US Human Rights Conduct and International Legitimacy


Book Description

Was the Bush administration was successful in legitimating its preferences with habeas corpus, torture, and extraordinary rendition? As American transforms in the post-Bush era, scholars have begun to assess the post-9/11 period in American foreign and domestic policy, asking difficult questions regarding torture and human rights.




Legitimacy in International Society


Book Description

The word 'legitimacy' is seldom far from the lips of practitioners of international affairs. The legitimacy of recent events - such as the wars in Kosovo and Iraq, the post-September 11 war on terror, and instances of humanitarian intervention - have been endlessly debated by publics around the globe. And yet the academic discipline of IR has largely neglected this concept. This book encourages us to take legitimacy seriously, both as a facet of international behaviour withpractical consequences, and as a theoretical concept necessary for understanding that behaviour. It offers a comprehensive historical and theoretical account of international legitimacy. It argues that the development of principles of legitimacy lie at the heart of what is meant by an international society,and in so doing fills a notable void in English school accounts of the subject.Part I provides a historical survey of the evolution of the practice of legitimacy from the 'age of discovery' at the end of the 15th century. It explores how issues of legitimacy were interwoven with the great peace settlements of modern history - in 1648, 1713, 1815, 1919, and 1945. It offers a revisionist reading of the significance of Westphalia - not as the origin of a modern doctrine of sovereignty - but as a seminal stage in the development of an international society based on sharedprinciples of legitimacy. All of the historical chapters demonstrate how the twin dimensions of legitimacy - principles of rightful membership and of rightful conduct - have been thought about and developed in differing contexts.Part II then provides a trenchant analysis of legitimacy in contemporary international society. Deploying a number of short case studies, drawn mainly from the wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and the Kosovo war of 1999, it sets out a theoretical account of the relationship between legitimacy, on the one hand, and consensus, norms, and equilibrium, on the other.This is the most sustained attempt to make sense of legitimacy in an IR context. Its conclusion, in the end, is that legitimacy matters, but in a complex way. Legitimacy is not to be discovered simply by straightforward application of other norms, such as legality and morality. Instead, legitimacy is an inherently political condition. What determines its attainability or not is as much the general political condition of international society at any one moment, as the conformity of its specificactions to set normative principles.




US Human Rights Conduct and International Legitimacy


Book Description

Was the Bush administration was successful in legitimating its preferences with habeas corpus, torture, and extraordinary rendition? As American transforms in the post-Bush era, scholars have begun to assess the post-9/11 period in American foreign and domestic policy, asking difficult questions regarding torture and human rights.




The Legitimacy of American Human Rights Conduct in the War on Terror


Book Description

This thesis examines the effect American human rights conduct during the war on terror hadon three international human rights norms: torture, habeas corpus, and rendition for thepurposes of torture. It does so by analysing a large-n sample of public legitimation strategiesof both the United States and other members of international society during theadministration of President George W. Bush. The thesis asks three questions: First, has thedefection of the United States from these human rights norms led to a?norm cascade? thatdelegitimized the norms? Second, did the United States run an exemptionalist argument foreach, and was this successful? Third, did the material preponderance of the United Stateshelp it to legitimate its preferences in international society? The thesis argues that the UnitedStates was unsuccessful at overtly legitimating its preferences in the habeas corpus casestudy. In the torture case study the United States had some early success using a strategy ofnorm justification, but most international legitimation strategies were subsequentlyabandoned. It was relatively successful in the rendition case study where it pursued very fewlegitimation strategies, relying instead on secrecy and denial. Furthermore, there is no overtevidence that the United States either attempted or was successful in an exemptionaliststrategy, though some of the conduct by the United States and other members of internationalsociety might imply that a covert strategy was in effect. Lastly, though the materialpreponderance of the United States allowed it to absorb the costs associated with itsillegitimate behaviour, there was no evidence that it was useful in transforming internationalhuman rights norms.




International Legitimacy and World Society


Book Description

This is a study of the theory and history of international norms. How does international society come to adopt certain norms in particular? This book shows how ideas of international legitimacy have evolved, and makes us rethink the nature of international society.




