Rethinking the Principle of (Sovereign) Equality as a Standard of Civilisation

Abstract

The standard of civilisation is most often identified as the infamous legal doctrine that legitimised imperialist rule and the exclusion of non-European non-Christian states from the international society. In disciplinary narratives of both International Relations and International Law this colonial project is usually presented as a mere interlude on the way to a mature and inclusive international society based sovereign equality as its organising principle. In line with more critical historiography, which shows how colonialism is the condition of possibility for both sovereignty and international law, this article investigates how a standard of civilisation is inherent in political legal practices of international ordering. Moreover, while usually presented as a practice of exclusion, this article will analyse the more intricate dynamic of inclusion and exclusion as a basis for international order by addressing the legal politics of subjecthood (as objects and subjects of the imagined global regime). More specifically, it will address how law operates as a technology through the interplay between a standard of civilisation, the principle of equality and legal subjectivity. The article will look into legal practices of different historical periods (in the age of discovery, during the colonial expansion, and in modern international society) to analyse the workings and transformations of these legal technologies. Together this will show how an (implicit) standard of civilisation is entrenched in the operation of law as a technology of international order. This does not stop with the universalisation of sovereign equality as the organising principle of an inclusive or 'global' international society. This article will argue that this reveals the productive power of law which functions not just as a juridical rule to regulate relations between independent and equal sovereign subjects, but operates as the norm to produce appropriate sovereigns as members of the international society.

Shape shifting: Civilizational discourse and the analysis of cross-cultural interaction in the constitution of international society

“…Aalberts has continued the School’s exploration of the interplay between the standards of civilization and international law. However, she treats international law as not only as an institution but an ordering principle, a governmental technology and a form of productive power through which shifting conceptions of legitimate authority are articulated and regulated (Aalberts, 2014: 779).…”

“…But here the standards of civilization have become again a site of contestation. As noted above, the promotion of self-determination as a right was fundamental to decolonization and delegitimating the ‘standards of civilization’ as a regulatory framework of sovereignty (Aalberts, 2014). The commensurate reconceptualization of sovereignty fundamentally altered the boundaries and politics of recognition in international society.…”

“…As Linklater (2017) notes, this echoes conceptions of the responsibilities of ‘civilized states’ to intervene in other societies to contain violence and acts of ‘barbarism’ (2017: 451). States depicted as uncivilized, backward, illiberal or rogue are often represented as ‘failed states’, justifying interventions by states who conform to liberal criteria (Aalberts, 2014: 785). Yet the selectivity of humanitarian interventions has fuelled perceptions that human rights provides a new mechanism for promoting Western values and interests, replicating the use of civilizational discourse to construct hierarchies within, and the boundaries of, international society (Buzan, 2014; Teitt, 2017; Zhang, 2014, 2017).…”

The hierarchical society: the politics of self-determination and the constitution of new states after 1919

“…Moreover, it is a process that is deeply interconnected with empire (Anghie, 2009; Keene, 2002; Reus-Smit, 2013) and, in the more recent past, with other, more or less violent, forms of control and domination. Critical, post-colonial and feminist scholars have shown that these include economic and financial standards (Chimni, 2006; Mozaffari, 2002), hierarchies generated by international law (Aalberts, 2014, Anghie, 2009; Pahuja, 2011), relations of gender dominance (Towns, 2009; Yuval-Davis, 1997), racial hierarchies (Sabaratnam, 2017; Yunis, 2018), stratifications of class (Agathangelou and Ling, 2009; Pal, 2018) and nationality (Chatterjee, 1993, 2010). A number of scholars have further stressed that, historically, resistance has been as central a pattern as domination in the making of the international system (Crawford, 2002; Lake and Reynolds, 2008; Meger, 2017).…”

Everyday sovereignty: International experts, brokers and local ownership in peacebuilding Liberia

“…Practices such as peacekeeping and peacebuilding, in such a view, have become institutionalized tools in a broader process in which sovereignty has become governmentalized (Aalberts, 2014; Andersen and Sending, 2010; Bartelson, 2014; Zanotti, 2011), itself a tool for restoring order in areas where ‘forms of political authority still refuse to be squeezed into the symbolic form of sovereignty’ (Bartelson, 2014: 89). No longer absolute, but contingent upon ‘proper’ state behaviour, sovereignty today becomes the prize of good behaviour, but also the blueprint or prescription for how to craft polities coming out of longer periods of protracted conflict (Andersen and Sending, 2010).…”