ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

ESIL Interest Group History of International Law
Showing posts with label hegemony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hegemony. Show all posts

Tuesday, 3 October 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS: Hegemony in the International Order (Rome, 11-12 Jun 2018); DEADLINE 31 Mar 2018

“Hegemony in the International Order”
June 11-12, 2018
University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome
Co-Sponsored by the Transnational Theory Network (TLPT-Network), the Italian Society of Political Philosophy (SIFP) and the European Society of International Law (ESIL)
(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Post WWII international law and politics has promised a more just and free world. Liberal values of equality, human rights and freedom have shaped international relations, infusing also the ‘ethical turn’ of international law with the human rights revolution and the formalization of jus cogens peremptory norms. Regional orders like the EU have grown both in terms of centralized competences and in the possibility of allowing higher circulation of goods and people. The international political system as a whole has seen one of its greatest times of rights consolidation and economic fluxes which have certainly favored wide cultural contaminations.

Yet, more recent developments of international politics show some of the drawbacks of such epochal shift, raising demands of democratic governance, individual interests representation etc. Lack of political participation at the transnational level, the North-South and the East-West divides, migratory flows altogether signal a disconnection and a persistent friction between economic, legal and political sectors. What takes the appearance of a wide share of goods and benefits brought about by globalization turns into unequal forms of redistributory patterns, unmasking the reality of power-control and dominance of single actors, either in the form of a super-state or a multinational corporation.

Hegemonic entities seems therefore to have taken advantage of those spaces of economic and legal freedom that progressive liberalism has opened up and used them to the advantage of limited beneficiaries, exploiting the opportunities created therewith.

The workshop wants to investigate the contemporary significance of hegemony in the international realm. More specifically its aim is to assess whether and to what extent neo-Gramscian, neo-hegemonic or, alternatively, post-hegemonic forms of power help understanding law and politics in regional and global contexts.

Since hegemony requires support and complicity also by subordinated groups, how does this concept differ from the notion of imperialism and that of unilateralism? What forms of ideological solidarities as well as material and military alliances are necessary for hegemonic effectiveness?
Furthermore, are there hegemonic phases that have accompanied the so-called “human rights revolution” since the aftermath of WWII? In what ways, eventually, it is possible to trace a counter-history to the mantra of a global constitutional progression and peace?
Papers in philosophy, law or politics addressing any of the issues above or suggesting relevant insights into the topic. In order to allow time for adequate presentation and discussion only a limited number of people will be selected (approx.10).

Abstract Submission

Abstracts between 700-1000 or more should be submitted by 31 March 2018 to Claudio.Corradetti@uniroma2.it

(source: International Law Reporter)

Monday, 28 September 2015

BOOK REVIEW: Nuno Monteiro (Yale) reviews John IKENBERRY (ed.), Power, Order, and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 308 pp. $32.99, ISBN 978-1-107-42106-6 (H-Diplo)


(image source: H-Diplo)

The discussion forum H-Diplo (HNet) features a review by Nuno Monteiro (Yale) of John Ikenberry's collective work Power, Order and Change in World Politics (CUP, 2014).

(image source: Cambridge UP)


First paragraph:
The ninth of Walter Benjamin’s 1940 theses “On the Concept of History” consists of the following controversial observation about Paul Klee’s drawing Angelus Novus (1920): “A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”
 Read the fulltext here.