International, Politics, Philosophy (IPP)

Perception and Misperception 40 years later: Reputation in IR

Robert Jervis (Columbia University)

In the almost 40 years since Perception and Misperception, was published, there has been an enormous amount of relevant research in psychology and political psychology. While I think little of it contradicts what I said, it does move in directions that I didn’t explore or that I implied were dead ends. The most important, I believe, concerns the role–or rather the roles–of emotion. First of all, it is clear that the previous habit of contrasting emotion to reason (and exalting the latter) is badly misleading. It is also clear that perceptions can be driven by psychological needs, and what are called « motivated biases » can be very powerful. Indeed I think it is fair to say that psychological and political needs share pride of place with expectations as the prime determinants of perceptions in the political realm (see my « Understanding Beliefs » in the journal Political Psychology).

Another important development is Prospect Theory, which argues that people are much more risk-acceptant when they are in the realm of losses than they are when they are in the realm of gains, something that may be a part of human nature, as I argued in another Political Psychology article. This means that wars are particularly likely when both sides believe they are in the realm of losses, a danger compounded by the difficulty of understanding that the adversary feels it is in this situation.

Work on the biological roots of perception and behavior in the forms of genetics and the neurobiology of the brain hold promise, but also are in the early stages of development and some skepticism is in order.

For many years, much work in IR and other fields was based on a rational choice theory of reputation. Indeed, this was the approach I used in my first book, The Logic of Images in International Relations. The books by John Mercer and Daryl Press have cast this into doubt, although Gregory Miller’s recent book reasserts the older view with better research. The topic is without doubt extremely important and deserves deeper conceptualization and research. But I think it is clear that there is much to the point made by Snyder and Diesing 40 years ago–leaders are very concerned about their own reputations but pay much less attention to those of others. Contrary to the American preoccupation (shared with other countries?), backing down in one instance does not automatically lead to a reputation for being weak or irresolute.

Discussant: Gloria Origgi (CNRS, ENS-EHESS)

Lundi 28 Avril 17.00-19.00
Lieu: Sciences Po, salle 511, 199 blvd St. Germain (rez-de-chaussée)

Éthique, défense, sécurité et agents artificiels autonomes

Jean-Gabriel Ganascia (Paris 6, Pierre et Marie Curie)

Les agents artificiels autonomes prennent une part de plus en plus grande dans la vie quotidienne, que ce soit dans le monde physique, avec la robotique manufacturière, la robotique de service ou les drones, ou dans le monde virtuel, avec les « bots », les « malwares » (maliciels en français), etc. S’ils procurent puissance et confort, ces agents sont aussi source de nouvelles vulnérabilités. Il n’y a donc rien d’étonnant à ce qu’ils acquièrent de plus en plus d’importance dans le monde de la défense et de la sécurité. Après avoir rapidement passé en revue les applications militaires et policières actuelles de ces agents, nous verrons en quoi on peut évoquer des questions d’ordre éthique à propos de leur comportement. Nous montrerons ensuite comment approcher la programmation de ces agents en s’inspirant des cadres conceptuels posés par certaines approches philosophiques de l’éthique. Ce faisant, il se trouve que la notion de conflit, centrale pour l’éthique, provoque des incohérences logiques que doivent surmonter les programmes d’intelligence artificiel qui supervisent ces agents. Cela conduit à l’introduction de formalismes de représentation non monotones que l’on évoquera. Nous montrerons ensuite, comment ces modélisations ont pu être mises à profit par des roboticiens comme Ron Arkins pour légitimer la réalisation de « robots soldats » qui se substitueraient aux hommes dans les théâtres d’opérations. Nous conclurons en indiquant les limitations intrinsèques de ces approches et en proposant d’autres perspectives qui précisent la part des agents artificiels dans la prise de décision.

