Millennium: Journal of International Studies

This article deconstructs the twin ‘self-delusions’ of IR to reveal, first, the conventional axiom that the discipline enquires into juridically-equal sovereign state relations under international anarchy masks the dark hierarchical face of IR which promotes, defends and reifies, analytically and/or normatively, Western civilisation over non-Western states, and, second, the conventional axiom that IR operationalises a positivist and/or value-free cultural pluralism masks the dark face of Eurocentric monism that constitutes the core ideological foundation of the vast majority of IR theory. These emerge from IR theory’s deployment of the twin concepts of Eurocentric hierarchy and the Eurocentric ‘standard of civilisation’, which yield the twin conceptions of ‘formal (imperialist) hierarchy’ and ‘informal (anti-imperialist) hierarchy’ alongside the notion of ‘gradated sovereignties’ in world politics. To illustrate this, the ‘formal-hierarchical’ conception is traced in classical English School pluralism and neorealist hegemonic stability, while the ‘informal-hierarchical’ conception is traced in neo-Marxism and classical English School pluralism.

The ‘standard of civilisation’ has its roots in the culturally widespread trope of ‘civilised’ versus ‘barbarian’. It took its specific modern form in the 19th century, primarily as a European legal term. No specific set of criteria for the ‘standard of civilisation’ was ever codified, but the general practice was to define the standard by the contemporary forms of government prevailing in Europe. Its political role was to gate-keep membership of international society, and to justify colonialism. The term collapsed after 1945 when the right of self-determination opened membership to nearly all peoples. In the English School literature, the ‘standard of civilisation’ has been used to tell a variety of historical encounter stories, and to critique the School’s neglect of colonialism. Its contemporary relevance in the literature concerns debates about whether human rights, democracy, capitalism and possibly environmentalism are being used to construct a new ‘standard of civilisation’ operationalised through conditionality and other discriminatory practices. Another important link is between the colonial obligation to raise ‘less advanced’ peoples to the standard and the post-1945 obligation to provide aid and development to the ‘less developed’. The English School concept of the ‘standard of civilisation’ is thus both refreshingly frank politically and of durable relevance for thinking about international relations.

This article explores some ways in which the condition of women has been articulated as a standard of civilisation, focusing on articulations by a range of European and non-European political thinkers and political actors in the 19th century and the present, two important periods marked by intense discussions of the status of women and civilisation. In short, the status of women is used by a broad range of actors to draw up civilisational boundaries and to mobilise for action. The standard also functions as an arena of contestation in which alternative visions of a good society are debated. However, whereas the alleged link between sexual equality and “the West” was highly disputed in the 19th century, this claim is much less contested today. The article ends with a discussion of the problematic implications of using the status of women as a standard of civilisation for feminisms around the world.

Many people recognise that there is a need to distinguish between states in the international system, such as on the basis of legitimacy. For much of the system’s history the means of drawing such distinctions have been standards of civilisation. For some, the need to divide and separate is unavoidable; others are more critical of standards of civilisation because of the consequences that come with exclusion or the pressure to conform. On both sides it is often downplayed that standards of civilisation are, by and large, a means to an end. If we want to rethink the way standards of civilisation work and mitigate some of their more unsavoury consequences, then we need to rethink the end they are designed to achieve, which is best captured in Kant’s title ‘Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View’.

This article joins recent debates on China’s rise that claim the People’s Republic of China has become increasingly ‘assertive’. By examining discourses calling for China to emulate Western great powers, it demonstrates that there remains a powerful discourse within Chinese society which regards Western standards as the sole ‘benchmark’ for success and recognition in the international community. In doing so, the article introduces the concept of ‘Occidentalism’, which is a belief that a state’s identity is deeply connected to Western recognition, and which constructs a highly idealised and essentialised ‘Western Other’ to promote particular political reforms. The existence of ‘Occidentalism’ in domestic debates on China’s future as a great power demonstrates that claims of China’s ‘assertive turn’ are premature, and those who call for a more muscular Chinese foreign policy are one of many voices within Chinese political circles.

