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AbstractThis article defends the normative status of the right intentions requirement in just war theory. Before we turn to many ethical questions about a conflict – whether there was just cause or whether a war was fought well – we often begin by asking whether the war was rightly intended. Particularly in the contemporary world, where questions of humanitarian intentions and their place in international law is an important political issue, clarifying what we mean by right intentions and showing why they matter is politically very important. Unfortunately, despite the importance of right intentions in the history of political thought, recent discussions give the concept mixed attention, leaving it obscure and difficult to apply. The first section reviews four traditional accounts, showing their underlying (and important) differences and respective weaknesses. The second section of the article argues that these models fail because they are rooted in private instead of public reason. A model of right intentions as public intentions is described and justified, where an intention is only right when the motives that underlie it can be endorsed by the group it is supposed to aid, and the opportunities it provides that group are endorsable by the intervener.

International Relations scholars tend to focus their attention on agents with institutional sources of power, such as presidents. Yet, decades of scholarship in other fields has shown that ordinary individuals–traders, missionaries, and soldiers–often have the ability to shape international cooperation and conflict. Under what conditions do individuals distant from institutional power shape international politics? I argue that intermediaries — key figures who broker deals between parties — are crucial for cooperation when information is low and contact between the parties is sparse. To demonstrate the argument that intermediaries matter, I investigate alliances between the US and its non-state allies — non-state political communities abroad and in North America — between 1776 and 1945. In each case, there are intermediaries who are uniquely suited to broker cooperation by identifying partners for cooperation, explaining others' interests, providing reassurances, and managing identity issues. These intermediaries are often those who we tend to think of as unimportant political agents. However, because they fill key information roles, they have unexpected sources of political power. Using four case studies, I test to see whether intermediaries' performance of these roles matters in a diverse range of cases.

There is growing debate concerning the nature of causation in political science. In comparative politics and International Relations, scholars are divided by probabilistic, mechanistic, and conditions-based definitions of 'cause.' Moreover, post-positivist approaches to political science increasingly eschew causal analysis altogether. This article argues that the source of these divisions is methodological, not philosophical. Using the example of the Cuban missile crisis, a contrastive, counterfactual approach to causation, where a cause exists when the occurrence of one event rather than another leads to one event rather than another, meets the intuitions and the practice of political scientists engaged in different methodological approaches with different purposes. A contrastive, counterfactual account meets the intuitions of scholars engaged in quantitative and qualitative methods, and captures many of the intuitions guiding debates within qualitative and interpretive methods. By developing a common, unified approach to a key philosophical division, it is easier to identify the differences that matter. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Ltd. & ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research.]

States rarely declare war. For many international law scholars, just war theorists, and moral philosophers, the declaration of war is a moribund tradition that serves no important purpose. When declarations of war are defended, the argument is situated in the war powers debate about executive authority. In contrast, I argue that declaring war – making conditional and reasoned moral demands – continues to be an important requirement for just wars. States should declare war because states should make explicit (formal) moral demands before fighting. Declaring war is procedurally important because it ensures that a state makes a formal moral case, showing respect to innocent third parties whose interests are affected and providing targets the right to confront their accusers and hear evidence. While not a panacea, requiring declarations is a significant improvement on thead hocpolitics of wartime justification that plagues wars such as Iraq. Further, declarations, as ultimatums, are the only reasonable interpretation of the 'last resort' requirement in just war theory. A final section extends the argument to contemporary wars against non-state actors, showing that a politics of recognition underlying declarations of war may prove especially fruitful today.

There is growing debate concerning the nature of causation in political science. In comparative politics and International Relations, scholars are divided by probabilistic, mechanistic, and conditions-based definitions of 'cause.' Moreover, post-positivist approaches to political science increasingly eschew causal analysis altogether. This article argues that the source of these divisions is methodological, not philosophical. Using the example of the Cuban missile crisis, a contrastive, counterfactual approach to causation, where a cause exists when the occurrence of one event rather than another leads to one event rather than another, meets the intuitions and the practice of political scientists engaged in different methodological approaches with different purposes. A contrastive, counterfactual account meets the intuitions of scholars engaged in quantitative and qualitative methods, and captures many of the intuitions guiding debates within qualitative and interpretive methods. By developing a common, unified approach to a key philosophical division, it is easier to identify the differences that matter.