Background: In a comprehensive and highly respected study—the Human Security Report, 2005, “War and Peace in the 21st Century”—it is shown that war now occurs less frequently and with far less deadly consequences than as recently as thirty years ago. (The Report “Overview” is posted on the course Moodle.) More recently, the Human Security Report Project released a follow-up study, its 2009-10 Report, which was published in 2011 by Oxford University Press under the title, “The Causes of Peace and the Shrinking Costs of War.” Part II of that Report, “Shrinking Costs of War,” shows that, paradoxically, mortality rates are declining in wartime. (Part II is posted on the course Moodle; you should read Chapter 6, “The Paradox of Mortality Rates that Decline in Wartime,” and Chapter 9, “Armed Conflict and Health Policy.”) In that report, additional evidence is presented that, in terms of loss of human life, war is now less costly than it has been throughout modern history.
According to the researchers of the Human Security Report Project, there are several reasons why war is becoming both less frequent and less deadly. (When you read the Reports that are posted on the Moodle, you will see the reasons that they identify.) Among the factors that they point to are various institutions and practices of global governance, including those directed to the provision of health and other humanitarian services to people in need. They highlight especially the WHO, UNICEF, World Bank, the UNSC and UN peacekeeping missions, the ICC, and some non-governmental organizations, such as MSF. If that conclusion were correct, most analysts would credit such global governance efforts with fostering progress in international relations.
A theoretical issue that has attracted the attention of international cooperation theorists and liberal theorists of international relations is how to analyze whether, why, and how global governance institutions have legitimacy (Allan Buchanan and Robert O. Keohane, “The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions,” Ethics & International Affairs, 20(4), December 2006, pp. 405-437; posted on Moodle.) One question at the heart of the analysis of the legitimacy of global governance institutions is what the relationship is, if any, between fostering progress in international relations and global governance legitimacy.
Assignment: Your assignment is to provide a systematic theoretic analysis of whether, why, and how the decreased incidence and lethality of war, as described by the Human Security Report Project, is related to the legitimacy of institutions and practices of global governance. Your analysis is to be written from the perspectives of international cooperation theory (both institutionalism and constructivism) and liberal international relations theory. In particular, you are to analyze how progress in reducing the occurrence of war and the costs of war in terms of loss of human life would be understood by cooperation theorists and liberal theorists in relation to the legitimacy of global governance institutions and practices. Is that decrease in the incidence and human destructiveness of war an effect of the legitimacy of such global governance institutions and practices as the UNSC, UN peace-keeping, the WHO, UNICEF, and humanitarian relief by NGOs like MSF? Or does that war-reduction contribute to the legitimacy of those institutions and practices of governance? Or, is it neither cause nor effect? Or, is it both cause and effect? Your analysis is to reveal your ability to bring international relations theory (cooperation theory and liberal theory) to bear systematically on an important aspect of contemporary international politics, informed by assigned readings and supplementary materials posted on the Moodle for the class; that issue concerns the relationship, if any, between progress in international relations and the legitimacy of global governance. Specifically, from theoretic perspectives of cooperation theory (institutionalism and constructivism) and liberal theory, write an analytical essay in which you explain whether, why, and how reduced incidence and lethality of war reflects and/or contributes to the legitimacy of global governance institutions. For this essay, demonstrate that you think as an international cooperation theorist and as a liberal international relations theorist, and that, in doing so, you are informed by the theorists we read—Keohane, Martin, Finnemore and Sikkink, Abbott and Snidal, Keohane and Victor, Schumpeter, Slaughter, Moravcsik, and Buchanan and Keohane.
In preparation for this assignment, and before you begin writing, you should reflect carefully on the following:
As an international cooperation and/or liberal theorist, what assumptions do you make about the possibility and conditions of progress in international relations?
How is progress related to the institutions and practices of global governance? Do the institutions and practices of governance foster progress; does progress foster the institutions and practices of global governance?
What are the bases of international legitimacy according to the perspectives of cooperation and liberal theorists? And what are the consequences of international legitimacy in those perspectives?
Specifically, how are progress and legitimacy connected in the views of cooperation theorists and liberal theorists of international relations?