How should the geographic boundaries of democratic participation be set? This has been a notoriously difficult theoretical question, beset by paradoxes around determining democratic participants democratically. It also is seen as increasingly important in practical terms, amid deepening interdependence between states, immigration tensions, and suprastate regional integration. Numerous recent accounts have called for extending participation beyond the state. The case is generally made on intrinsic grounds: democracy demands it. Respect for individual autonomy is said to be violated when outsiders are deeply affected by decision processes, or subject to coercion from them, without being able to participate in them. Yet, familiar problems around restrictions on the autonomy of persistent democratic minorities remain in such accounts, and they could be magnified with expanded boundaries. An alternative approach is offered here, grounded in a rights-based instrumental justification for democracy. It sees participation as foundationally – though not solely – valuable as a means of promoting and protecting fundamental rights. It recommends extending participation boundaries to reinforce protections within regional and ultimately global institutions. Democratic participation would remain crucial at all levels, not principally as an expression of autonomy but to provide checks on power and promote accountability to individuals in multilevel polities.

A recent wave of scholarship attests that the liberal world order is under threat. Although there is disagreement about the underlying reasons for this diagnosis, there are few attempts to further our understanding of how the liberal order can be reinvigorated. This paper probes the potential of blockchain technology to promote international cooperation. Blockchain technology is a data structure that enables global governance stakeholders to establish decentralized governance systems which provide high-powered incentives for enhanced cooperation. By outlining the contours of a blockchain-based global governance system for climate policy, the paper illustrates that blockchain technology holds theoretical promise to foster cooperation in three ways: leveraging new sources of information through blockchain-based prediction markets; allaying coordinating problems through reducing the cost of transactions for side payments; and allowing states and other global governance actors to make more credible commitments given guaranteed execution of blockchain-enabled smart contracts. By empowering local knowledge holders and non-state actors that traditionally lacked the means to coordinate efforts to influence global politics, blockchain technology also promises to advance an international order based on liberal values. In actuality, however, emerging blockchain-based global governance systems will fall short of the libertarian ideal of ‘fully-automated liberalism’ as their design and operation will remain under the shadow of power.

We show that without a few peculiar modeling choices that are not justified by the core assumptions of the theory, selectorate theory neither unambiguously predicts the democratic peace nor that leaders of more inclusive regimes will rely upon the provision of public goods to remain in office, though they may be more likely to provide club goods. We illustrate these claims using relatively simple models that incorporate the core assumptions of their theory, while avoiding modeling choices we believe to be less appropriate. We argue for a revised version of selectorate theory, one that continues to emphasize the importance of the size of the winning coalition, yet we believe it provides a more realistic picture of democratic politics.

The article deals with a pivotal conceptual distinction used in philosophical discussions about global justice. Cosmopolitans claim that arguing from the perspective of moral cosmopolitanism does not necessarily entail defending a global coercive political authority, or a ‘world-state’, and suggest that ambitious political and economic (social) goals implied in moral cosmopolitanism may be achieved via some kind of non-hierarchical, dispersed and/or decentralized institutional arrangements. I argue that insofar as moral cosmopolitans retain ‘strong’ moral claims, this is an untenable position, and that the goals of cosmopolitan justice, as explicated by its major proponents, require nothing less than a global state-like entity with coercive powers. My background ambition is to supplement some existing works questioning the notion of ‘governance without government’ with an argument that goes right to the conceptual heart of cosmopolitan thought. To embed my central theoretical argument in real-world developments, I draw on some recent scholarship regarding the nature of international organizations, European Union, or transnational democratization. Finally, I suggest that only after curbing moral aspirations in the first place can a more self-consciously moderate position be constructed, one that will carry practical and feasible implications for institutional design.

