Suchergebnisse

The digital pdf of Chapter 16 is available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This collection brings together leading figures in the study of international relations to explore praxis as a perspective on international politics and law. With its focus on competent judgments, the praxis approach holds the promise to overcome the divide between knowing and acting that marks positivist international relations theory.
Building on the transdisciplinary work of Friedrich Kratochwil, this book reveals the scope, limits and blind spots of praxis theorizing.

Friedrich Kratochwil's book explores the role of law in the international arena and the key discourses surrounding it. It explains the increased importance of law for politics, from law-fare to the judicialization of politics, to human rights, and why traditional expectations of progress through law have led to disappointment. Providing an overview of the debates in legal theory, philosophy, international law and international organizations, Kratochwil reflects on the need to break down disciplinary boundaries and address important issues in both international relations and international law, including deformalization, fragmentation, the role of legal pluralism, the emergence of autonomous autopoietic systems and the appearance of non-territorial forms of empire. He argues that the pretensions of a positivist theory in social science and of positivism in law are inappropriate for understanding practical problems and formulates an approach for the analysis of praxis based on constructivism and pragmatism

This article reviews Wiliam Bains book and places it in the wider discussion of seciularization vs. secularism taking place in the social science. in general.

AbstractIn putting Wendt's recent Quantum Mind in a larger context both of his own disciplinary engagement and some larger philosophical issues, I try to avoid a hasty dismissal, since the book seems at first blush to offer a 'theory of everything', or an uncritical acceptance, since the desire to know what makes the world hand together has always been part of the knowledge game. As to the first problem, I find it rather odd that Wendt spends little time in justifying his particular take on quantum theory, which is far from uncontroversial. Second, I attempt to understand why he has given up on the profession trying now to solve puzzles in the field by claiming that 'quantum consciousness theory' provides us with an 'ace up the sleeve'. But the fact that wave collapse plays havoc with our traditional notions of cause, location, and mass, does not without further ado entitle us to claim that all or most problems in social science dealing with issues of validity and meaning of our concepts (rather than 'truth/falsity', as decided by making existential assertions) have been solved by quantum mechanics.

AbstractThe comment expands the logic of the critique of the 'judicialisation' in the global era and suggests that arguments in support of this development often engage in confirmatory research which weighs the 'evidence' in light of our wishes and political projects. The talk about 'learning' and 'dialogue' cannot sustain this form of judicial paternalism (at best) as an instantiation of emancipation or celebrate it as a victory for law by dispensing with politics. It is just a politics by other means. But in this politics some traditional remedies for insuring the accountability of the 'rulers' (or rule-handlers) have been weakened. The comment adds several critical observations about the practices of discourse, law, politics and judging which cannot camouflage the problem of power and its legitimisation. Thus we had better consider also a political alternative which relies on a variety of different institutional solutions where courts have to compete with other institutions without fixed hierarchies and where different sources of legitimacy stand in tension with each other.

Published online: 15 April 2021 ; The comment expands the logic of the critique of the 'judicialisation' in the global era and suggests that arguments in support of this development often engage in confirmatory research which weighs the 'evidence' in light of our wishes and political projects. The talk about 'learning' and 'dialogue' cannot sustain this form of judicial paternalism (at best) as an instantiation of emancipation or celebrate it as a victory for law by dispensing with politics. It is just a politics by other means. But in this politics some traditional remedies for insuring the accountability of the 'rulers' (or rule-handlers) have been weakened. The comment adds several critical observations about the practices of discourse, law, politics and judging which cannot camouflage the problem of power and its legitimisation. Thus we had better consider also a political alternative which relies on a variety of different institutional solutions where courts have to compete with other institutions without fixed hierarchies and where different sources of legitimacy stand in tension with each other. ; This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - CUP Transformative Agreement (2020-2022)

AbstractThe problem of 'distance and engagement' highlights the Weberian paradox that objectivity in the social sciences cannot be based on demonstrative proof; it has to take into account values as the constituents of our 'interests'. Values should be explicit even if this 'perspectivity' cannot satisfy the criteria of necessity and universality. Allegedly, my skeptical approach to 'social theory' leaves researchers with insufficient 'hope', but one also learns from understanding that something is impossible or conceptually flawed. Moreover, deeper issues of analyzing social action, with existential and moral dimensions, should be considered. These involve our cognitive capacities, experiences, and emotions.

In this response, I answer some of the critiques that were raised in the Forum. In particular, this response clarifies the role of practices and pragmatism, the limits of inter-disciplinarity, and the authority and assumed foundations of law in a post-foundational time. Even though this contribution does not attempt to solve these issues once and for all, it provides avenues for future engagement.

This paper examines the changing meaning of 'territoriality' by focusing on the problem of representation. It examines the two-dimensional homogenous space as it has been increasingly used in 'mapping' the international system as an area of mutually exclusive zones of jurisdiction. This way of mapping has reinforced the notion of 'sovereignty' as exclusion, despite the growth of competing jurisdictional claims based on a variety of principles, which the emergence of private international law attempted to mediate during the heydays of the nation state. It also placed international regimes and international organizations 'above' the state where they became 'invisible', thereby again reinforcing the territorial conception of law and politics. The new systems theory of Niklas Luhmann and Gunther Teubner claims to provide a better representation of contemporary social and political reality, as it no longer uses the part/whole distinction as its main conceptual tool and is thus more open to 'legal pluralism' both domestically and internationally. Nevertheless, the conceptualization of autonomous functional systems does not do justice to the special role that law plays in constituting and transforming these supposedly autonomous 'auto-poietic' systems. For that reason the new systems theory fails to address also problems of non-territorial 'imperial' formations as evidenced by the political project of 'governance' and 'best practices', universal human rights, and extra-territorial regulation as exemplified e.g. by the European REACH initiative and the EU's neighborhood policy.