Introduction: Intervention and State Sovereignty in the International System

Abstract

This volume is about the discourse and practice of intervention and nonintervention in international relations and the ethical justifications and interpretations of such behaviour. The essays that follow are the result of a deliberate effort at bringing together the analytical and interpretive skills of theorists of politics and international relations. What follows is a conversation in international theory that focuses on the problems associated with intervention. The basis for such a conversation between scholars from ostensibly discrete subject areas has been identified by Michael Donelan:

if the starting point of the study of international relations is a world of separate states, a political theorist is right not to be interested in the subject.... If, on the other hand, we do not start with this assumption of separate states, there is all the international theory in the world to be done. For there is now a primordial community of [hu]mankind; separate states are but an arrangement of it.¹

In the course of this dialogue, four major areas of interest emerged as the focal points of this volume. First, our understanding of the nature of the state and state system, the validity of the idea of state sovereignty and the norm of non-intervention are questioned from a variety of perspectives. Second, the applicability of rights arguments is explored, particularly with respect to the possibility of generating justifications for intervention. Third, realist, liberal, critical theory and postmodern conceptions of power, identity and agency in international society are considered. Finally, the universal and particularistic justifications for intervention and non-intervention — both those offered by existing practice and discourse and those which might possibly be generated — are a constant theme in the contributions.