Classical Realism represents a science of politics that is distinct from the conventional understanding of science in International Relations. The object of Realist science is the art of politics, ...which is the development of a sensibility based on practical knowledge to balance values and interests and to make judgments. Realism’s science and its object led to its tagging as “wisdom literature.” This article illustrates that reading Hans Morgenthau’s and Raymond Aron’s work shows how their hermeneutic form of enquiry provides insights into the character of international politics, which conventional understandings do not. Following the example of Morgenthau, the article, first, illustrates how Realism, rather than providing a theory of practice, builds on a science with the purpose to judge knowledge. Realism’s science analyzes the objective conditions of politics, theorizes them, and takes into account the requirements of political practice under contingencies and considerations of morality. The article, second, examines Aron’s take on political practice in the context of the Cold War and politics that built on knowledge without experience to judge knowledge. Morgenthau and Aron’s science helps to capture Realism’s take on politics as an art, how to explicate Realism’s epistemological foundation and value in studying international politics. Doing so, the article, third, contributes to practice theory by clarifying several aspects of Realism’s science. In particular, it shows how Realism captures the art of politics by conceptualizing practice as a form of human conduct thereby offering a more coherent notion of practice than current practice theory.
Identifying peacekeeping as practical ethics helps analyze how the problems of existing approaches to military ethical training led to practical problems of standard setting. This article illustrates ...the value of understanding ethics as a theoretical framework to confront and prepare for moral practice. Pointing out the problems in terms of how military ethics ascertain the nature of ethics, the field of military ethics frames problems in ways that undermine standard settings for moral practice. Specifying these problems complements established theoretical inputs and helps peacekeepers better adjust to the moral choices and dilemmas ahead. This is particularly because military ethical training is also about coming to terms with society's moral standards and demands that led to peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions in the first place. The article illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of this approach to military ethical training with the example of Austrian peacekeeper ethical training.
Religious actors and their political concepts are commonly assumed to be conservative, static, and aligned with the private contemplative world. Popes, however, regularly stand out from this ...narrative. The article contextualizes the papal human rights discourse since the 1940s and contributes a hitherto neglected perspective to the debate on human rights and religion in the international realm, illustrating that religious ideas and configurations change. The research, partially derived using discourse network analysis software, points out three key findings: First, John Paul II dominates the human rights discourse, which has gained traction since the end of the Second World War. Second, although Francis takes an outside role in the papal discourse, he does not differ in principle from the mainstream trajectory of the papal human rights discourse. Finally, third, from the first evocation of human rights by a pope, there has been a persistent trend stressing both individual and collective human rights. Moreover, the article illustrates that political and religious conceptions of human rights are relational, and even contingent on each other. The results offer ample reason to anticipate future papal political conduct based on the trajectory of the papal human rights discourse.
This article argues that how the United Nations (UN) conceptualizes legitimacy is not only a matter of legalism or power politics. The UN’s conception of legitimacy also utilizes concepts, language ...and symbolism from the religious realm. Understanding the entanglement between political and religious concepts and the ways of their verbalization at the agential level sheds light on how legitimacy became to be acknowledged as an integral part of the UN and how it changes. At the constitutional level, the article examines phrases and ‘verbal symbols’, enshrined in the Charter of the ‘secular church’ UN. They evoke intrinsic legitimacy claims based on religious concepts and discourse such as hope and salvation. At the agential level, the article illustrates how the Secretary-General verbalizes those abstract constitutional principles of legitimacy. Religious language and symbolism in the constitutional framework and agential practice of the UN does not necessarily produce an exclusive form of legitimacy. This article shows, however, that legitimacy as nested in the UN’s constitutional setting cannot exist without religious templates because they remain a matter of a ‘cultural frame’.
From the beginnings of the UN Secretariat, its Secretaries-General reached out to a wide audience, considering themselves servants of peace beyond narrow organizational tasks. The article argues that ...it is the Secretaries-General perception as an international civil servant which led them to endeavour a more expansive role ever since. To unfold this argument, the article, first, traces the international civil servant roots of the Secretary-General. Second, the article illustrates that the themes and rhetorical details of the Secretaries-General inaugural addresses provide a lens to detect and trace the trajectory of the Secretaries-General self-understanding as international civil servants providing the grounds to expand their role. Secretaries-General as international civil servants always embraced the ideal of serving peace, thereby seeking to gain a political role. This international civil servant trajectory illustrates that the role of the UN Secretary-General transcends historical periodization of the UN and sheds light on the evolution of the UN's global nature and mission.
