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Humanitarian Intervention (humanitarian + intervention)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%
Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences
International Relations54%
General & Introductory Political Science12%
General & Introductory Development Studies8%

Selected Abstracts

THE PROBLEM WITH MILITARY HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND ITS SOLUTION

PHILOSOPHICAL FORUM, Issue 1 2005
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE MERLE
First page of article [source]

American Humanitarian Intervention: Toward a Theory of Coevolution

FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 1 2007
ALYNNA J. LYON
The goal of this study is twofold. First, it seeks to move beyond the exploration of motivations for understanding why the United States launches some humanitarian interventions and avoids others. Second, it initiates a theory building process to map the complex international and domestic environment that frames American humanitarianism. To explain the selectivity of U.S. engagement, the article establishes a typology of actors, restraints, and concerns involved in the humanitarian policy-making process. It then presents a theory of coevolution that serves as a framework for understanding the interactive and diffusive dynamics between policy makers and their broader operating environment. With illustrative case studies on Operation Provide Comfort in Iraq (1991), Operation Allied Force in Kosovo (1999), and Operation Unified Assistance in response to the Asian Tsunami (2004), this study suggests that U.S.-led humanitarian interventions are part of larger episodes of engagement that hold consequences for subsequent involvements. It finds that altruistic interventions are often blurred with self-interested power pursuits, as American humanitarianism is the product of a confluence of domestic political factors, historical milieu, and international normative advancement. [source]

Principal-Agent Problems in Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazards, Adverse Selection, and the Commitment Dilemma

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2009
Robert W. Rauchhaus
A number of recent studies have concluded that humanitarian intervention can produce unintended consequences that reduce or completely undermine conflict management efforts. Some analysts have argued that the incentive structure produced by third parties is a form of moral hazard. This paper evaluates the utility of moral hazard theory and a second type of principal-agent problem known as adverse selection. Whereas moral hazards occur when an insured party has an opportunity to take hidden action once a contract is in effect, adverse selection is the result of asymmetric information prior to entering into a contract. Failing to distinguish between these two types of principal-agent problems may lead to policy advice that is irrelevant or potentially harmful. Along with introducing the concept of adverse selection to the debate on humanitarian intervention, this study identifies a commitment dilemma that explains why third parties operating in weakly institutionalized environments may be unable to punish groups that take advantage of intervention. [source]

The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2008
Alan J. Kuperman
This article explores a perverse consequence of the emerging norm of humanitarian intervention, or "Responsibility to Protect," contrary to its intent of protecting civilians from genocide and ethnic cleansing. The root of the problem is that such genocidal violence often represents state retaliation against a substate group for rebellion (such as an armed secession) by some of its members. The emerging norm, by raising expectations of diplomatic and military intervention to protect these groups, unintentionally fosters rebellion by lowering its expected cost and increasing its likelihood of success. In practice, intervention does sometimes help rebels attain their political goals, but usually it is too late or inadequate to avert retaliation against civilians. Thus, the emerging norm resembles an imperfect insurance policy against genocidal violence. It creates moral hazard that encourages the excessively risky or fraudulent behavior of rebellion by members of groups that are vulnerable to genocidal retaliation, but it cannot fully protect against the backlash. The emerging norm thereby causes some genocidal violence that otherwise would not occur. Bosnia and Kosovo illustrate that in at least two recent cases the moral-hazard hypothesis explains why members of a vulnerable group rebelled and thereby triggered genocidal retaliation. The article concludes by exploring whether potential interveners could mitigate genocidal violence by modifying their intervention policies to reduce moral hazard. [source]

"Do Ourselves Credit and Render a Lasting Service to Mankind": British Moral Prestige, Humanitarian Intervention, and the Barbary Pirates

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2003
Oded Löwenheim
This paper raises the issue of moral credibility in international relations and shows that considerations of preserving moral prestige can become crucial for armed humanitarian intervention. It contrasts realist and constructivist explanations about the causes of humanitarian intervention and demonstrates that traditional accounts do not provide a complete understanding of the phenomenon of intervention. In the case studied here, Britain engaged in a relatively costly humanitarian intervention against the Barbary pirates, slave trade in Christian Europeans due to her willingness to defy moral criticism and exhibit consistency with her professed moral principles. No material incentives and/or constraints influenced the British decision, and neither was it affected by a sense of felling, with regard to the Christian slaves. Instead, allegations that Britain urged Europe to abolish the black slave trade out of selfish interests, while at the same time turning a blind eye toward the Christian slave trade of the pirates, undermined British moral prestige and became the cause of the Barbary expedition. [source]

