What Should Be Done? Pragmatic Constructivist Ethics and the Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

In this paper I examine what constructivist approaches to IR tell us about how states should act when confronted by atrocity crimes in the context of a politically pluralist international society. Building on the work of theorists who responded to Richard Price and Christian Reus-Smit's call to substantiate the constructivist's claim to explain “moral progress,” and to better inform normative assessments, I claim that the constructivist emphasis on historical and social contingency does not rule out ethical standpoints, suggesting instead a “pragmatic” ethic. Norms are hypotheses rather than absolute values. The task of the pragmatic constructivist is not to establish beyond doubt the normativity of a norm—the task is to test the norm for how well its “meaning-in-use” supports action that ameliorates lived social problems. Pragmatic constructivists can commit to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as an idea that might reconcile various communities of normative practice and ameliorate vulnerability without upsetting international order. To the extent particular practices (e.g., prevention) have proven (and continue to prove) useful in doing this, pragmatic constructivists can equate the institutionalization of those practices with normative progress. However, R2P is a “complex” norm. It recognizes that knowledge of how to respond to ongoing atrocity is context specific and cannot therefore be fixed. The task of the pragmatic constructivist here is to assess the practical judgment of those that claim to speak for the norm by weighing the consequences of acting out their prescription in the specific context of a particular crisis. I test the meanings of R2P in use during the Syria crisis from 2011 to 2012. R2P was problematic to the extent certain meanings reinforced policy ends (e.g., protection through political/criminal accountability) that were impractical and pursued at the expense of non-ideal but realizable goals (e.g., protection through peace/aid).

How can we criticize international practices?

“…Rather, there is a "plurality of normative commitments" that practitioners and scholars need to reconcile in their judgments (Ralph and Gifkins 2017, 648). In a later article Ralph (2018) further elaborates what this alternative perspective entails. Spelling out how IR constructivism can further a "pragmatic" ethic that assesses norms by how well they help "ameliorate lived social problems," he argues that as "pragmatic constructivists," we "can maintain faith in R2P as a norm that sets out a process for ameliorating the problem of atrocity in the context of political pluralism" (Ralph 2018, 174, 194).…”

“…Just as Boltanski did in sociology, some of them have begun to articulate a more comprehensive pragmatic critique of practices outside academia. Ralph and Gifkins (2017), whose argument we will discuss in greater detail below, problematize the mistrust created through specific practices in the UN Security Council, a theme that also features prominently in a more recent article by Ralph (2018). Cochran's work on the governance of nuclear weapons also addresses mistrust as a problem that pragmatic critique seeks to overcome.…”

“…Recently, however, a growing number of IR scholars have begun to think about these analytical questions in conjunction with normative ones. Constructivists have extensively debated how their analytical work on international norms can inform normative judgments and guide political decision-making (e.g., Price and Reus-Smit 1998;Price 2008;Ralph 2018;Wiener 2018). Similarly, scholarship in the tradition of the English School has placed a renewed emphasis on ethical questions (e.g., Cochran 2009;Navari 2017).…”

The Responsibility to Protect norm cluster and the challenge of atrocity prevention: an analysis of the European Union’s strategy in Myanmar

“…This acknowledges that R2P situations are not alike and different responses may be justified (Gallagher, 2015). An analysis of how well a state discharges its responsibility to protect therefore involves an agency-based approach (Bucher, 2014), which assesses the judgements of decision-makers, including their ability to engage in applicatory contestation and justification so as to avoid the inappropriate application of directives that may well be unsuitable to the concrete situation (Ralph, 2018).…”

What is the responsibility to respect human rights? Reconsidering the ‘respect, protect, and fulfill’ framework

“…However, this paper's reinterpretation of the responsibility to respect human rights is also not impartialist. Erskine (2012, 452) characterizes an impartialist moral starting-pointof the kind critiqued by Price (2008) in his reflection on the ethical horizons of IR constructivismas 'one that abstracts from particular social, historical, cultural, and political contexts' (see also Erskine 2008;Ralph 2018). Human rights, as constituting a reason for action/decision that is available today to all moral agents, is indeed deeply embedded within all of the domains mentioned by Erskine: social (liberal individualism), historical (post-1940s and/ or post-1970s), cultural (at both global and local levels), 13 and political (a world in which negative sovereignty is an important institutional fact).…”