Discutantes : Amélie Ferey, Marine Guillaume

Jeudi 24 Avril, 17.00-19.00

Salle du Conseil, Sciences Po, 13, rue de l’Université – 5ème étage

Jean-Marc Coicaud, Droit international et théorie politique internationale : comprendre le present, revisiter le passé et offrir une vision pour le futur

Cette présentation s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un livre en cours que Jean-Marc Coicaud développe actuellement sur le thème de la justice globale pour Cambridge University Press. Elle se concentrera sur les relations entre le droit international et la justice internationale et la justice globale. De ce point de vue, l’accent sera mis sur trois questions: les défis que le droit international rencontre aujourd’hui dans le contexte de la globalisation; une vision alternative de l’histoire du droit international; une critique philosophique du droit international; et quelques pistes de recherche pour le passage du droit international inter-étatique a un droit international plus cosmopolite.

Mercredi 19 Mars 17.00-19.00
SALLE DU CONSEIL, 13, rue de l’Université, 5ème étage

Discutant : Andrei Poama (Sciences Po)

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

Oona Hathaway (Yale), The War to End War

Attached are portions of a book manuscript that I am writing with my colleague, Professor Scott Shapiro. I have provided you with the introduction, which attempts to set the stage and preview the argument of the book, and the fourth chapter. Those who are pressed for time should focus on the introduction alone.
The first three chapters of the book (which are not included here) describe what we call the Old World Order—a system that relied on war as the linchpin of law. The first chapter centers on Grotius and the legal order he established. The second chapter shows that war was a source of legal redress and legal rights. The legal rights to territory, people, and goods were decided by war—even one that was entirely unjust. The third chapter examines what followed from the legality of war and of conquest and how those rules in turn shaped the international legal system that persisted for hundreds of years.
The second part of the book—also comprised of three chapters, of which I have given you the first—tells the story of what we argue is a deep shift in the legal meaning of war. It describes the end of the Old World Order and the beginning of something fundamentally new. This shift, we argue, has consequences not just for states’ recourse to war, but for international law and the international system as a whole.
The third part of the book will examine our modern international legal system and the ways in which international law can and cannot shape state behavior. This part of the book will draw on our article on “outcasting” as a mechanism for enforcing international law (Hathaway & Shapiro, Outcasting: The Enforcement of Domestic and International Law, Yale Law Journal (2012)).

Discussant: Ariel Colonomos (CNRS, Sciences Po), Christopher Kutz (Berkeley Univ.)

Mardi 25 Juin, 17.00-19.00
Salle Jean Monnet, Ceri

Jennifer Welsh (Oxford Univ.), The Morality of Drone Warfare

This paper examines the impact of the increased use of drones in warfare, and their particular role in the practice of targeted killing. The preliminary section challenges some of the commonly held myths about drone technology, and argues that weaponized drones remain a ‘human heavy’ and intimate means of killing. In the second section, I demonstrate that targeted killing through drones has significant implications for what Just War Theory calls jus ad bellum (the legitimacy of engaging in war), and jus in bello (the legitimacy of acts taken during the conduct of war). With respect to JAB, drones have the potential to change states’ conception of, and adherence to, the notion of ‘last resort’ (i.e., that the use of force, because of its lethality and consequences, must only be contemplated after other means have proved unworkable). More specifically, they both raise the threshold for engaging in a large-scale war (since they offer an alternative means of meeting a threat), and encourage relaxation of the ‘last resort’ criterion when contemplating their use (since they are a means short of full-scale war). With respect to JIB, drones offer a better prospect of meeting the requirement of non-combatant immunity. But this in turn has had a morally relevant effect: the U.S. government’s faith in drones’ proportionality and discrimination induces the U.S. to undertake riskier strikes, thereby increasing the likelihood of the collateral damage drones are celebrated for preventing. Moreover, the U.S. government’s implementation of the discrimination principle in the context of counter-terrorism (particularly in ‘signature strikes’), has led to questionable methods for defining a ‘combatant’, which in practice has meant that those who the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) might define as civilians have been killed in drone strikes. This suggests that drone warfare may not actually eliminate risk, but rather transfer much of it from one society to another – raising ethical questions about the legitimacy of such a quest for ‘low cost’ warfare. In my concluding section, I will argue that targeted killing through drones has observable and morally relevant effects not only on the people and societies that are targeted, but also on the society sponsoring the killing (particularly if it is a constitutional democracy) and the individual operating the drone.

Discutant: Christopher Kutz (Berkeley University)
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