Why are some acts, events, or people elevated to a status of a threat, when no hostile action or direct physical damage appears imminent? Why are some relationships of threat infused with intense emotionality and ethical language? In this paper, I argue that puzzles such as these can be understood if we develop a concept of normative threat. The role of ethical values and beliefs has not been sufficiently integrated with the threat literature. Many writers assume that ethical language tied to constructions of threat serves merely to disguise and palliate the underlying hard reality of struggles for power. This is too simplistic. I offer an approach that takes seriously the normativity of the threat experience for people as members of political bodies. I argue that perceptions of threat emerge and carry a heightened emotional and moral energy when basic features of a political body's normative order appear to be at stake and people believe action affirming their strength as a collective body is required. Normative order comprises a set of principles citizens believe to be necessary for the functioning, justifiability, and indeed ‘reality’ of their political body. A normative threat is perceived as a promise of harm to the political body through defiance of basic principles of order and right that constitute one's group. The paper describes three main types of normative threat: transgression/grievance, subversion/insecurity, abomination/indignant aversion.

The world's understanding of the action needed to advance human rights is deeply structured by the ‘respect, protect, and fulfill’ framework. But its potential is significantly undermined by a narrow conception of ‘respect’ for human rights. This paper systematically addresses these weaknesses and advances an original alternative. It first provides a historical account of the ‘do no harm’ conception of ‘respect’ in the political context of the late Cold War. It then analyzes this conception's empirical functioning today, using the example of unauthorized migration along the US–Mexico border. These points illustrate an overarching theoretical argument: the responsibility to respect human rights should be based on a responsibility not to dehumanize, rather than exclusively on a duty to do no harm. This involves the consideration of each person as a moral equal, the elevation of human rights practice as a basis for judgment inside of a moral agent's self, and the rejection of state-centrism as the basis for all political responsibility. This argument has implications traversing the theory and practice of human rights, including: the ability to translate and embed into practice the new meanings of ‘respect,’ ‘protect,’ and ‘fulfill’; and the need to re-consider the contemporary significance of 1980s liberalism.

The question of change has emerged as one of the main conceptual and empirical challenges for International Relations' practice turn. In the context of international law, such a challenge is brought into particularly stark relief due to the significant development of legal meaning through more informal, interpretive avenues, including through the judgments of international courts. This paper develops a framework for theorizing how interpretive legal practices generate normative content change in international law. Specifically, it uses the example of the development of international criminal law through the decisions of international criminal courts to analyze how legal interpretation can lead to normative change in practice. Drawing on interviews conducted with judges and legal officers at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), I analyze how a community of legal practice centered around these courts was able to construct and alter legal meaning in international criminal law, and how such a potential for change was curbed by understandings of the interpretive process and the role of international courts dominant among international lawyers.

Emerging scholarship on global governance offers ever-more detailed analyses of private regulatory regimes. These regimes aim to regulate some area of social activity without a mandate from, or participation of, states or international organizations. While there are numerous empirical studies of these regimes, the normative theoretical literature has arguably struggled to keep pace with such developments. This is unfortunate, as the proliferation of private regulatory regimes raises important issues about legitimacy in global governance. The aim of this paper is to address some of these issues by elaborating a theoretical framework that can orientate normative investigation of these schemes. It does this through turning to the idea of experimentalist governance. It is argued that experimentalism can provide an important and provocative set of insights about the processes and logics of emerging governance schemes. The critical purchase of this theory is illustrated through an application to the case of primary commodities roundtables, part of ongoing attempts by non-governmental organizations, producers, and buyers to set sustainability criteria for commodity production across a range of sectors. The idea of experimentalist governance, we argue, can lend much needed theoretical structure to debates about the normative legitimacy of private regulatory regimes.

Recent conflicts and crises in international relations have tested the ethical commitments of many cosmopolitans. However, this article argues that cosmopolitanism can be morally compelling and practically useful if it is conceived pragmatically as a set of ideals that guide interactions concerning cross-border problems. It argues that a will to believe in cosmopolitanism can be rationally justified by historical achievements and present tendencies in social conditions. Cosmopolitan beliefs are warranted, first, by demonstrating the empirical relevance of cosmopolitan ethics as a ‘living option’ in a new era of interaction and interdependence. Second, a pragmatic reorientation of cosmopolitan theory is conducted to widen the basis for identifying cosmopolitan action and permit a reconstruction of its ideals appropriate to today's pluralistic world. Finally, cosmopolitan ideals of equality, critical intelligence, and intercultural dialogue are developed as guides to addressing cross-border problems, drawing on the issue of climate change to illustrate how they become operative. A pragmatic faith in these ideals is thus justified by empirical hypotheses concerning the historical tendencies and latent potentialities of human experience, rather than metaphysical premises attached to a supernatural force or universal Reason.

