Luke Glanville

The antecedents of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’

Notions of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ and ‘the responsibility to protect’ are often fra-med as radical departures from the ‘traditional’ conception of sovereignty. Many assume that sovereignty has, until recently, entailed only rights and not responsibilities. In con-trast, this article argues that sovereign authority has been understood to involve varied and evolving responsibilities since it was first articulated in the 16th and 17th centuries. It then traces the historical emergence of the tension between the right of sovereign states to be self-governing and free from outside interference and their responsibility to secure the safety of their populations. It cautions against a simplified story of ‘traditional’ sovereignty which reifies supposedly concrete and ahistorical rights of sovereigns while casting sovereign responsibilities as a morally abstract and late-arriving challenge.

The international community's responsibility to protect

The concept of the responsibility to protect (R2P) holds that not only do sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their populations, but so too does the international community. The international community is said to be responsible for encouraging and assisting states to protect and also for taking collective action to enforce the protection of populations in instances where states fail to carry out their obligations. This idea that the international community itself bears not merely a right but a responsibility to protect, through military intervention if necessary, is perhaps the most novel aspect of the R2P concept, and it would seem to have extraordinary implications. Yet it remains largely under-examined. In this article, I consider how the notion that the international community bears a responsibility to protect might be fruitfully understood and conceptualised. After briefly outlining from where this idea has emerged, I consider two interrelated questions: What kind of responsibility is it – moral, legal, or political, or some combination of the three? And who in particular bears the responsibility – the international community broadly speaking, particular international institutions such as the Security Council, regional organisations, or individual states?

Retaining the Mandate of Heaven: Sovereign Accountability in Ancient China

Ideas of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ and ‘the responsibility to protect’ have become increasingly accepted by the society of states in recent years. The origins of these ideas are appropriately traced to earlier European concepts of popular resistance and humanitarian intervention. However, Europe is not unique in possessing a heritage of sovereign accountability. Almost two thousand years before sovereignty emerged in early modern Europe, philosophers in Ancient China developed remarkably similar concepts about the responsibilities of legitimate rule. Confucian scholars, in particular Mencius, argued that rulers were established by Heaven for the benefit of the people. The people, in turn, could rightfully hold their rulers to account. They had the right to banish a bad ruler and even to kill a tyrant. Moreover, a benevolent ruler was justified in waging ‘punitive war’ against the tyrannical ruler of another state, in order to punish him and to comfort the people. Recognition of this non-European heritage of sovereign accountability opens up new possibilities for dialogue between those who would promote present-day concepts of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ and those who perceive these concepts as merely Western and alien principles grounded in Western and alien values.

Is “genocide” still a powerful word?

“Genocide” was once perceived to be a powerful word. In 1994, the Clinton administration feared using the word to describe violence in Rwanda. Officials believed that the use of this label would activate unwanted legal obligations and increase political expectations for an American response to the crisis. In contrast, ten years later the Bush administration willingly used the term to describe atrocities being committed in Darfur, Sudan. This administration denied that a determination of “genocide” activated new legal obligations, and also found that the use of the word did not lead to substantially increased political pressures to act. This article argues that the word “genocide” has lost some of its ideational power in the sense that it has been detached from legal and political demands “to prevent and to punish” it. The article suggests some reasons for this change and also considers the extent to which such a change actually matters.

Darfur and the responsibilities of sovereignty

An examination of the international communitys response to the crisis in Darfur between 2004 and 2007 reveals two contradictory developments regarding the responsibilities of sovereign statehood. On one hand, the vast majority of states within the Security Council readily endorse the notion that sovereignty entails a responsibility to protect populations. On the other hand, a few states, including two of the permanent-five, continue to insist that the international community cannot legitimately intervene in the affairs of a functioning state, even when the sovereign has manifestly failed to carry out its responsibilities, unless sovereign consent is granted. While important developments have been made in holding sovereigns to account over the last two decades, this continued assertion of the necessity of consent strikes at the heart of the notion that sovereignty entails responsibility. If consent is required before the international community can act, the notion that the sovereign state is responsible and accountable not only to its own people but also to the international community loses much of its meaning. The enjoyment of sovereign rights can only be understood to be truly conditional upon the observance of sovereign responsibilities if the international community can legitimately breach these rights in the absence of sovereign consent.

Does R2P matter? Interpreting the impact of a norm

There is a curious tendency among some scholars and commentators to denigrate the impact of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Drawing on constructivist scholarship that illuminates both the regulative and constitutive ways that norms matter and that explains how the effects of norms can be interpreted, I argue that the R2P norm has a real and observable impact on the behaviour of states. I demonstrate that this impact can be detected not only in instances of compliance, such as in Libya, but perhaps even more clearly in examples of violation, such as in Syria.

The benefits of norm ambiguity: constructing the responsibility to protect across Rwanda, Iraq and Libya

Over the past two decades, International Relations scholars have highlighted the importance of efforts by hegemonic states and norm entrepreneurs to foster norm clarity when promoting the establishment, institutionalisation, and internalisation of norms. Yet, such analyses obscure the benefits of norm ambiguity in facilitating consensus, flexibility, and compliance. The authors offer a framework positing that hegemonic and institutional ambiguity can help create consensus and facilitate incremental reform necessary to sustain that consensus. Empirically, the authors then show how such ambiguity has facilitated the development of the responsibility to protect norm, tracing Rwanda-era debates over humanitarian intervention, Iraq-era backlash over interventionist abuses, and Libya-era norm implementation.

Norms, interests and humanitarian intervention

A number of constructivist and English school scholars have investigated the extent to which humanitarian intervention is allowed and legitimized by international society. In other words, they have examined the nature and strength of a norm permitting humanitarian intervention. It is the contention of this article that another norm of humanitarian intervention—parallel but discrete—has been neglected. It is argued that ideas and beliefs shared by some members of international society not only permit intervention but prescribe it in certain circumstances and this has been largely ignored in the literature. By focusing on questions of when, where and why humanitarian action is permitted, scholars have neglected to develop theoretical explanations for the significant inconsistencies in humanitarian action that can be observed in the world. States do not intervene to prevent human rights violations simply because they are allowed to. By considering when and where humanitarian action is prescribed, and the interplay of this prescription with the self-interests of states, we can begin to understand why states respond to some grave violations of human rights and not others. The article concludes with an analysis of the power of the prescriptive norm to explain the increased instances of humanitarian intervention since the end of the Cold War and an assessment of the present state of the norm.

On the meaning of 'responsibility' in the 'responsibility to protect'

The ‘responsibility to protect’ (RtoP) concept has emerged rapidly over the last decade to take a prominent place in international discussions about the protection of populations from mass atrocities. However, little attention has been paid to the meaning of the term ‘responsibility’ in RtoP. ‘Responsibility’ is a slippery term that can perform a range of functions. This article suggests that, in order to understand the meaning of ‘responsibility’ in RtoP, we need to examine three things: what actors are responsible for; who actors are responsible to; and the ways in which irresponsible actors may be held to account. Such examination enables us to comprehend better some of the key debates and dilemmas with which the RtoP principle continues to be confronted.

Christianity and the Responsibility to Protect

The ‘responsibility to protect’ (RtoP) concept has rapidly taken a prominent place in international debates about how to ensure the protection of civilians from mass atrocities in places such as Libya, the Congo, and Darfur. This article argues that RtoP has deep roots both in Scripture and also in Christian political thought of the last two millennia. In particular, it observes that, whereas twentieth-century arguments for ‘humanitarian intervention’ framed the protection of strangers and foreigners as a discretionary right, RtoP echoes Ambrose of Milan and others in framing such protection as a duty. It further suggests that the emphasis of RtoP on the responsibility to work with states and to help build their capacity to protect their civilians, rather than waiting until military intervention is necessary, holds the promise of advancing the Christian principle of assisting the vulnerable while, at least in some instances, avoiding thorny and divisive debates about the justice of war.