New from the University of Chicago Press:
Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect: A New History, by
Luke Glanville (Australian National University). A description from the Press:
In 2011, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution
1973, authorizing its member states to take measures to protect Libyan
civilians from Muammar Gadhafi’s forces. In invoking the “responsibility
to protect,” the resolution draws on the principle that sovereign
states are responsible and accountable to the international community
for the protection of their populations and that the international
community can act to protect populations when national authorities fail
to do so. The idea that sovereignty includes the responsibility to
protect is often seen as a departure from the classic definition, but it
actually has deep historical roots.
In Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect,
Luke Glanville argues that this responsibility extends back to the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that states have since been
accountable for this responsibility to God, the people, and the
international community. Over time, the right to national
self-governance came to take priority over the protection of individual
liberties, but the noninterventionist understanding of sovereignty was
only firmly established in the twentieth century, and it remained for
only a few decades before it was challenged by renewed claims that
sovereigns are responsible for protection.
Glanville
traces the relationship between sovereignty and responsibility from the
early modern period to the present day, and offers a new history with
profound implications for the present.
A few blurbs:
“Luke Glanville provides
a powerful corrective to the literature that sees sovereignty—and
particularly the right of nonintervention—as a static norm in
international politics, showing that there has always been an inherent
tension between rights and responsibilities and that the ‘traditional’
meaning of sovereignty became predominant only at the end of World War
II. Well-written and deeply rooted in the relevant literature, Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect makes a valuable contribution to scholarship in international relations.” -- Stacie Goddard, Wellesley College
"In international
relations, sovereignty has often been associated with the rule of
noninterference. In practice, it has been used as a veil behind which
abusive governments hide. In this brilliant new book, Luke Glanville
explodes the myth that sovereignty grants states carte blanche to govern
however they please. In meticulous detail, Glanville shows that the
theory and practice of sovereignty has always entailed responsibilities
as well as rights. Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect
forces us all to rethink how we understand, practice, and teach others
about sovereignty. As such, it marks an important contribution to the
field that should be read by newcomers and old hands alike." -- Alex Bellamy, Griffith University, Australia
More information is available
here.