This article identifies a series of gaps in the English school’s thesis of the ‘expansion of international society’ from European to global extension, and presents two propositions that can correct these problems, and so give us a better understanding of the social space in which 19th-century international relations were carried on. First, we should replace the concept of ‘expansion’ with ‘stratification’, changing the terms of the enquiry from an examination of ‘entry into’ the society of states to an exploration of who was where in the 19th-century international social system. Secondly, we should add a more relational analysis of patterns of association to the English school’s predominantly institutionalist approach to the analysis of the structure of international society. To flesh out these two proposals, the article presents a neo-Weberian framework for thinking about international social stratification and an empirical analysis of patterns of treaty-making.

This article interrogates the recent return of the discourse of the standard of ‘civilisation’ in international relations. Looking at the expansion of international society as an ongoing civilising project, it examines three important macro societal transformations of the international from a grand historical perspective. The classical civilising project, it argues, gives a particularistic interpretation and a truncated meaning to civilisation in international relations, while creating a pluralistic and functional order populated by Westphalian states. The globalisation of the modern sovereign order in the mid-20th century is equally a civilising project, as it redefines legitimate statehood and rightful membership in the making of a post-colonial international society. The current attempts at embedding democracy and human rights in the normative fabric of global international society, contentious and contested as they are, are an integral story of the expansion of international society 3.0, which is marked by a significantly expanded normative scope for making collective judgements of legitimate statehood and rightful state action. In bringing the expansion story up to date and giving it a hermeneutically different reading, the article suggests that as global international society resides in a multi-civilisational world, the civilising project as a form of inter-civilisational communicative actions will always have its place in the evolution of international society.

When IR scholars examine ‘standards of civilisation’, they typically privilege the Western civilisational standard that structured international society during the colonial era. Conversely, this article compares the ‘civilising missions’ of non-Western empires in the early modern period in Mughal India and Qing China. As foreign conquerors ruling huge and diverse empires, Mughals and Manchus faced common problems legitimating their dominance over indigenous majorities that vastly outnumbered them. In both cases, they formulated elaborate civilising missions to justify their rule, recruit collaborators and sustain the hierarchical international orders that formed around their empires. In foregrounding these parallels, this article helps us to better understand how hierarchies form in international politics, while also illuminating the specific role civilising missions and processes played in constituting international hierarchies in non-Western settings.

While some denounce the legacies of colonialism they discern in the EU’s practices and discourse, others believe these accusations to be unfounded, raising the question: how apt is the analogy between the 19th-century standard of civilisation and the EU’s narratives and modes of actions today? In this essay, we address the question by developing a ‘new standards typology’ articulated around two axes: agency denial and hierarchy. These refer respectively to the unilateral shaping of standards applicable to others, and to the salience of Eurocentricism in the way the standards are enforced and structure the international system. Ultimately, we argue that in transforming their ‘continent’ from a metropolis to a microcosmos – from a cluster of colonial capitals to an EU that contains many of the world’s tensions within itself – Europeans have only partially succeeded in transcending their colonial impulses. We conclude by suggesting that the EU’s relevance is grounded in its ability to become a post-colonial power, and that to achieve this, those acting in its name need to remember historical legacies and reflect upon the ‘standards’ that inspire their action.

Underlying claims about a ‘standard of civilisation’ are questions about what it means to be human. Those that assert membership of a higher civilisation do so on the basis of the extent to which a particular grouping has been able to separate itself and become independent of nature. Such contentions reproduce the duality between the human and non-human nature in that the civilised are considered as separate/superior to the non-civilised, and on the grounds of that superiority have a right of dominion over them in ways that parallel human relations with non-human nature. The process of othering that any claim of civilisation requires thus involves a claim about the less than human status of the other.

Following a brief discussion of posthumanism, we assess the considerable literature on the ‘standard of civilisation’ and, focusing on the language of race, consider the ways in which claims about civilisation are based on notions of a separation from nature. In the third section we assess the implications of such a separation. In the final section we turn the notion of civilisation on its head, by pointing to developments that suggest that those groupings who make the claims to be most separated from nature are those posing the gravest ecological threats.

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.

