International, Politics, Philosophy (IPP)

Taking UNFCCC Norms Seriously

Darrel Moellendorf (Goethe Universität, Frankfurt, Normative Orders)

We are urgently in need of a comprehensive climate change mitigation treaty. This urgency affects the kind of moral guidance we should expect and can reasonably propose to others. Insofar as nonideal theory is dependent on an account of ideal theory which it serves, I argue that nonideal theory is ill-suited to offer practical moral guidance in this situation. That view does not entail, however, that climate change policy must be either morally blind or governed simply by a norm of efficiency. Instead, I argue that the United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an important source of moral norms. There are very good normative and prudential reasons to take these norms seriously. The normative background provided by the treaty is a significant good for the collective effort of international cooperation. But also given the likely costs if the force of the background to become significantly weakened, it is reasonable for each state to want to see the UNFCCC remain in force and therefore also not to erode it through non-compliance. The strongest moral reasons to comply with the norms of the UNFCC, however, are the promissory obligation that a state assumes by ratifying the convention and the duty of fairness in an international system of energy use and climate change mitigation expressed by commitment to the right to sustainable development.

Discussant: Margaux Le Donné (Sciences Po)

Lieu: Sciences Po, Ecole doctorale, salle de réunion
199 blvrd St. Germain, 3ème étage

The International Politics of Human Rights and the R2P Cause

Monica Serrano (Colegio de Mexico) viendra présenter l’ouvrage dont elle a co-dirigé la publication avec Thomas G. Weiss.

The book discusses the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P) ten years after its definition. The book presents international debates ranging from the prevention of mass atrocities to R2P’s normative prospects. It also addresses various issues, such as the problem of sovereignty in R2P practice. The authors try to answer key questions: can R2P break or revert cycles of violence? How can one determine the appropriate duration and timing of the preventive and protective phases of R2P? What should be the target of preventive actions? They also analyze the current doctrine in state decision making, as well as try to advance the credibility of R2P’s preventive dimensions.

Discutant : Pierre Hassner (CERI, Sciences Po)

CERI, 56, rue Jacob, salle Jean Monnet
17.00-19.00

Christopher Kutz (Berkeley)

This paper, prepared for a colloquium on problems of state responsibility, takes up the issue of state responsibility for the costs of mitigating and adapting to global climate change. It argues that any theory of state responsibility must be integrable into individual conceptions of moral responsibility among the subjects of the states bearing the burdens of these costs. I take up the particular question whether permissions trading systems or carbon tax systems are more likely to be integrable into senses of responsibility, and argue for the superiority of the carbon tax on this (among other) grounds.

Discutante: Margaux Le Donné (Sciences Po)

Jeudi 12 Juin, 13h00-15h00
Lieu: Sciences Po, 199, blvrd St Germain, école doctorale, 3ème étage, salle de réunion
Séance organisée avec le séminaire de théorie politique de l’école doctorale

Mathias Risse, On the Relevance of Humanity’s Collective Ownership of the Earth for Immigration

My book On Global Justice makes the idea of humanity’s collective ownership of the earth central and among other topics applies it to immigration. However, this perspective continues to be largely absent from debates about immigration. This paper argues that humanity’s collective ownership of the earth should be given more prominence in immigration debates and addresses some important objections that have been raised to that approach.

Discussant: Benjamin Boudou (CERI)

Lundi 20 Janvier 2014
CERI, salle Jean Monnet
17.00-19.00

Frédéric Ramel, « L’attraction mondiale »

Dans la théorie des relations internationales, l’attraction correspond soit à la polarisation (mécanisme stratégique à partir duquel les Etats se rallient à une puissance), soit à la séduction (tendance culturelle décrite sous les traits du soft-power). Ces deux perspectives sont étriquées mais surtout aveugles quant à l’existence d’une autre forme que revêt l’attraction. Celle-ci travaille l’humanité depuis la Renaissance européenne. Elle correspond à la circulation des biens, des personnes et des idées qui rapprochent les êtres humains et les sensibilisent à un destin commun (ce qui renvoie à la tendance générale qu’évoque l’attraction dans la physique newtonienne). Cette prise de conscience transforme notre rapport au monde ainsi qu’à l’espace politique. Elle modifie les manières de concevoir l’organisation du vouloir vivre ensemble. L’attracteur n’est plus un pôle de puissance militaire ou culturelle. Il renvoie à l’idée d’unité politique mondiale en tant qu’« aboutissement logique » de l’histoire universelle. Quelles sont les propriétés de cet aboutissement ? Quelle est la nature de cet attracteur que l’on peut qualifier de cosmopolitique ? Quelles sont ses particularités institutionnelles ? Cette unité correspond-t-elle à un idéal ? A ces interrogations, les familles de pensée ne répondent plus de manière homogène en leur sein. De nouveaux clivages apparaissent entre celles qui clarifient l’attraction cosmopolitique, celles qui contestent son existence, celles qui cherchent à le corriger tout en acceptant la quête de l’universel dans une perspective d’ouverture aux idées non-occidentales. Ces trois approches reposent sur une relecture des classiques de la philosophie (en particulier Kant, Hobbes, Schmitt) tout en proposant des aménagements inédits. Elles constituent le cœur de la philosophie politique des relations internationales.

