Violence, Law and Feminist Politics

Liberal theories of international relations (IR) focus on the demands of individuals and social groups, and their relative power in society, as fundamental forces driving state policy. For liberals, every state is embedded in an interdependent domestic and transnational society that decisively shapes the basic purposes or interests that underlie its policies, its interaction with other states, and, ultimately, international conflict and order. This “bottom-up” focus of liberal theories on state–society relations, interdependence, and preference formation has distinctive implications for understanding international law (IL). In recent years liberal theory has been among the most rapidly expanding areas of positive and normative analysis of international law. As the world grows more and more interdependent and countries struggle to maintain cooperation amid diverse economic interests, domestic political institutions, and ideals of legitimate public order, international law will increasingly come to depend on the answers to questions that liberal theories pose. The first section of this chapter (“Liberal Theories of International Relations”) elaborates the assumptions and conclusions of liberal international relations theory. Section II (“What Can Liberal Theories Tell Us about International Law-Making?”) develops liberal insights into the substantive scope and depth of international law, its institutional form, compliance, and long-term dynamic processes of evolution and change. Section III (“International Tribunals: Liberal Analysis and Its Critics”) examines the specific case of international tribunals, which has been a particular focus of liberal theorizing, and treats both conservative and constructivist criticisms of liberal theory. Section IV (“Liberalism as Normative Theory”) considers the contribution of liberal theory to policy, as well as to conceptual and normative analyses of international law.

Objectives: Women’s healthcare is a potential source of cross-cultural conflicts. Diverging values between healthcare providers and patients challenges the provision of culturally sensitive care and meeting migrant women’s needs. The aim is to investigate healthcare providers’ values in relation to sexual and reproductive rights, gender equality, migration and religion in Swedish sexual and reproductive healthcare.Methods: A national cross-sectional study was carried out. The questionnaire was distributed through a non-probability sample to midwives or other nurses, gynaecologists and obstetricians, and hospital social workers (n = 1,041). Through descriptive statistics, we mapped their values, comparing healthcare provider data to external representative population survey data.Results: Healthcare providers in sexual and reproductive healthcare displayed homogeneous liberal social values, being permissive towards sexual and reproductive rights and restrictive against gender-based violence. They were for gender equality, expressed low anti-immigrant sentiments, and had even more liberal values than the Swedish population and a demographically comparative sub-population.Conclusion: Individuals with very liberal values are selected to work in Swedish sexual and reproductive healthcare. Healthcare providers need self-reflexivity to avoid conflicts in clinical encounters in a diversified society.

One of the key objections raised against political liberalism is the argument from asymmetry, which claims that political liberalism holds double standards between its treatment of the right and the good. According to political liberalism, the question of the good life, unlike the question of political justice, fundamentally divides even reasonable people in a liberal society, so the most sensible thing to do is for the state to refrain from making references, let alone officially endorsing, comprehensive doctrines in order to avoid implications of paternalism and even totalitarianism. However, it is also reasonable to assume that similar disagreements exist in the realm of justice. According to Joseph Chan, liberals “owe perfectionists an account as to why the state’s enforcement of controversial decisions is problematic only in the case of conceptions of the good life and not in non-good-life issues like social justice.” In other words, liberals must show that the distinction between social justice and the good life is so deep that they warrant asymmetric treatments. For instance, why is it not justified for the liberal state to endorse Aristotelian teleological ethics, whereas its endorsement of court decisions, policies on national defense, and education reforms that are no less controversial is considered legitimate? Michael Sandel argues that “political liberalism must assume not only that the exercise of human reason under conditions of freedom will produce disagreements about the good life but also that the exercise of human reason under conditions of freedom will not produce disagreements of justice.” The asymmetry objection is considered by many to be so powerful that “as long as [it] remains unanswered, the pursuit of justice opens the door to perfectionism.” As Jonathan Quong correctly points out, the asymmetry objection, instead of challenging the main assumptions from which political liberalism begins, “purports to show that political liberalism is not even internally coherent; that liberal neutrality concerning the good cannot be consistently derived from within the political liberal position.” The force of the asymmetry objection is thus twofold. First, it casts doubt on the distinction between the right and the good that lies in the heart of political liberalism. If this distinction is blurred, people who are sympathetic to perfectionism will have the ground to propose alternatives to the neutral state, albeit liberal or not. Second, the objection also turns some of the most widely used political liberal defenses against political liberalism and vindicates the reasonability of perfectionism.