Humanitarian Intervention, Altruism, and the Limits of Casuistry

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS, Issue 1 2000
Richard B. Miller
This essay argues that the ethics of humanitarian intervention cannot be readily subsumed by the ethics of just war without due attention to matters of political and moral motivation. In the modern era, a just war draws directly from self-benefitting motives in wars of self-defense, or indirectly in wars that enforce international law or promote the global common good. Humanitarian interventions, in contrast, are intuitively admirable insofar as they are other-regarding. That difference poses a challenge to the casuistry of humanitarian intervention because it makes it difficult to reason by analogy from the case of war to the case of humanitarian intervention. The author develops this point in dialogue with Michael Walzer, the U.S. Catholic bishops, and President Clinton. He concludes by showing how a casuistry of intervention is possible, developing a motivational rationale that draws on the Golden Rule. [source]

Just Wars and Humanitarian Interventions

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Issue 4 2005
Rex Martin
First page of article [source]

Humanitarian Intervention, Altruism, and the Limits of Casuistry

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS, Issue 1 2000
Richard B. Miller
This essay argues that the ethics of humanitarian intervention cannot be readily subsumed by the ethics of just war without due attention to matters of political and moral motivation. In the modern era, a just war draws directly from self-benefitting motives in wars of self-defense, or indirectly in wars that enforce international law or promote the global common good. Humanitarian interventions, in contrast, are intuitively admirable insofar as they are other-regarding. That difference poses a challenge to the casuistry of humanitarian intervention because it makes it difficult to reason by analogy from the case of war to the case of humanitarian intervention. The author develops this point in dialogue with Michael Walzer, the U.S. Catholic bishops, and President Clinton. He concludes by showing how a casuistry of intervention is possible, developing a motivational rationale that draws on the Golden Rule. [source]

The ,New War' on Terror, Cosmopolitanism and the ,Just War' Revival

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 1 2008
Helen Dexter
The post-Cold War era has seen the return of the ,good war' and a move away from legal pacifism , the control of war through international law , to ,just war' theorizing. This article is concerned with the re-legitimization of warfare witnessed within the post-Cold War security paradigm that is being justified via humanitarian claims. It aims to highlight the difficult relationship that has developed since the commencement of the Bush administration's ,war on terror' between the cosmopolitan beliefs of those who have long argued for legal and legitimate humanitarian intervention, and the cosmopolitanism being espoused by the neo-conservatives of the Bush administration and the Project for the New American Century. [source]

The Responsibility to Protect and the problem of military intervention

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2008
ALEX J. BELLAMY
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has come a long way in a relatively short space of time. From inauspicious beginnings, the principle was endorsed by the General Assembly in 2005 and unanimously reaffirmed by the Security Council in 2006 (Resolution 1674). However, the principle remains hotly contested primarily because of its association with humanitarian intervention and the pervasive belief that its principal aim is to create a pathway for the legitimization of unilateral military intervention. This article sets forth the argument that a deepening consensus on R2P is dependent on its dissociation from the politics of humanitarian intervention and suggests that one way of doing this is by abandoning the search for criteria for decision-making about the use of force, one of the centre pieces of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 2001 report that coined the phrase R2P. Criteria were never likely to win international support, the article maintains, and were less likely to improve decision-making on how best to respond to major humanitarian crises. Nevertheless, R2P can make an important contribution to thinking about the problem of military intervention by mitigating potential ,moral hazards', overcoming the tendency of international actors to focus exclusively on military methods and giving impetus to efforts to operationalize protection in the field. [source]

Averting Forced Migration in Countries in Transition

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 3 2002
Susan Martin
Many countries of emigration are in transition from conflict to peace and from authoritarian to democratic governments. Addressing population movements from these countries requires more than economic opportunities; equally important is the establishment of the rule of law, respect for human rights, and, in countries recovering from conflict, reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure and housing. Otherwise, fragile peace and democratization processes can easily break down, creating new waves of forced migrants and hampering efforts towards repatriation and reintegration of already displaced populations. This background paper discusses the nature of forced migration, pointing out that the end of the Cold War has produced new pressures and new opportunities to address these flows. While extremism, particularly rampant nationalism, has provoked massive forced migration in many parts of the world, the changing geopolitical relations has also led to peace settlements in some countries and humanitarian intervention to reduce suffering in others. Addressing forced migration pressures in countries in transition requires comprehensive policy approaches. Four types of best practices are considered in this paper. First, mechanisms to ameliorate the causes of forced movements, including the role that expatriate communities can play in strengthening the rule of law and respect for human rights, particularly minority rights. Second, mechanisms that enhance refugee protection while minimizing abuses of asylum systems, including enhanced respect for the refugee convention, adoption of complementary forms of protection when the refugee convention does not apply, strengthened regional protection, and the establishment of in,country processing of refugee claims. Third, mechanisms to resolve the longer,term status of forced migrants, including decisions on when to cease refugee status and temporary protection and encourage/permit return or integration. Fourth, mechanisms for more effective repatriation when return is possible, particularly programs to help returnees reintegrate and communities reconstruct themselves. [source]

