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Abstract
There has been a transformation in the relationship between the corporate and humanitarian worlds over the last two decades, as the humanitarian sector has integrated a corporate mentality that would have once been viewed as downright deplorable by humanitarian actors. The search for a "new business model" is symbolic of the times. After situating the historical moment in terms of the relationship between humanitarianism and neoliberalism, the article examines three defining elements of this model: humanitarian finance; the role of corporations and markets for addressing life-threatening circumstances; and a business-oriented rationalization. These developments can constrain and possibly soil the legitimacy of humanitarianism. They might also alter humanitarianism's practices and distort what humanitarian is. Such concerns raise the sociological question of: what function does humanitarianism play in the world order? Where does humanitarianism's new business model fit?

AbstractMichael Zürn'sTheory of Global Governanceis an original, bold, and compelling argument regarding the causes of change in global governance. A core argument is that legitimation problems trigger changes in global governance. This contribution addresses two core features of the argument. Although I am persuaded that legitimacy matters, there are times when: legitimacy appears to be given too much credit to the relative neglect of other factors; other times when the lack of legitimacy has little discernible impact on the working of global governance; and unanswered questions about how the legitimacy of global governance relates to the legitimacy of the international order of which it is a part. The second feature is what counts as change in global governance. Zürn reduces change to either deepening or decline, overlooking the possible how of global governance. In contrast to Zürn's map of global governance that is dominated by hierarchies in the form of international organizations, an alternative map locates multiple modes of governance: hierarchies, markets, and networks. The kinds of legitimation problems that Zürn identifies, I argue, can help explain some of the movement from hierarchical to other modes of global governance.

AbstractIn her new memoir, The Education of an Idealist, Samantha Power reflects on her eight years in the Obama administration. Although she claims that the experience did little to change her views, there is a considerable disjuncture between her point of view in her award-winning earlier book "A Problem from Hell," in which she criticizes U.S. officials for not doing the right thing, and her point of view in The Education of an Idealist, in which she defends indifference of U.S. officials under somewhat similar circumstances during the Obama years. The author of Problem could not have written Education, and the author of Education could not have written Problem. What does this tell us about the possibility for ethics in foreign policy?

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.

The contributions raise several important issues regarding the norm of gender equality in development organizations, and I want to raise the following points for further consideration. Does it matter if we treat gender equality as a norm or practice? The articles suggest that there is general movement toward the norm, but what it means to do gender equality is quite fractured. Who decides what gender equality means? Why do organizations feel the need to adopt this norm? Organizations have different motives, and these motives are probably important for understanding whether these norms have any impact. Impact refers to effects, and there are various kinds of effects raised by the articles, though focused mainly on the norm's institutionalization rather than its impact.

Abstract:Contemporary global governance is organized around an odd pairing: care and control. On the one hand, much of global governance is designed to reduce human suffering and improve human flourishing, with the important caveat that individuals should be allowed to decide for themselves how they want to live their lives. On the other hand, these global practices of care are also entangled with acts of control. Peacebuilding, public health, emergency aid, human rights, and development are expressions of this tension between care and control. There is a concept that captures this tension: paternalism. Drawing on our moral intuitions, I argue that paternalism is the attempt by one actor to substitute his judgment for another actor's on the grounds that such an imposition will improve the welfare of the target actor. After discussing and defending this definition, I note how our unease with paternalism seems to grow as we scale up from the interpersonal to the international, which I argue owes to the evaporation of community and equality. After exploring the implications of this definition and distinguishing it from other forms of intervention, I consider how different elements of paternalism combine to generate different configurations. Specifically, I point to five dimensions that are most relevant for examining the paternalism found in contemporary global and humanitarian governance: the tools used to restrict another actor's liberty (force versus information); the scope of the interference (wide versus narrow); the purpose of the intervention (prevention of harm versus emancipation); the source of the paternalizer's confidence (faith versus evidence); and the mechanisms of accountability (internal versus external). These different elements often correlate historically, suggestive of two ideal types of global paternalism: strong and weak. Contemporary global and humanitarian governance is largely the weak variety: force is severely proscribed, interference is relatively restricted, the paternalizer's confidence has epistemic roots, and accountability to local populations remains a noble but rarely practiced goal. I further speculate that a major reason for this difference is the effects of liberalism and rationalization. I use this taxonomy to suggest how two different global efforts to improve the lives of those peoples living in what were perceived to be unstable and illiberal territories — the civilizing missions of the nineteenth century and the peacebuilding operations of the post-Cold War period — exhibited different kinds of paternalism. I conclude by reflecting on the ethics of international paternalism.

AbstractA standard view is that global governance institutions require strong accountability mechanisms to perform effectively and legitimately. Yet these institutions are much better at preaching than practicing accountability. A standard explanation for this gap references interests. For various reasons, institutions and their creators would rather be less than more accountable, and they are quite content to live with the hypocrisy. This article points to an alternative possibility: the public interest. An article of faith is that modern governance should be staffed by relatively autonomous experts who use their specialized knowledge for the greater good; accordingly, they cannot be accountable to those who are affected by their decisions. Too much democracy, therefore, can be a source of dysfunction. Yet expert authority's virtues also can become vices; namely, insulation from those affected by their decisions can also be a source of dysfunction, most closely associated with the "iron cage." Although the possibility that expertise is both a virtue (effectiveness) and a vice (dysfunction) is well known in the literature on domestic governance, it has been neglected in discussions of global governance. Indeed, the dangers of, and dysfunctions associated with the iron cage might be greater in global governance than in domestic governance precisely because of the absence of institutional checks that often are produced by a preexisting social contract between the rulers and the ruled. I probe this possibility in the area of humanitarian governance.