The cardinal idea in Rawls's political liberalism is that a better conception of liberal justice is available to us once we ground principles of justice in an ‘overlapping consensus’ among the many reasonable doctrines that abound in a free society instead of any of the comprehensive liberal doctrines that liberal philosophers have traditionally championed. Rawls's contrast between the political and comprehensive liberalism is specious, though his political conception of the person and his related conception of ‘reasonable pluralism’ are shown to provide a compelling perspective on the proper scope of diversity and the conduct of political education in a liberal society.

This work seeks to trace a possible connection between the foundational principles of liberal political theory, established primarily by T. Hobbes, J. Locke, and B. Spinoza, and its developed or contemporary practices. These practices are examined in relation to fundamental concepts that were previously understood as integral to the generalized notion of the good human life, such as faith, family, love, manliness, etc., and that, as a result of its influence, underwent significant – sometimes radical – changes in the outline of the liberal logic. The piece formulates key liberal concepts like progress, consumption, and tolerance to elucidate the reasons for liberalism's success, the potential negative implications of this success, and the challenges stemming from the continued unfolding of the liberal logic for concepts like freedom of speech, meritocracy, universal peace, etc. embedded in liberal theory. The analysis, establishing a direct connection between the theoretical foundations of liberal theory and the success of its practices, highlights the impossibility of transforming the latter without reassessing the former. It posits the inadequacy of political opposition to liberalism without a preliminary theoretical resolution of the fundamental issues that liberal theory poses.

In the post-Cold War context, liberal international theory appeared to have re-emerged as a powerful explanatory instrument of global change. Traditional liberalinternational theory had lost ground due to challenges from both Realist and Marxist theories. The inability to account for the configuration and deployment of state power and interest and their mutations in an international framework, on the one hand, and the incapacity to explain structural inequalities within nation-states and at the international level, on the other, kept liberal theory away from the centre-stage of academic international relations for a long period of time. I wish to argue that the return of liberal international theory is not based on any considerable recent advancements in liberalism’s conceptual and methodological apparatus. The problems of traditional liberalism continue to mar its explanatory possibilities. It is the contemporary assertion of neoliberalism that is often viewed as the return of liberal internationalism. What we see today is a shift from conventional liberal internationalism to what I call ‘neoliberal globalism’.KeywordsSocial MovementJoint VenturisUruguay RoundResistance MovementWashington ConsensusThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

ABSTRACTThis article examines liberal political theory’s limits and possibilities in relation to indigenous self-determination. It shows that while the liberal tradition has provided theoretical rationale to the colonial project it is also equipped to rationalise a politics of substantive indigenous inclusion. The article introduces the recourses that exist within liberal theory for non-colonial interpretations of citizenship, democracy and sovereignty. It shows how these concepts may be interpreted to contribute to a liberal theory of indigeneity as a theory emphasising independent indigenous authority on the one hand and culturally contextualised and substantive participation in the politics of the state on the other.

Both liberal theorists and their critics have been unable to reconcile successfully respect for individual freedom and autonomy with a system of legitimate political authority. Liberal theory fails because its system of rights and representative institutions is particularistic, favoring the interests of restricted individuals and groups. Nonliberal theory threatens individuals' freedom by having political authority exercised in the name of a dubious, real will. Present liberal and nonliberal theory continues to reflect these problems.This article is an effort to present a view of political authority that respects individual freedom and is legitimate, supporting the interests of all citizens. The failure of liberal and nonliberal theory to achieve this reconciliation is believed to result from their excessively ambiguous, incomplete views of central issues—freedom, authority, and normative reasoning—and a related tendency to examine these problems in isolation. The analysis presented here proposes a more complete view of their meaning and integrates this understanding into a conception of legitimate political authority. The conclusion seriously challenges the view of political legitimacy presented by liberal theory and suggests that a different set of problems must be addressed if political authority is to be legitimate and support individuals' freedom.

