The rise of the radical ‘New Right’ (NR) across much of the global political landscape is one of the most striking political developments of recent years. This article seeks to foster international theory’s critical engagement with the NR by providing an overview of its thinking about world politics and the challenges it presents. We argue that in many ways international theory is in fact uniquely positioned to provide such an engagement, and that it is essential that international theory comes to terms more fully with its political vision and theoretical claims if it is to engage effectively with this increasingly potent and often deeply troubling intellectual and political movement.

This article uses the concept of international practices to explore the distinctions between human rights and humanitarianism in the contemporary period and, in turn, uses this exploration to comment on the concept of international practices. First section proposes to advance the theoretical and empirical utility of the concept of practices by parsing it into the ‘problem’ that sets the story in motion, what counts as competent action, background knowledge, and meanings. Second section applies this framework to the relationship between human rights and humanitarianism. Beginning in the 1990s, they began responding to many of the same material realities, which unleashed two, interrelated, processes, but had different ways of understanding competent action, background knowledge, and meanings. They began to revise their practices not only in response to new challenges but also to how the other evolved, generating new distinctions. These points of distinction were structured by different kinds of suffering and informed their contrasting narratives of precarity in the case of humanitarianism, and progress in human rights. The conclusion considers how this discussion of human rights and humanitarianism redirects contemporary research on international practices.

This article argues that opportunities for unilateral influence within international bureaucracies create a delegation problem akin to that in coalition governments. Parties in coalitions that suspect each another of diverting from the coalition bargain avail themselves of mechanisms, such as junior ministers and parliamentary scrutiny, to monitor their coalition partners’ actions within the executive. Similarly, states that suspect cooperating partners of abusing their unilateral influence within the bureaucracy employ mechanisms, reminiscent of those in coalition governments, in order to ‘keep tabs’ on one another. I illustrate the plausibility of this claim using the case of the European Commission. However, this delegation problem of interstate control can be expected to apply more widely. The article has implications for the study of international organization, international delegation and informal governance.

Deliberation has not only epistemic and moral value, it also has transformative value. Even if deliberation faces the problem of indeterminacy, it is assumed to have explanatory power. This article spells out why this is so and suggests a way to establish the causing effect of deliberation. It outlines a reason-based (RB) model of political decision-making applicable also to international affairs. By specifying a theory of argumentation on collective decision-making, we get to the nuts and bolts of deliberative decision-making, which, when supported by institutional powers, ensures a justified and well-grounded decision. The model contains a set of rules of inference and offers ‘mechanismic’ accounts of social events. It allows for explanations, but not predictions. The RB model conceives of decision-making as consisting of three sequences: claims-making, justification, and learning, each containing a set of explanatory mechanisms: values referring to conceptions of the common good, mandatory norms concerning the right thing to do, and evidence to the fact that non-compliance is wrong. The explanatory potential of this scheme is exemplified with reference to agreement making in the European Union. Some actors changed opinion voluntarily with regard to empowering the European parliament.