Human Rights, Legitimacy, and the Use of Force


Book Description

The thirteen essays by Allen Buchanan collected here are arranged in such a way as to make evident their thematic interconnections: the important and hitherto unappreciated relationships among the nature and grounding of human rights, the legitimacy of international institutions, and the justification for using military force across borders. Each of these three topics has spawned a significant literature, but unfortunately has been treated in isolation. In this volume Buchanan makes the case for a holistic, systematic approach, and in so doing constitutes a major contribution at the intersection of International Political Philosophy and International Legal Theory. A major theme of Buchanan's book is the need to combine the philosopher's normative analysis with the political scientist's focus on institutions. Instead of thinking first about norms and then about institutions, if at all, only as mechanisms for implementing norms, it is necessary to consider alternative "packages" consisting of norms and institutions. Whether a particular norm is acceptable can depend upon the institutional context in which it is supposed to be instantiated, and whether a particular institutional arrangement is acceptable can depend on whether it realizes norms of legitimacy or of justice, or at least has a tendency to foster the conditions under which such norms can be realized. In order to evaluate institutions it is necessary not only to consider how well they implement norms that are now considered valid but also their capacity for fostering the epistemic conditions under which norms can be contested, revised, and improved.




Legitimacy in International Relations and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia


Book Description

This book develops a conceptual model of legitimacy as a value-judgement in international relations in contrast to Weberian and legal approaches. The model is based on the interaction of the states-systemic value of order with a liberal ideal of the state and a free-market, liberal international economy. Whilst formulated as a principally Western model, the analysis of the rise and fall of Yugoslavia and the international response points towards a wider applicability as well as confirming the value of the concept as an analytical tool.




Human Rights and Peace


Book Description

As our world becomes a truly global village through instantaneous media transmission of events, the relationship between human rights and peaceful international relations receives more and more attention. David P. Forsythe's book analyzes and discusses the dimensions of cover and overt human rights violations and how they militate against the establishment of democracies in the Third World.øPart One describes the paradox of internationally recognized human rights standards and international violence. Forsythe draws a crucial comparison between the lack of overt force between industrialized democracies and the use of covert force by certain democracies against some elected Third World governments.øPart Two deals with human rights and intrastate violence. A creative framework of analysis, centering on the concept of political legitimacy, is illustrated by case studies of Sri Lanka, Liberia, and Romania. Forsythe shows that, in different ways and in different situations, the violation of human rights standards can be correlated with political revolution.øHuman Rights and Peace evaluates critically the argument that human rights in general and democracy in particular contribute to peaceful international relations.




The Legitimacy of International Human Rights Regimes


Book Description

The past sixty years have seen an expansion of international human rights conventions and supervisory organs, not least in Europe. While these international legal instruments have enlarged their mandate, they have also faced opposition and criticism from political actors at the state level, even in well-functioning democracies. Against the backdrop of such contestations, this book brings together prominent scholars in law, political philosophy and international relations in order to address the legitimacy of international human rights regimes as a theoretically challenging and politically salient case of international authority. It provides a unique and thorough overview of the legitimacy problems involved in the global governance of human rights.




Legitimacy and Criminal Justice


Book Description

The police and the courts depend on the cooperation of communities to keep order. But large numbers of urban poor distrust law enforcement officials. Legitimacy and Criminal Justice explores the reasons that legal authorities are or are not seen as legitimate and trustworthy by many citizens. Legitimacy and Criminal Justice is the first study of the perceived legitimacy of legal institutions outside the U.S. The authors investigate relations between courts, the police, and communities in the U.K., Western Europe, South Africa, Slovenia, South America, and Mexico, demonstrating the importance of social context in shaping those relations. Gorazd Meško and Goran Klemencic examine Slovenia's adoption of Western-style "community policing" during its transition to democracy. In the context of Slovenia's recent Communist past—when "community policing" entailed omnipresent social and political control—citizens regarded these efforts with great suspicion, and offered little cooperation to the police. When states fail to control crime, informal methods of law can gain legitimacy. Jennifer Johnson discusses an extra-legal policing system carried out by farmers in Guerrero, Mexico—complete with sentencing guidelines and initiatives to reintegrate offenders into the community. Feeling that federal authorities were not prosecuting the crimes that plagued their province, the citizens of Guerrero strongly supported this extra-legal arrangement, and engaged in massive protests when the central government tried to suppress it. Several of the authors examine how the perceived legitimacy of the police and courts varies across social groups. Graziella Da Silva, Ignacio Cano, and Hugo Frühling show that attitudes toward the police vary greatly across social classes in harshly unequal societies like Brazil and Chile. And many of the authors find that ethnic minorities often display greater distrust toward the police, and perceive themselves to be targets of police discrimination. Indeed, Hans-Jöerg Albrecht finds evidence of bias in arrests of the foreign born in Germany, which has fueled discontent among Berlin's Turkish youth. Sophie Body-Gendrot points out that mutual hostility between police and minority communities can lead to large-scale violence, as the Parisian banlieu riots underscored. The case studies presented in this important new book show that fostering cooperation between law enforcement and communities requires the former to pay careful attention to the needs and attitudes of the latter. Forging a new field of comparative research, Legitimacy and Criminal Justice brings to light many of the reasons the law's representatives succeed—or fail—in winning citizens' hearts and minds. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust