Molly Cochran

Human Rights and Civil Rights: The Advocacy and Activism of African-American Women Writers

Royster and Cochran use the words of African American women writers to enrich our view of intersections between American civil rights discourses and the discourses of human rights as a global concept. They focus on both individual and collective activities of the women and contextualize this activism within the larger framework of the rise of individual human rights language in twentieth century international relations.

Talking with feminists about what we can know in IR

International relations may be arriving at a time when it can recognise the value of taking the feminist contribution to the discipline seriously and on its own terms. This essay begins by outlining the nature of the ‘epistemological impasse’ that has tended to produce an ‘external character’ to the criteria used by feminists when evaluating the mainstream of IR and the criteria the mainstream has used to judge feminists. Tensions within the mainstream, particularly the failure to predict the end of the Cold War, provides an opening for engagement with alternative approaches. The final section elucidates what is regarded as the most significant element of feminist IR as a social science: its own struggle with the ‘quest for certainty’, and its efforts to stimulate and work with epistemological doubt.

Conceptualizing the Power of Transnational Agents: Pragmatism and International Public Spheres

What power is available to non-governmental organizations and social movements to influence international decision-making? Not only have formal international organizations proliferated in the last century, but international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and social movements have as well. Theories and approaches exist to explain the origins of international organizations and their operation in world politics, but the origin and role of INGOs and social movements is undertheorized by comparison. Can we make a claim about INGOs similar to that Ian Hurd makes about international institutions: that international politics is “carried out using tools derived from or controlled” by these actors? (2005, p. 496) This chapter argues that the existing literature on INGOs needs both bridging and augmentation to answer this question. Openness to an alternative idea of international relations as a social science will be required as will a conceptual tool that can demonstrate the unique nature of power that these non-state actors wield in world politics. To these ends, an idea of pragmatist social science and the concept of international public spheres (IPSs) will be introduced and developed. It is difficult to trace these transnational actors and their effects in world politics. Their influence is constructed through diffuse networks of intersocial relations within and between states. Also, their ‘interests’ are not defined by the agendas of states or by bureaucratic culture so much as by a principled concern with the welfare of individuals and associated groups who are themselves seldom heard or seen in international decision-making. Neither the subjects – individuals – nor the normative nature of their interests is easy to chart within realist, neo-realist, liberal or neo-liberal approaches. However, two literatures, with little, if any, regular contact or exchange, are engaged in this kind of activity: constructivism and normative theory. My central argument is that those who study INGOs and social movements must recognize that international norms, the foundation from which these actors are able to leverage power, are at once facts and values that require sociological as well as moral-philosophical investigation. However, neither constructivism nor normative theory has a demonstrated ability to provide this breadth of analysis. Can we bring these literatures together to gain a fuller picture of the power available to these actors? Are they compatible? I will argue that while they are not incompatible, their

Progressivism and US Foreign Policy between the World Wars

In Progressivism and US Foreign Policy Between the World Wars, Molly Cochran and Cornelia Navari present a valuable collection of essays that address the lasting impact of the Progressive Movement upon the foreign relations of the United States during the inter-war period and beyond. Although several essays draw upon the narrative and events of the Progressive Era itself, the volume primarily seeks to demonstrate that Progressivism not only shaped the deliberations over the United States’ decision to enter the First World War but established the core facets of future foreign policy debates. In their introductory chapter, the editors characterise 20th-century debates over United States foreign relations as a combination of three ‘fundamental antinomies’, namely: unilateralism versus multilateralism, regionalism versus globalism, and military engagement versus military restraint. Whilst these antimonies manifested at the turn of the century, the editors posit that it was between the two world wars and against the backdrop of the Progressive Movement that they became embedded within policy-making discourses. Subsequent debates, including the response to fascism and the establishment of global stability after the Second World War, ‘took off from the progressive program and were presented either as amendments to it or its necessary overthrow’ (pp. 1-2).

Hedley Bull and John Dewey: Two Middle Grounders and a Pragmatic Approach to the Nuclear Dilemma

Arguably, the English School is distinctive among approaches to International Relations (IR) theory for its formulation of a middle-ground ethics (Cochran 2009). While its philosophy of IR is not sorted tidily, the School has done important work mapping out the difficult terrain of ethics as interest and how one might balance ideas of the good, and individual morality, with the actualities of real-world politics and the practical desire to maintain an international society for the good of states and their peoples. To the extent that such concerns are laid out with any academic clarity has much to do with the English School and political philosophers concerned with international ethics would do well to engage with it.