Discutant: Pierre Hassner (Sciences Po, CERI)
Salle Jean Monnet: 17.00-19.00

Nehal Bhuta (EUI), Predicting disorder: « Early Warning » and Indexes of State Failure

The term “failed state” appears to have emerged in the early 1990s, and was used in reference to dramatic cases of state collapse, generally occasioned by severe internal conflict. After September 11, the security threats associated with state failure triggered an interest in understanding the correlates and preconditions for such situations. Attempts to develop measures of failure and fragility proliferated, and were sought out as « early warning » mechanisms which would allow governments to have some foreknowledge of risks of conflict and instability and so develop policy interventions. The ambition of these measures was to foresee crises of political order before they materialized and thus help forestall them, and to provide diagnostic tools to better address the « causes of instability. » This paper will examine the rise of interest in « early warning » mechanisms for state fragility, and one specific effort to quantify « state fragility » by the United States Agency for International Development.

Governance by Indicators’ book
Discussant: Didier Bigo (Sciences Po – King’s College)
Salle Jean Monnet : 17.00-19.00

Toni Erskine (Aberystwyth)

Questions of moral agency are fundamental to world politics. Who – or what – can bear the related moral burdens of duty and blame for specific acts and outcomes has serious implications for both theory and practice. Politicians, policy-makers, citizens and scholars alike endeavour to identify and assign, and sometimes deny or deflect, obligations to respond to crises such as famine, environmental degradation, genocide, and financial collapse. We also apportion blame – for acts and omissions that contribute to these crises and for failure to address them adequately. Problematically, however, these calls to action, claims to duty, and cries of condemnation often precede consideration of the bodies capable of responding. In this paper, I will argue that such prescriptions and evaluations should be directed towards those formal organizations with sophisticated, integrated capacities for deliberation and action (such as most states, multinational corporations, and, sometimes, the United Nations), as well as towards individual human actors. In short, an account of what I call ‘institutional moral agency’ is necessary in order to speak coherently about world politics.

Discussant: Ariel Colonomos (CNRS-CERI)
CERI (salle du rez-de-chaussée)
17.00-19.00

Richard Beardsworth (AUP)

Cosmopolitan Commitments in International Relations: Normative and Empirical Arguments in a Global Age of Transition

In my recent book Cosmopolitanism and International Relations Theory I respond to two judgments in the discipline of International Relations concerning cosmopolitan commitments. First, qua moral, they remain normative; attempting to embed them in empirical practice is consequently either naïve and/or dangerous. Here cosmopolitanism has often been conflated in IR with neoconservative foreign policy (particularly among Realists); or rather, actually existing cosmopolitan commitments have been critiqued through the critique of neoconservative foreign policy. Second, cosmopolitanism has been more generally associated, when seeking institutional form, with the hegemonic strategies of ‘global liberal governance’. Here cosmopolitanism is considered reducible to Western forms of either cultural/legal universalism (particularly among postmodern IR theorists) and/or economic neo-liberal universalism (particularly among post-Marxists). My response unties in detail the theoretical confusions that permit both kinds of judgment, arguing strongly for the pertinence of universal commitments in international politics. While doing so, it nevertheless assumes the difficulty of a cosmopolitan politics at this moment of world history. The book argues, accordingly, for a pragmatic cosmopolitanism: one that situates responsibility to cosmopolitan commitments on specific global issues within state behaviour. The argument is left unfinished in the book and requires more reflection in the context of current transitions in power.
With the emergence of a multipolar world and the loss of a global hegemon, the disjuncture between global problems and the institutions to address them effectively and legitimately is apparent. State responsibility to cosmopolitan commitments on specific global issues needs consequently, to be argued all the more: on both empirical and normative levels. Empirically, increasing dependence between states and their peoples fosters ever-more distinctive, but inter-related transnational problems; it is therefore in the national interest regarding these problems to act collectively. As both the current financial crisis in the EU and the dilemmas of the UNFCCC conferences on climate change mitigation and adaptation however show, states’ assumption of supranational commitments constitutes also, and crucially, a normative issue. This assumption requires moral responsibility and moral leadership. Both are currently lacking. The argument for cosmopolitan commitments in the next era of the post-Westphalian system of states must therefore be made, at one and the same time, in empirical and normative terms. Such argument fosters more emphatic political vision in the discipline of IR.

Discutant: Bertrand Badie (Sciences Po)
Sciences Po, Ecole doctorale, 199, boulevard Saint Germain, 3è étage.
17.00 – 19.00

Frédéric Mérand (Université de Montréal)

Le monde selon Pierre Bourdieu : éléments pour une théorie sociale des relations internationales

Discutant et responsable scientifique : Bastien Irondelle (CERI)

CERI, salle de conférences, 10.00 am – 12.00 pm