Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-hgkh8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T23:06:32.846Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2008

Richard Price
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. E-mail: rprice@politics.ubc.ca
Get access

Abstract

At what point does one reasonably concede that the “realities” of world politics require compromise from cherished principles or moral ends, and how does one know when an ethical limit has been reached? Since social constructivist analyses of the development of moral norms explain how moral change occurs in world politics, that agenda should provide insightful leverage on the ethical question of “what to do.” This article identifies contributions of a constructivist research agenda for theorizing moral limit and possibility in global political dilemmas.I thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its support of a workshop on Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics, held at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in September 2005. I thank the participants of that workshop for their input into this article; it is part of a collaborative project and their contributions are too numerous to mention by name. Versions of this article were also presented to the University of Minnesota International Relations Colloquium, the University of British Columbia International Relations Colloquium, at the Australian National University, at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting 2006, and at the University of Chicago Program on International Politics, Economics and Security; I am grateful to participants in these venues for their invaluable questions and comments, as well as to the students in my courses upon whom I vetted a number of the ideas in this project. Thanks also to the reviewers and editors of IO for their rigorous comments. Finally, thanks also to Alana Tiemessen and Scott Watson for research assistance along the way.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2008 The IO Foundation and Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adler, Emanuel. 1997. Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics. European Journal of International Relations 3 (3):31963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 2005. Communitarian International Relations: The Epistemic Foundations of International Order. New York: Routledge.
Adler, Emanuel, and Beverly Crawford, eds. 1991. Progress in Postwar International Relations. New York: Columbia University Press.
Anderson, Kenneth. 2000. The Ottawa Convention Banning Landmines, the Role of International Non-Governmental Organizations and the Idea of International Civil Society. European Journal of International Law 11 (1):91120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barkin, J. Samuel. 2003. Realist Constructivism. International Studies Review 5 (3):32542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beitz, Charles. 1999. Political Theory and International Relations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Campbell, David. 1994. The Deterritorialization of Responsibility: Levinas, Derrida, and Ethics After the End of Philosophy. Alternatives 19:45584.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, David. 1998. Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. Rev. ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Checkel, Jeffrey. 1998. The Constructivist Turn in Theory. World Politics 50 (2):32448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Robert. 1986. Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond Theory. In Neorealism and Its Critics, edited by Robert O. Keohane, 20454. New York: Columbia University Press.
Crawford, Neta. 2002. Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Deitelhoff, Nicole, and Harald Müller. 2005. Theoretical Paradise—Empirically Lost? Arguing with Habermas. Review of International Studies 31 (1):16779.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doty, Roxanne Lynn. 1996. Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Eckersley, Robyn. Forthcoming. The Ethics of Critical Theory. In Oxford Handbook of International Relations, edited by Duncan Snidal and Christian Reus-Smit. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Finnemore, Martha. 2008. Paradoxes in Humanitarian Intervention. In Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics, edited by Richard Price. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. International Norm Dynamics and Political Change. International Organization 52 (4):887917.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frost, Mervyn. 1996. Ethics in International Relations: A Constitutive Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
George, Jim, and David Campbell. 1990. Patterns of Dissent and the Celebration of Difference: Critical Social Theory and International Relations. International Studies Quarterly 34 (3):26993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibney, Matthew J. 2004. The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gurowitz, Amy. 2008. Hypocrisy or Political Compromise? Assessing the Morality of U.S. Policy Toward Undocumented Migrants. In Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics, edited by Richard Price. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Translated by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Jochnick, Chris af, and Roger Normand. 1994. The Legitimation of Violence: A Critical History of the Laws of War. Harvard International Law Journal 35 (1):4995.Google Scholar
Kowert, Paul, and Jeffrey Legro. 1996. Norms, Identity, and Their Limits. In The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, edited by Peter J. Katzenstein, 45197. New York: Columbia University Press.
Linklater, Andrew. 1998. The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lynch, Marc. 2008. Lie to Me: Sanctions on Iraq, Moral Argument, and the International Politics of Hypocrisy. In Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics, edited by Richard Price. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Price, Richard. 2003. Transnational Civil Society and Advocacy in World Politics. World Politics 55 (4):579606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reus-Smit, Christian. 1999. The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Risse, Thomas. 2000. ‘Let's Argue!’—Communicative Action in World Politics. International Organization 54 (1):139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risse, Thomas, Stephen Roppe, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1999. The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ruggie, John Gerard. 1998. What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-Utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge. International Organization 52 (4):85585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rumelili, Bahar. 2002. Producing Collective Identity and Interacting with Difference: The Security Implications of Community-Building in Europe and Southeast Asia. Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Rumelili, Bahar. 2008. Interstate Community-Building and the Identity/Difference Predicament. In Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics, edited by Richard Price. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shapcott, Richard. 2001. Justice, Community and Dialogue in International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sikkink, Kathryn. 2008. The Role of Consequences, Comparison, and Counterfactuals in Constructivist Ethical Thought. In Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics, edited by Richard Price. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Snyder, Jack. 2003. ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’: Evaluating Empirical Aspects of Normative Research. In Progress in Theory: Appraising the Field, edited by Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman, 34977. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Snyder, Jack, and Leslie Vinjamuri. 2003. Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice. International Security 28 (3):544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tetlock, Philip E., and Aaron Belkin, eds. 1996. Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Thomas, Daniel C. 2001. The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Towns, Ann. 2008. Inevitable Inequalities? Approaching Gender Equality and Multiculturalism. In Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics, edited by Richard Price. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wheeler, Nicholas J. 2000. Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.