The past, present, and future of intervention

Abstract

Despite the prominent place of intervention in contemporary world politics, debate is limited by two weaknesses: first, an excessive presentism; and second, a focus on normative questions to the detriment of analysis of the longer-term sociological dynamics that fuel interventionary pressures. In keeping with the focus of the Special Issue on the ways in which intervention is embedded within modernity, this article examines the emergence of intervention during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, assesses its place in the contemporary world, and considers its prospects in upcoming years. The main point of the article is simplealthough intervention changes in character across time and place, it is a persistent feature of modern international relations. As such, intervention is here to stay.

Introduction: Decentring the study of international interventions

“…This focus has been criticized for being state centric (e.g. Lawson andTardelli, 2013: 1042), being too narrowly centred on the European/Northern experience (e.g. Sabaratnam, 2013), and having 'echoes of the "standard of civilisation" argument', as Ayoob (2002: 84) puts it.…”

Marketing parliament: The constitutive effects of external attempts at parliamentary strengthening in Jordan

“…In my further discussion of the constitutive effects of international attempts at parliamentary strengthening, I particularly relied and built on Sabaratnam's (2013: 60) call for a repoliticisation of assumptions of 'difference'. Exploring the ways in which the Jordanian regime positions itself as partner in, rather than as target of external intervention, I suggested a reading of Jordan's parliament as a stage for international democracy promoters and the Jordanian regime's common performance of intervention as a means for order maintenance (Lawson andTardelli, 2013: 1237), as well as for the discursive reaffirmation of assumptions of cultural 'difference'.…”

“…By repositioning itself not as passive target of, but active partner in international democracy promotion interventions, the Jordanian regime has very effectively managed to ensure that the foundations of authoritarian power structures remain largely out of bounds (for a similar argument, see Carapico, 2014: 11), while simultaneously reconfirming its own supposed nature as 'modern' and 'reform-minded' (for a discussion of the Jordanian liberal reform project, see Schwedler, 2012). Based on Lawson andTardelli (2013: 1237), as well as on the case of Jordan, one may suggest that acceptance of and participation in intervention play a crucial role in determining whether intervention operates as a means for order transformation or order maintenance. Ironically, the Jordanian regime's wilful acceptance of and participation in international democracy promotion interventions then needs to be seen as a central factor in ensuring that international efforts at democracy promotion in the country primarily operate as a means for authoritarian order maintenance, while simultaneously reconfirming interveners' desired self-understandings.…”

“…Different variants of this argument, which is deeply critical of the kind of normative analyses that Hurrell (2015: 22) pointedly describes as 'perhaps the most western-centric of all', have been developed by Bilgin (2010) in the field of security studies, by Oren (2003) in regard to American political science and by Hann (1996: 6) and Aksartova (2006: 18), among others, in regard to the idea of civil society. The underlying premise is the observation that 'interventions in the periphery have been constitutive of developments in the core' (Lawson andTardelli, 2013: 1247), and that interventions may tell us much more about the interveners than about the environment that is intervened upon. Exploring the constitutive effects of interventions is thus a crucial step in inverting the traditional assumption of policy as a key driver for the everyday effects of external intervention (see Mosse, 2005: 2).…”

Beyond the ‘RtoP’: Responsibility as doing, being and sharing

“…Scholars tend to focus directly on the pros and cons of this norm and its application, such as the use of humanitarian intervention as a pretext for regime change, rather than treating it from a specific theoretical perspective (for exceptions see Panke and Petersohn, 2011;Capie, 2012). Historical analyses show that responsibility has been linked to sovereignty (Glanville, 2010a, b;Aalberts and Werner, 2011;Glanville, 2013) and that some states hold special responsibilities linked to their special rights as great powers (Lawson and Tardelli, 2013). In a critical evaluation of the RtoP from a realist perspective, Moses (2012, p. 134) highlights that powerful states make use of responsibility for their own winning: 'We have already seen ethical zeitgeist of global responsibility can be captured by powerful states with the US neo-conservative claim to "benevolent hegemony" and rejection of criteria that would limit the exercise of their interventionist power at the 2005 UN World Summit'.…”