International, Politics, Philosophy (IPP)

This book is an intervention at three levels, which is laid out in its first part. Conceptually, it shows that one can define luck as a distinct and researchable concept. Empirically, the book uses untapped primary sources to document two cases in which nuclear explosions have been avoided out of luck and not due to control practices. Epistemologically, it identifies five expert practices that make luck invisible or a priori inconsequential to analysts and scholars alike.
Given that policymakers have paid tribute to luck in the non-catastrophic outcome of nuclear crises for a long time (Acheson as early as 1969, McNamara 2003, Leonov 2002…) and that the consensus on the Cuban Missile Crisis over the last 25 years has established the role of luck without it leading to major chances in expert claims of control and control practices, the second part of the book investigates what the implications of taking luck seriously would be on four key dimensions of responsibility in international politics: the nexus between security and sustainability; morality and the issue of moral luck; recognition as taking luck seriously changes the possibility and meaning of trust, and democratic accountability. The book will conclude by reflecting on redefining responsibility in light of those four dimensions.

Sciences Po
199, Bd Saint Germain
3ème étage

17.00-19.00

Discussant: Benjamin Puybareau (CERI-Namur)

This paper is an exercise in problem-driven theory of a critical (rather than empiricist) kind. My first contention is that there are three major problems driving contemporary politics: 1) the disjuncture between threats that affect humanity as a whole and an everyday politics of efficacy and legitimacy (a disjuncture that is leading some to consider threats like climate change now ‘un-governable’); 2) the short-termism of contemporary forms of political responsibility and political leadership despite these threats or in direct disavowal of them (populist nationalism); 3) the challenge, therefore, of addressing ‘trans-border’ problems from within a structurally tenuous but politically resilient system of states. My second contention is that addressing each of these problems requires the active exercise of political leadership and new forms of enlightened statecraft and that, without this leadership, politics will remain polarized and endangered as a form of the common good. The paper contends thirdly that such leadership requires squaring practically and embodying symbolically national and global/human interests. In conclusion I discuss whether this focus on political responsibility and leadership (as ‘the political moment’) reinforces the status quo or critically helps to transform it.

Sciences Po
199, Bd Saint Germain
3ème étage

17.00-19.00

Discussant: Annabelle Lever (Sciences Po)