Next to military means, causing disruption and interdiction, Western and local powers also relied on policies of containment to halt the expansion of the Islamic State's territorial strongholds. Yet, ...a Cold War state-based strategy of containment seems not apt to counter a transformed Islamic State. This article, first, examines why containing the Islamic State was successful in the past. Second, the article argues that the Islamic State can still be contained if containment addresses the Islamic State's hybrid nature rather than convulsively looking for the transferability of past containment aspects. In particular, this requires a focus on the struggle for power of the opponent and a foreign policy of restraint. Finally, the article proposes three angles to contain the Islamic State. Each angle exploits the persisting characteristics of the Islamic State as a revolutionary actor with internal contradictions and promulgating specific narratives which containment can engage.
In this article, I argue that there is a startling resonance between Hans Morgenthau’s conception of the political and power and recent analyses of an urbanizing international realm. By making this ...connection clear, I depart from a mechanistic understanding of politics, which tends to inform both conventional International Relations views and some claims in urban studies pertaining to the rise of global cities as international actors. Turning to Morgenthau’s conception of the political and power also has wider implications for International Relations studies of urbanization: it helps explain a tendency toward depoliticization caused by ignoring the conflictual character of the political. The emphasis on the political, on the other hand, serves as a bridge between International Relations and urbanization studies by creating conditions for the repoliticization of urban space. After illustrating the existential manifestation of the political and its violent outfalls, the remainder of this article turns to its relational and dialogical manifestation that points out the shortcomings of reading the political merely as an existential concept in the context of urbanization.
Abstract
English School accounts of international relations always stressed some degree of interaction between political international society and ideational world society. Yet, English School ...research, relying on agential and structural premises, often misses how and where international society and world society interact. If intermediation between the two societies is identified, it often remains abstract. I argue that identifying agents and the standards defining their practices helps to understand intermediation between international society and world society. I suggest that likely candidates that practice intermediation are rooted in both international society and world society. This is because practices rooted in both realms are also defined by the standards of both realms. I argue that the Pope and the United Nations Secretary-General are likely intermediation instances between international society and world society. Both are equally footed in international society and world society. Given their organizational embedding in international society, both rely on practices informed by international society standards such as diplomacy. Yet, both also rely on world society standards such as their concern for humanity. Focusing on the sanctity of the individual rather than only on state-based interests and agendas of international society marks their concern and caring for refugees. I illustrate this argument with advocacy, an intermediation practice. Deprived of membership in a community, solutions for refugees in international society require political and moral theory from world society, relying on concepts such as humanity. Advocating for refugees on the grounds of world society's common humanity, the Pope and the United Nations Secretary-General are intermediation instances between world society and international society.
This article proposes a conceptualization of violence that builds on a tripartite relationship between violence, victims, and sacrifice that frames violence as a self-justifying sacrificial act. This ...conceptualization delineates the nature of violence by addressing its transformation from an instrumental act to a constitutional act, making violence possible, ongoing, contagious, and productive. In particular, I argue, with the help of René Girard’s theoretical framework, that conceptual accounts of violence can gain further insights through an engagement with his concepts of sacrifice and victims. Violence, this article illustrates, becomes a societal feature by producing victims via sacrifice rather than drawing simplified boundaries between the relation of perpetrator and victim, mediated by the act of violence. To illustrate the epistemological value of this conceptualization, the article re-examines Timothy McVeigh’s justification of his Oklahoma City bombing. The article concludes that not only terrorism’s atrocities reflect this proposed conceptualization of violence but also potentially all acts of political violence.
The unconventional nature of Holy See diplomats rests in the composite character of their ecclesiastical role as the Pope’s representatives and their legal diplomatic status and commencement to ...ordinary diplomatic practice. Holy See diplomacy is a form of conduct created by a set of mixed secular and religious standards in which agents are guided by practices. I locate this argument within a classical English School and a conventional understanding of practice, diplomacy, and agency while incorporating understandings of the diplomat as a stranger. The article situates a Holy See diplomat’s mode of agency as a hybrid one by nature, located at the intersections of political and religious modes of agency and substantial and relational conceptions of international politics. I probe this conceptual framework of hybrid agency by analysing episodes involving papal diplomats in turmoil-ridden historical episodes, and correspondence with informed agents.
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