Studies of masculinity and armed conflict have struggled to capture the complex interaction between globalized militarized masculinities and local gender formations. Particularly in conflicts characterized by a high degree of combatant mobility (in the form of foreign fighters, massed displacement, or significant diaspora involvement) locating the relevant gender dynamics can prove to be a difficult step in understanding the character of armed groups. Based on fieldwork with Indonesian former foreign fighters, we make the case that feminist international relations have tended to unreflectively default to the nation when locating gender hierarchies. Exploring the multiple articulations of masculinity present in former fighters’ lives, we suggest that efforts must be made to resist methodological nationalism in understanding the relationship between gender hierarchies and armed conflict. Charting how foreign fighters traverse local constructions of gender, national gender hierarchies, and transnational social structures to participate in the conflict, we argue that adopting a conscious consideration of scale in our research method is needed to move beyond methodological nationalism.

This article critically engages the Global Transformation thesis through the lens of multiple early modernities. The 19th century undeniably saw a profound shift in the global mode of power, driven by industrialization, rational state-building, and the rise of ideologies of progress. But this triad impacted on regions that had already been reconfigured by an early modern Eurasian Transformation, centered on an ‘industrious revolution’, absolutist state-building, and the spread of ‘civilizing processes’. This Eurasian Transformation yielded distinct early modernities and regional orders, which fundamentally conditioned the nature, extent, impact, and legacy of later Western expansion. Acknowledging the diversity of these early modern orders enhances our understanding of the variance in patterns of order reconfiguration that attended the Global Transformation. Equally, it strengthens the case for reconceptualizing international systems change as encompassing reconfiguration as much as revolutionary transformation. This cautions against thinking of ‘great transformations’ in world politics as constituting radically discontinuous breaks with the past.

This response concentrates on two sets of issues raised by the contributors to the symposium: the first centers around theory, the second around history. On the former, our argument is that, contrary to some of the comments made by our interlocutors, the book contributes to theoretical debates ranging from issues of causation to those concerning history as a theoretical enterprise. We use these arguments to engage with, and extend, historical questions raised about the book, paying particular attention to the issue of comparisons across time. Our overarching reaction to the symposium is positive – the book has generated an exciting range of responses. This makes us hopeful that The Global Transformation will stimulate both intra- and inter-disciplinary conversations, even if these conversations sometimes emerge from frustration with paths not taken and issues not addressed.

If torture is both ethically odious and usually ineffective as an interrogation method, why have states, especially democratic ones, practiced it? This paper develops a theoretical response to this puzzle by extending constructivist understandings of normative effects. I argue that the norm prohibiting torture has the perverse effect of making torture more attractive to some political leaders in two ways: first, the norm attracts those who are looking for an outside-the-box solution to challenging intelligence-gathering scenarios; second, the norm offers political leaders a narrative of heroism in which they sacrifice their morality for the greater good. I illustrate these explanations with the example of torture in the United States war on terror. My argument suggests that norms can shape the interests even of those who do not follow their scripts, implying that the scope of normative impact may be much wider than previously believed.

This article examines the question of whether international markets in allowances conferring the right to emit greenhouse gases are consistent with a cosmopolitan approach to global and intergenerational justice. After placing emissions trading within the context of both climate change policy and cosmopolitan political theory, three normative objections are examined to the use of emissions trading to mitigate the threat of dangerous climate change. Each objection arises from a different application of cosmopolitan thinking: (i) the potentially corrosive impact of greater use of emissions allowances markets on the environmental values of successive generations of atmospheric users; (ii) the awkward relationship between emissions markets and the norms of procedural justice endorsed by all prominent cosmopolitans; and (iii) the injustice expressed by policy instruments that commodify the atmosphere. It is argued that, while each objection should prompt some care in the construction and implementation of emissions trading schemes to guarantee their legitimacy among existing and future users of the atmosphere, they do not generate a decisive normative challenge to the use of markets, properly defined and regulated, to slow global warming.