Some religiously devout individuals believe divine command can override an obligation to obey the law where the two are in conflict. At the extreme, some individuals believe that acts of violence that seek to change or punish a political community, or to prevent others from violating what they take to be God’s law, are morally justified. In the face of this apparent clash between religious and political commitments it might seem that modern versions of political morality—such as John Rawls’s political liberalism—that refuse to take a stance on controversial religious matters, or eschew appeal to perfectionist doctrines, are beset by a particularly acute version of this problem of religious disobedience. Whilst political liberalism follows this path so as to generate wide and stable support, it raises the question of how political liberals should respond to religiously motivated non-compliance with the norms of that liberal conception of justice. This article evaluates what resources are available to political liberalism to respond to this challenge. It examines whether anti-perfectionism can be sustained in the face of those whose religious beliefs are in conflict with the law. We argue that, under certain circumstances, political liberalism requires direct engagement with the religious views of the unreasonable, including offering religious arguments to show that their particular interpretation of their faith is mistaken. This view takes political liberalism away from its usual ambitions, but it is a position that is both anticipated by Rawls and consistent with his view. It does, however, require that political liberals give up the claim that the view is a wholly non-sectarian, purely political view, and accept that, under certain circumstances it is a partially comprehensive version of liberal theory.

Essentially, liberalism contradicts imperialism; but in diplomacy and Realpolitik liberals rarely stand against imperial enterprises. Such is the case of the British Liberal Party during the late nineteenth century. Focused on Lord Rosebery's policy towards Egypt under Gladstone's last ministry, this thesis argues that, as far as foreign policy was concerned, the Liberals in the early 1890s discarded their ＂outdated＂ beliefs in rationalism and pacifism, and assumed an attitude not different from that of their political opponents-the Conservatives. This article examines the political atmosphere in 1893, when Lord Rosebery and Abbas Hilmi II took office as the British Foreign Secretary and the new khedive respectively, and the so-called Abbas' Coup in 1893 and the Frontier Incident in 1894, to show how ＂Liberal Imperialism＂ developed and the British occupation of Egypt became ＂permanent,＂ in spite of strong Liberal idealist opposition. In conclusion, the author points out the British policy of ＂Liberal Imperialism＂ in dealing with the Egyptian question, the Liberal Party was losing touch with liberalism and becoming more ＂conservative,＂ and that while achieving more popularity with the British public in this way, the Liberal Party grievously alienated its fundamentalist supporters, which detracted from its merit and worth as an independent political group.

In this work two key theses are defended: political liberalism is a processual (rather than a static) view and process thinkers should be political liberals. Three major figures are considered (Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne) in the effort to show the superiority of political liberalism to its illiberal alternatives on the political right and left. Further, a politically liberal stance regarding nonhuman animals and the environment is articulated. It is typical for debates in political philosophy to be adrift regarding the concept of method, but from start to finish this book relies on the processual method of reflective equilibrium or dialectic at its best. This is the first extended effort to argue for both political liberalism as a process-oriented view and process philosophy/theology as a politically liberal view. It is also a timely defense of political liberalism against illiberal tendencies on both the right and the left.

In this paper I argue that Rawlsians have largely misunderstood the idea of an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, thereby failing to delineate in an appropriate way the place of comprehensive doctrines in political liberalism. My argument rests on two core claims. The first claim is that (i) political liberalism is committed to three theses about the overlapping consensus. The first thesis concerns the subject of the overlapping consensus; the second thesis concerns the function of the overlapping consensus; the third thesis explains how the overlapping consensus can serve its function in accordance with political liberalism’s commitment to epistemic neutrality. The second claim on which my argument relies is empirical: (ii) Rawlsians typically deny at least one of the three theses to which political liberalism is committed. Based on (i) and (ii), I conclude that Rawlsians have hitherto provided unconvincing accounts of the place of comprehensive doctrines in political liberalism.

This study examines ways in which political ideology influences discourses of race and social class in the formal curriculum and teacher attitudes in social studies education. More specifically, the study determined how elements of conservative, liberal, and radical ideologies affect discourses around race, social class, democracy and citizenship. The study drew on two data sources: all seven versions of the formal social studies curriculum used in British Columbia's high schools from 1941 to the present; and transcripts from interviews with current social studies department heads in ten high schools in Vancouver, British Columbia. Critical discourse analysis was used to analyze both data sources. The interview transcripts were also analyzed using an interpretation of meaning approach. The study demonstrates that the British Columbia curriculum evolved from a conservative document to one influenced by liberalism. The early curriculum guides were essentially conservative. The 1956,1968, and 1980 versions indicated oscillation between these two ideologies. The 1988 and 1997 versions were completely dominated by liberalism. Over this time period, conservative depictions of non-white peoples that were overtly racist transformed to liberal representations in a pluralist multicultural framework. Social class issues were always presented from the standpoint of capital in the conservative versions of the curriculum, while subsequent liberal versions almost completely ignored social class representation. The treatment of democracy and citizenship evolved from conservative to liberal conceptions. Radical elements were almost completely absent from any curricular documents. The study revealed that ideology influences teacher attitudes toward issues of race, class, democracy and citizenship. In general, liberalism was the most dominant ideology. Conservative discourses, however, appeared more than in the formal curriculum. Teachers invoked radical discourses only rarely. The liberal cultural deficit discourse was used by the majority to explain differences in academic proficiency along axes of race and class. Conservative genetic-deficit discourses appeared about as frequently as radical discourses that focused on unfair structural problems. The teachers were evenly divided in their use of conservative and liberal discourses about democracy and citizenship. Recommendations were made to alter social studies curriculum and teacher education programs to reflect social justice aims from a radical perspective.

