Tanja Aalberts

Playing the game of sovereign states: Charles Manning's constructivism avant-la-lettre

This article analyses C.A.W. Manning’s The Nature of International Society (NIS) by exploring the constructivist insights avant-la-lettre displayed in this not so prominent opus on international society. The article’s objective is twofold. First, to re-establish Manning’s argument, which has been distorted by its successors. That is to say, whereas often identified as a source of inspiration by subsequent generations of English School academics, the British mainstream at the same time appears to have missed out on Manning’s more metatheoretical, socio-linguistic insights. By exploring his message about the link between knowledge, language, meaning and reality, this article secondly addresses the added value of Manning’s work in terms of his analysis of the metaphor of sovereignty games. It is argued that, particularly in the analysis of the constitutive role of language, NIS provides useful insights for the reconvention project of the English School.

Mobilising Uncertainty and the Making of Responsible Sovereigns

The past few decades have witnessed a fundamental change in the perception of threats to the security of states and individuals. Issues of security are no longer primarily framed in terms of threats posed by an identifiable, conventional enemy. Instead, post-Cold War security policies have emphasised the global and radically uncertain nature of threats such as environmental degradation, terrorism and financial risks. What are the implications of this transformation for one of the constitutive principles of international society: state sovereignty? Existing literature has provided two possible answers to this question. The first focuses on the alleged need for states to seek international cooperation and to relax claims of national sovereignty. In Ulrich Becks terminology, this would amount to a transformation of sovereign states into cosmopolitan states. The second takes the opposite position: in response to uncertain threats states rely on their sovereign prerogatives to take exceptional measures and set aside provisions of positive law. In Becks terminology, this would amount to the creation of a surveillance state. None of these two answers, however, does justice to the complex relation between sovereignty, power and (international) law. As this article will show, the invocation of radical uncertainty has led to a transformation in sovereignty that cannot be captured in terms of the cosmopolitan/surveillance dichotomy. What is at stake is a more fundamental transformation of the way in which sovereignty is used to counter threats. Based on a study of the UN Counterterrorism Committee, this article demonstrates how state sovereignty is used as a governmental technology that aims to create proactive, responsible subjects.

The Politics of International Law and the Perils and Promises of Interdisciplinarity

In the previous editorial, Larissa van den Herik and Jean d’Aspremont referred to LJIL’s ‘special plural identity’.1 On the one hand, this plurality shows in its table of contents; on the other hand, the plural identity is equally – if not even more – treasured in terms of appreciating the plurality of voices within the legal discipline, as the editors-in-chief also highlight. Diversity and heterogeneity are an asset for academic debate, and LJIL as such seeks to provide a forum for scholars from different ‘paradigms’. The appreciation of diversity and plurality is also reflected in the interest of LJIL to look beyond the confines of the legal discipline itself and engage with external perspectives to foster discussions about international law. It is in light of this open-mindedness and the wish to reach out to non-legal audiences, and to the international relations community in particular, that I was invited to join the LJIL team some years ago.2 Whereas there is a growing audience of IR scholars genuinely interested in (theorizing) international law, LJIL is not very well known as a journal with that profile for its International Legal Theory section. As a leading scholar in IR once remarked: ‘LJIL is the best kept secret in IR’.3 So when the request came for me to write an editorial, it seemed only apt to reflect upon some of the perils and promises of interdisciplinarity from my experience as an IR scholar within the LJIL editorial board. The history of the disciplinary fission of IR from IL is well known and need not be repeated in detail here. According to the disciplinary narrative, IR was established with a first chair in Aberystwyth after the First World War in order to generate academic knowledge to prevent another Great War. Its failure to do so was diagnosed

