State Civil Disobedience and international society

Abstract

This article examines the concept of State Civil Disobedience (SCD) in the context of international society. It is argued that SCD is problematic for several reasons. First, that SCD is extremely difficult to practice in an association such as international society, relying, as it does, a great deal on the policies and powers of a few dominating actors; second, that the unequal status of states makes SCD mainly an instrument of the strong, hence undermining not only the idea of civil disobedience as the strategy of the weak but also questioning the role of SCD within an international society based on the formal equality of states. It is concluded that the practice of SCD in international society requires an invigoration of international society as a moral association. A more practical alternative, it is argued, is to conceive of a limited concept of SCD confined largely to non-violent means and preferably practiced in order to resist legal anomalies.

Destituent power in the European Union: On the limits of a negativistic logic of constitutional politics

“…While Franceschet does not formulate standards of legitimacy for the exercise of destituent power, it is clear that the category of civil disobedience is supposed to do the normative work and that he rejects a core condition of the classical understanding of it, namely that the actors must ‘seek legal reforms’ (Delmas, 2016: 682). Ronnie Hjorth (2017) accepts this revision but points out that state civil disobedience can appear as a justified response to specific political ills only if it occurs in the context of an overall legitimate basic structure:If there is no […] common normative framework, meaning that if there aren’t any shared norms and institutions, any shared moral conception within which justificatory claims can be addressed and met […], then the whole idea […] seems difficult to consider. (2017: 355)…”

State civil disobedience: A republican perspective

“…Otfried Höffe (2007: 244), for example, claims that the idea of transnational democracy presupposes the possibility of “world-federal disobedience” which, of course, would have to remain “the ultima ratio ,” because “as with individual states, disobedience at the global level is prone to considerable abuse.” Therefore, Robert Goodin (2005: 236) demands that states, which act like “would-be law-makers” by breaking international law, should justify their actions publicly and prove their willingness to accept legal sanctions. This might be the only way to find out whether these states differ from “ordinary law-breakers.” The lawbreaker has to prove that it seeks a “moral improvement of society” (Hjorth, 2017: 332). A good example was the Brazilian government’s decision to issue a compulsory license for an HIV/AIDS medication produced by the US pharmaceutical company Merck, in defiance of intellectual property rights guaranteed by the TRIPS Agreement, in May 2007 (Neubauer, 2016: 141–170).…”