In The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu claims that commerce brings peace. His ideas on the separation and balance of powers and commerce form the cornerstones of liberal democratic theory. Yet it is often overlooked that they were conceived in the context of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. Most scholars interpret his constitutional theory as promoting freedom against the absolutist French monarchy and most argue that he rejects imperialism and despotism in favour of international and democratic peace that advances trade relations between republics. By contrast, I present a new reading that interprets his theory in the light of commerce and colonialism. Montesquieu’s constitutional theory provides the conditions for the republic to pursue empire without collapsing. It further underlies the development of democratic institutions that incorporate a greater number of people and support a market economy, as the benefits of international trade transformed both global and domestic orders. Montesquieu’s ‘fundamental constitution’ establishes a strong central executive power and a distinct legislative power that incorporates the landed nobility and the upwardly mobile portion of the popular social classes on a hierarchical basis. Executive power mediates social conflict and facilitates expansion. This paper examines the institutions that constitute this expansive republic as well as Montesquieu’s arguments on climate, orientalism and commerce that justify 18th-century colonial empire. It is important to understand the elements of Montesquieu’s argument since these inform contemporary understandings of the standard of civilisation and the international order seen to be comprised of moderate democratic republics, developing states and immoderate despotic states.

Within the English School of International Relations the expansion of European International Society has always been regarded as an essentially European, western enterprise. However, the role that the Russian Empire played in expanding the institutions of international society into Central Asia remains quite neglected. By analysing primary sources and contemporary discourses about Russia’s civilisational status in the 19th century, this paper discusses the penetration of the Russian Empire in Central Asia in a socio-historical perspective, and argues that in the process of the expansion Russia’s Asiatic past weakened its status as a European power, and the value of its colonial enterprise. Using English School categories, this paper considers Russia as ‘a periphery in the centre’, and as a ‘less civilised civiliser’ in European International Society. In doing so, this paper seeks to explore an alternative way for the diffusion of norms and institutions of international society different from those of European ‘expansion’ or ‘inclusion’: that of ‘mediated expansion’.

The present study revisits the position accorded to Latin American states in the conventional account of the expansion of international society. Drawing on English School theory and legal history, it develops a critique of the ‘standard of civilisation’, contending that the boundaries of international society were much more malleable and diffuse than the conventional narrative suggests. The argument is illustrated with reference to the historical experience of Latin American states: despite the profound impact that European colonisation had on the region, the marginalisation of Latin American states within international society was commonly framed in civilisational terms. Rather than taking their ‘western’ identity and thus membership for granted, the paper demonstrates the role that civilisational rhetoric played in the making of Latin America’s place in the heterarchical international order of the ‘long 19th century’. The article concludes by discussing some implications for theorising the evolution of international society.

This article understands the United States’ 23-year ban on travellers with HIV/AIDS through the lens of state personhood metaphors and the concept of abjection. Using insights from queer theory as a critique of sovereignty, it argues that the practices and discourses that brought about and sustained the ban, from 1987 until its lifting in 2010, relied upon implicit understandings of the state as a national body free from disease. Having shown the heuristic power of metaphors of the state as a body or person, the article goes on to argue that this identification of the American state as a homeostatic and healthy space facilitates the securitisation of mobility and public health and in turn the exclusion of people living with HIV (PLHIV). This rejection of PLHIV, sustained by conservative political discourse as much as by medical screening, nevertheless shows the impossibility of the state attaining its desired purity against HIV/AIDS and its associated sexual and racial imaginaries. The article concludes with an empirical overview of the context of the travel ban through to its lifting in 2010 and a discussion of the role of queer theory as a critique of state sovereignty.

Traditionally, just-war ethics tries to offer an answer to two distinct moral questions: when (if ever) is it morally permissible to start a war, and how should it be fought? For this specific purpose, just-war reasoning is divided into two parts. The jus ad bellum guides our moral thinking in initiating war; the jus in bello informs us on proper moral conduct during the hostilities. More recently, however, a number of authors have felt the need to add a third element to the just-war theory, that of the jus post bellum. A war, so it is argued, has a beginning, middle and end. There is no reason then why the termination and the longer term aftermath of the war should deserve less attention from a moral point of view. A lot more needs to be said and done before the jus post bellum will reach a comparable degree of substance and sophistication to the two other just-war parts. However, this is exactly what two recently published books on the subject – Eric Patterson’s Ethics beyond War’s End and Larry May’s After War Ends: A Philosophical Perspective – aim to do.