Rethinking the Principle of (Sovereign) Equality as a Standard of Civilisation

The standard of civilisation is most often identified as the infamous legal doctrine that legitimised imperialist rule and the exclusion of non-European non-Christian states from the international society. In disciplinary narratives of both International Relations and International Law this colonial project is usually presented as a mere interlude on the way to a mature and inclusive international society based sovereign equality as its organising principle. In line with more critical historiography, which shows how colonialism is the condition of possibility for both sovereignty and international law, this article investigates how a standard of civilisation is inherent in political legal practices of international ordering. Moreover, while usually presented as a practice of exclusion, this article will analyse the more intricate dynamic of inclusion and exclusion as a basis for international order by addressing the legal politics of subjecthood (as objects and subjects of the imagined global regime). More specifically, it will address how law operates as a technology through the interplay between a standard of civilisation, the principle of equality and legal subjectivity. The article will look into legal practices of different historical periods (in the age of discovery, during the colonial expansion, and in modern international society) to analyse the workings and transformations of these legal technologies. Together this will show how an (implicit) standard of civilisation is entrenched in the operation of law as a technology of international order. This does not stop with the universalisation of sovereign equality as the organising principle of an inclusive or ‘global’ international society. This article will argue that this reveals the productive power of law which functions not just as a juridical rule to regulate relations between independent and equal sovereign subjects, but operates as the norm to produce appropriate sovereigns as members of the international society.

Forging International Order: Inquiring the Dutch Support of the Iraq Invasion

This article analyzes the Iraq inquiry in The Netherlands as presented by the Davids Committee (Rapport Commissie van onderzoek besluitvorming Irak. Boom, Amsterdam, 2010). It discusses the so-called corpus theory that informed the Dutch position that the invasion in Iraq was in accordance with international law, and its deconstruction by the Davids Committee. However, this article also argues that the corpus theory was only part of the story. In the search for justifying its political support of the war, the corpus theory interacted with two other claims for legitimacy put forward by the Dutch government. These alternative strands of legitimacy moved beyond positive law to include extra-Charter values (notably with regard to state roguery in the New World Order) on the one hand, and to circumvent the politics within the Security Council (legitimacy through defiance), on the other hand. The analysis discloses how any legal argumentation and bids for legitimacy are based on a particular vision of the international society and how to safeguard law, peace, and freedom in the contemporary international order. Together this leads to a more nuanced view, which does not alter the conclusion that the Iraq war was illegal, but which does show that it can be deceptive to reduce international policy-making to a zero-sum choice between law and politics narrowly defined.

Which Future for the Scholarly Concept of Soft International Law? Editors’ Introductory Remarks

Engaging with a mundane topic like the softness of international law may certainly look surprising to the readership of a journal known for its avowed and constant quest for an intellectually and conceptually rigorous ‘off-Broadway’ scholarship. Why would a journal that tries to establish itself as a leading alternative voice in the field replay a comedy so often staged in mainstream scholarship? It is with the full awareness of such an anticipated feeling of deja vu that the editors of the Leiden Journal of International Law have decided to open the ensuing pages to an oft-debated topic with the ambition of evaluating the possibility of transcending the traditional pitched battle between opponents and advocates of soft law. It is well known that, after the juvenile success of the concept 1 and its embrace by a great number of international scholars, soft law became the object of severe criticisms, resulting in a chasm in the international legal scholarship. Indeed, the debate about soft law came to literally split authors into two camps, firmly pitted against one another. On the one hand, there are the advocates of the notion for whom the binary nature of law is incapable of explaining the complexity of the international exercise of public authority in a pluralized world 2 or who see soft law as an instrument of (programming of the) development of hard law. 3 These apostles of the notion of soft law are opposed by those who see the notion as redundant because it turns into either hard law or not law at all, 4 it is self-serving for the profession, 5 it is dangerously deformalizing our instruments of law ascertainment, 6 or it is weakening the general authority of law. 7 The fierce character of that confrontation originates in soft laws being intrinsically intertwined with ones core and inner understanding of (international) law, thereby making these discrepancies seem irreconcilable.

Interdisciplinarity on the Move: Reading Kratochwil as Counter-Disciplinarity Proper

This contribution to the forum discusses The Status of Law in World Society from the perspective of interdisciplinary research in International Law and International Relations. While problematising  the mediation on interdisciplinarity itself, I suggest that the remainder of the book is an example of reflexive interdisciplinarity, which uses cross-disciplinary encounters to learn about disciplinary blindspots, hidden assumptions or silences, and to destabilise its certain knowledges and common senses. This is interdisciplinarity as counter-disciplinarity proper. Kratochwil shows how interdisciplinary research can be a non-imperialist, enriching and stimulating conversation, precisely because it refrains from dictating this in the form of a set research agenda with a delineated roadmap. The Status of Law instead highlights the scholarly merits of posing questions, being puzzled and having contestations as more important and productive features for our academic endeavour and interdisciplinarity itself.