The national resource privilege, which holds that states are allowed to control all the natural resources found in their territory, is a cornerstone of international politics. Supporters of the national resource privilege claim that without the privilege states would fail to be sovereign and self-determining entities which provide for the needs of their citizens. However, as this paper shows the case is not as simple as that. In fact, control over resources must be carefully unpacked. Doing so shows that states do not require full control over all resources found in their territory in order to be sovereign. Moreover, sovereignty and self-determination come with a set of responsibilities and duties attached. Based on these observations the paper will sketch the contours of an alternative resource governance scheme built around the idea of an International Court of the Environment.

Drawn from the philosophy of science, metatheory is generally defined in International Relations (IR) as ‘theorizing about theory’ by examining a theory’s ontology or epistemology. Yet, despite being available to IR since at least the 1940s, metatheory ‘exploded’ into IR only in the late-1980s. What explains this sudden proliferation of metatheory in IR’s literature? This article answers this question by conducting a genealogy of metatheory in IR. It begins by offering a four-step heuristic guide for conducting a genealogical analysis. Then, bracketing IR’s traditional historical narratives, it problematizes a tacit practice undergirding IR’s present use of metatheory: theorizing about the ‘world’ using the philosophy of science. Tracing and interpreting the transformations of this practice through scholarship from the 1940s to the present reveals how metatheory emerged unexpectedly from what is now considered to be an outmoded and forgotten event: the inter-paradigm debate (IPD) of the mid-1980s. The IPD transformed what had always been conceptualized as a single, dynamic world for IR theory, into plural, static, theoretical worlds best (meta)theorized through a concept of ontology drawn from scientific realism. In sum, this genealogy demonstrates the implicit power that explicit theoretical practices wield over IR scholars, tacitly conditioning the discipline’s conceptual possibilities and limits.

This paper analyses Jürgen Habermas’s claim that democracy and human rights are co-original and its implications for his international theory. A central argument in his theory, the co-originality thesis suggests that human rights and democracy are not only both fundamental and mutually supportive, but also ‘equi-primordial’ and internally related. Reconstructing Habermas’s argument as it has developed over two decades, I argue that his account of constitutional democracy has difficulties accounting for the enmeshment of constitutional and international human rights, while his three-tiered model of global governance, in the absence of democratic legitimation, amounts to a downgrade of the currently institutionalized practice of international human rights. Instead, I suggest that shifting the focus from ideal global institutions to actual processes of domestic contestation, through which groups appropriate and apply international legal norms in order to claim their rights, provides a plausible account of the practice of international human rights consistent with the co-originality thesis.

IR scholars have made increasingly sophisticated use of historical analysis in the last two decades. To do so, they have appealed to theories or philosophies of history, tacitly or explicitly. However, the plurality of approaches to these theories has gone largely unsystematized. Nor have their implications been compared. Such historical–theoretic orientations concern the ‘problem of history’: the theoretical question of how to make the facts of the past coherently intelligible. We aim to make these assumptions explicit, and to contrast them systematically. In so doing, we show theories of history are necessary: IR-theoretic research unavoidably has tacit or overt historical–theoretic commitments. We locate the field’s current historical commitments in a typology, along two axes. Theories of history may be either familiar to the observer or unfamiliar. They may also be linear, having a long-term trajectory, nonlinear, lacking such directionality, or multilinear, proceeding along multiple trajectories. This comparative exercise both excavates the field’s sometimes-obscured commitments and shows some IR theorists unexpectedly share commitments, while others unexpectedly do not. We argue that better awareness of historical–theoretic reasoning, embedded in all IR uses and invocations of history, may encourage the discipline become more genuinely plural.