Realizing the Responsibility to Protect

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 2 2009
Alex J. Bellamy
Written prior to the release of the UN Secretary-General's report on implementing the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), this article examines the effort to translate the principle from words into deeds. It begins by noting a post-2005 "revolt" against the principle in which a number of states expressed skepticism about the principle and its use in different settings. This revolt, the article contends, was largely a product of the continuing association between R2P and humanitarian intervention. This association was, in turn, caused by a combination of misplaced commentary and the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty's focus on the intervention question. This article maintains that building consensus on the R2P requires a shift in emphasis and proposes three avenues: clarifying the nature of prevention, developing practical measures, and proposing modest proposals for institutional reform. [source]

Ethics and Foreign Policy: Structured Debates for the International Studies Classroom

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 2 2004
Jeffrey S. Lantis
Debates about humanitarian intervention, foreign and defense policy priorities, and the ethics of the use of force have become highly politicized in the post-Cold War era. This article explores the value of structured classroom debates on ethical dimensions of international relations as active teaching and learning tools for introductory and advanced international studies courses. Specifically, this article presents design information for structured debates on the ethics of the use of military force, humanitarian interventions, and U.S. foreign policy toward international institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC). Building on the literature on active teaching and learning, the article describes the development of these exercises and assesses their effectiveness through ten years of classroom application. [source]

Principal-Agent Problems in Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazards, Adverse Selection, and the Commitment Dilemma

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2009
Robert W. Rauchhaus
A number of recent studies have concluded that humanitarian intervention can produce unintended consequences that reduce or completely undermine conflict management efforts. Some analysts have argued that the incentive structure produced by third parties is a form of moral hazard. This paper evaluates the utility of moral hazard theory and a second type of principal-agent problem known as adverse selection. Whereas moral hazards occur when an insured party has an opportunity to take hidden action once a contract is in effect, adverse selection is the result of asymmetric information prior to entering into a contract. Failing to distinguish between these two types of principal-agent problems may lead to policy advice that is irrelevant or potentially harmful. Along with introducing the concept of adverse selection to the debate on humanitarian intervention, this study identifies a commitment dilemma that explains why third parties operating in weakly institutionalized environments may be unable to punish groups that take advantage of intervention. [source]

The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2008
Alan J. Kuperman
This article explores a perverse consequence of the emerging norm of humanitarian intervention, or "Responsibility to Protect," contrary to its intent of protecting civilians from genocide and ethnic cleansing. The root of the problem is that such genocidal violence often represents state retaliation against a substate group for rebellion (such as an armed secession) by some of its members. The emerging norm, by raising expectations of diplomatic and military intervention to protect these groups, unintentionally fosters rebellion by lowering its expected cost and increasing its likelihood of success. In practice, intervention does sometimes help rebels attain their political goals, but usually it is too late or inadequate to avert retaliation against civilians. Thus, the emerging norm resembles an imperfect insurance policy against genocidal violence. It creates moral hazard that encourages the excessively risky or fraudulent behavior of rebellion by members of groups that are vulnerable to genocidal retaliation, but it cannot fully protect against the backlash. The emerging norm thereby causes some genocidal violence that otherwise would not occur. Bosnia and Kosovo illustrate that in at least two recent cases the moral-hazard hypothesis explains why members of a vulnerable group rebelled and thereby triggered genocidal retaliation. The article concludes by exploring whether potential interveners could mitigate genocidal violence by modifying their intervention policies to reduce moral hazard. [source]

"Do Ourselves Credit and Render a Lasting Service to Mankind": British Moral Prestige, Humanitarian Intervention, and the Barbary Pirates

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2003
Oded Löwenheim
This paper raises the issue of moral credibility in international relations and shows that considerations of preserving moral prestige can become crucial for armed humanitarian intervention. It contrasts realist and constructivist explanations about the causes of humanitarian intervention and demonstrates that traditional accounts do not provide a complete understanding of the phenomenon of intervention. In the case studied here, Britain engaged in a relatively costly humanitarian intervention against the Barbary pirates, slave trade in Christian Europeans due to her willingness to defy moral criticism and exhibit consistency with her professed moral principles. No material incentives and/or constraints influenced the British decision, and neither was it affected by a sense of felling, with regard to the Christian slaves. Instead, allegations that Britain urged Europe to abolish the black slave trade out of selfish interests, while at the same time turning a blind eye toward the Christian slave trade of the pirates, undermined British moral prestige and became the cause of the Barbary expedition. [source]