Current debates in the UK about faith schools often focus on whether they are able to promote liberal values while maintaining the values and doctrine of their religious tradition. These debates, worked out through education policy, legislation and the media, are typically conducted at the level of macro or meso-level generalisations, but are not informed by micro-level studies of how the transmission of religious tradition in relation to liberal values takes place through specific interactions between staff and students. This thesis seeks to contribute to such a knowledge-base through an ethnographic study of interactions between staff and students in relation to processes of religious transmission in a Catholic secondary school in London. Drawing on a Bourdieusian theoretical framework, informed by related work on the transmission of religious memory and the formation of religious emotion, the study examines how staff in this school try to enable students to develop a religious habitus in which Catholicism and liberal values are not experienced as being in tension with each other. The staff project of forming this Catholic habitus in their students is pursued in both conscious and non-conscious ways. Recognising the importance of reconciling Catholicism with wider liberal values, staff pursue a range of strategies with students to manage any tension that arises between them, with varying degrees of success. Conflict between liberal values and aspects of Catholic doctrine and ethical teaching is, in particular, avoided through emphasising the development of a distinctive Catholic habitus through the transformation of students' bodies and emotions through ritual and other forms of devotional practice. Staff seek to nurture such embodied and emotional formation particularly through the management of students' interactions with particular sacred times and spaces, trying to negotiate between enacting their authority over students and their understanding of students as active agents who need to come to their own authentic and freely chosen performance of Catholicism. Students engage with this project of formation in a variety of ways, ranging from committed collaboration to covert or overt forms of resistance. Whilst students' engagement with this staff project can sometimes reflect a shared sympathy for its devotional aims, it can also be motivated by an interest in the greater opportunities that arise through cultivating religious capital. For many students, this project of formation is approached through compliance rather than enthusiasm or hostility, but in ways where 'surface-acting' of devotional performance belies a lack of cultivation of more strongly-felt religious emotion or belief. Through its analysis of these micro-level processes, the thesis contributes to existing research on religious transmission in schools by extending an understanding of how this can take the form of particular kinds of interaction relating to students' embodied and emotional formation. It also generates a typology of staff approaches to managing potential tensions between their religious tradition and liberal values that could be utilised in other studies. It contributes to wider policy debates by problematizing simplistic notions of faith schools as inherently authoritarian sites of religious transmission, hostile to liberal values, by considering how staff can seek to reconcile religious tradition and liberal values through their practice as well as how students retain considerable agency in responding to such processes of religious formation.

The article aims to analyse the significance of liberal norms and values in the development of political relations between the EU and ASEAN, an issue which has been only selectively analysed in academic literature. At the same time, the topic of the article fits into a broader landscape of issues associated with the development of relations between international intergovernmental organisations in contemporary international relations, only partially studied in Polish and international literature to date. Considering the essential framework of classic constructivism, as well as significant contributions added by critical constructivism, the article formulates a research hypothesis whereby the European Union and ASEAN are organisations which, while recognising the importance of liberal values and norms, take a different approach to their promotion and protection. The European Union, which attempted to act towards ASEAN as an interpreter and diffuser of the aforementioned values and norms in the 1990s, adopted a pragmatic approach over time, in response to ASEAN’s stance and actions, limiting its role in this respect and taking regional conditions and dependencies into account. In order to verify this hypothesis, three research questions were formulated, namely: What is the place of liberal norms and values in the EU and ASEAN policy documents? Is the respect and protection of liberal norms and values an important element declared in mutual relations? How do both sides approach the implementation of liberal norms and values in practice in selected cases? This article is structured around these issues and discusses the significance of liberal norms and values in EU and ASEAN policy documents, the place and role of liberal norms and values in documents underpinning EUASEAN relations and in EU documents formulated towards ASEAN and the Southeast Asian region and also provides an analysis of EU and ASEAN policy towards Myanmar.