency. I argue instead that output legitimacy has an important democratic dimension. The touchstone of ‘democratic output legitimacy’ is the extent to which systems of governance produce results that cater to the public interest. Accordingly, the democratic output legitimacy of IOs can be understood in terms of their ability to safeguard the global public interest. This ability hinges upon their capacity to keep powerful factions in check, protect human rights, and safeguard a high epistemic quality of decisions. Attaining these qualities may require shielding IOs to some extent from the input dimension of the international political process. I do not, however, unconditionally praise de-politicization of IOs. I engage with the problem of technocratic paternalism, which is imminent when decision-making based on assumed citizen interests escapes confrontation with articulated citizen interests. The challenge is to devise global governance arrangements that enable an encompassing debate over the substance of the global public interest when needed, while keeping pressure from powerful factions at bay.

This paper presents a framework within which to understand the legitimacy of the global order called ‘cosmopolitan sovereign equality’. It is Kant inspired and consists of three formal and three political duties. The formal duties are those of structural coherence, innate right and publicity, and the political duties those of legitimate enforcement within states, non-intervention between states, and free communication between entities within different states. These duties are constructed from a reading of Kant’s Doctrine of Right and are defended in current International political theory debates on human rights, the role of the state and international law. The framework enables conceptualization of legitimate international relations between a world state and a system of autarkic states, and places a premium on states as legitimators of force, while working from the premises of moral cosmopolitanism.

The end of the Cold War led to intense debates about how change happens in international politics. In this article, we argue that practice theory has great potential for illuminating this question. Drawing on Vincent Pouliot’s empirical analysis of NATO-Russia relations after the end of the Cold War, we elaborate how change happens in and through practice. We show that post-Cold War security practices are inherently unstable, because there is a fundamental uncertainty about whether the Cold War is really over or whether the Cold War logic of bipolar confrontation still applies. Uncertainty about the meaning of the past destabilizes present practices and thus makes sudden and drastic change possible. To date, many contributions to the literature on international practices have, however, failed to grasp the inherent instability of practice. We argue that this failure is due to a particular conception of change that can be found in the works of Pierre Bourdieu. Through a close reading of Pouliot’s Bourdieusian analysis of post-Cold War politics, we demonstrate the limitations of such a perspective, notably that it is unable to grasp how change originates in practice.

It is the orthodox view in the cosmopolitan and normative international relations literature that Immanuel Kant is a staunch critic of European colonialism. This paper offers a far more critical stance towards Kant’s position with respect to minority nations and stateless Indigenous peoples through an analysis that draws on the criticisms developed by his contemporary and former student, Johann Gottfried Herder. The paper proceeds in three parts. In the first section, I present the evidence in favour of seeing both Kant and Herder as strident opponents of colonialism. In the second section, I then show the problems that arise in Kant’s position when his views on the state and property rights are taken into consideration. Kant’s coupling of the nation and state in contrast to Herder’s insistence that they are separate entities is highlighted as a crucial distinguishing point in their positions. In the third and final section, I indicate how Herder provides a far deeper critique of colonialism than Kant, also due to his recognition of the problematic nature of ideological pronouncements of progress.