Humanitarian Intervention, Altruism, and the Limits of Casuistry

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS, Issue 1 2000
Richard B. Miller
This essay argues that the ethics of humanitarian intervention cannot be readily subsumed by the ethics of just war without due attention to matters of political and moral motivation. In the modern era, a just war draws directly from self-benefitting motives in wars of self-defense, or indirectly in wars that enforce international law or promote the global common good. Humanitarian interventions, in contrast, are intuitively admirable insofar as they are other-regarding. That difference poses a challenge to the casuistry of humanitarian intervention because it makes it difficult to reason by analogy from the case of war to the case of humanitarian intervention. The author develops this point in dialogue with Michael Walzer, the U.S. Catholic bishops, and President Clinton. He concludes by showing how a casuistry of intervention is possible, developing a motivational rationale that draws on the Golden Rule. [source]

Europe at the Millennium

POLITICS, Issue 2 2000
Mary Kaldor
This article argues that the future of the European project depends on the capacity to maintain security. It traces the link between security and political institutions in the case of nation states and, subsequently, blocs. The security of nation states and blocs was defined in terms of the defence of borders against an external enemy and the preservation of law and order within borders. Today, the distinction between internal and external has broken down; ,new wars' are a mixture of war, organised crime and violations of human rights. Security can only be maintained through the extension of law and order beyond borders , through enlargement, migration and citizenship policies, and effective humanitarian intervention. Any other approach could lead to a reversal of the process of integration. This type of security policy is likely to be associated with a very different type of polity. [source]

Revising place-code schemes for humanitarian relief

PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2007
Randall B. Kemp
When clear communication about a location, such as a village name, is critical in times of humanitarian intervention, the use of place names can result in ambiguity. A place code system, on the other hand, has potential to reduce confusion and increase information sharing and coordination of relief efforts. This poster explores the possibilities of a place-code scheme revision for humanitarian action. [source]

Dynamics of NGO legitimacy: how organising betrays core missions of INGOs

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2008
Ringo Ossewaarde
Abstract International non-governmental organisations (INGOs) are prominent actors in the international arena, aiming to improve the life of disadvantaged people. However, INGOs often do not succeed in doing this. Consequently, INGO legitimacy is regularly questioned. Increased transparency and tightened accountability mechanisms are often-mentioned solutions to this problem. Based on an analysis of four dimensions of INGO legitimacy,normative, regulatory, cognitive and output legitimacy,we argue that this is not necessarily adequate. We conclude that INGO mission statements create a normative source of legitimacy, but that this, in itself, is not enough to ground INGO legitimacy: it also needs to be institutionalised and organised. However, as a result of power relations and resulting pressures for accountability and transparency, as defined by their external stakeholders, INGOs experience a permanent struggle to reconcile their mission with the requirements for regulatory, cognitive and output legitimacy. The more these stakeholders press for increased organisation of INGO work, the more the pursuit of the core objectives of INGOs is obstructed. We illustrate this argument with the case of the post-Tsunami humanitarian intervention (2004/2005). Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

American Humanitarian Intervention: Toward a Theory of Coevolution

FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 1 2007
ALYNNA J. LYON
The goal of this study is twofold. First, it seeks to move beyond the exploration of motivations for understanding why the United States launches some humanitarian interventions and avoids others. Second, it initiates a theory building process to map the complex international and domestic environment that frames American humanitarianism. To explain the selectivity of U.S. engagement, the article establishes a typology of actors, restraints, and concerns involved in the humanitarian policy-making process. It then presents a theory of coevolution that serves as a framework for understanding the interactive and diffusive dynamics between policy makers and their broader operating environment. With illustrative case studies on Operation Provide Comfort in Iraq (1991), Operation Allied Force in Kosovo (1999), and Operation Unified Assistance in response to the Asian Tsunami (2004), this study suggests that U.S.-led humanitarian interventions are part of larger episodes of engagement that hold consequences for subsequent involvements. It finds that altruistic interventions are often blurred with self-interested power pursuits, as American humanitarianism is the product of a confluence of domestic political factors, historical milieu, and international normative advancement. [source]

Ethics and Foreign Policy: Structured Debates for the International Studies Classroom

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 2 2004
Jeffrey S. Lantis
Debates about humanitarian intervention, foreign and defense policy priorities, and the ethics of the use of force have become highly politicized in the post-Cold War era. This article explores the value of structured classroom debates on ethical dimensions of international relations as active teaching and learning tools for introductory and advanced international studies courses. Specifically, this article presents design information for structured debates on the ethics of the use of military force, humanitarian interventions, and U.S. foreign policy toward international institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC). Building on the literature on active teaching and learning, the article describes the development of these exercises and assesses their effectiveness through ten years of classroom application. [source]