Just and Unjust Interventions in World Politics Public and Private

Debates between realists, communitarians, and cosmopolitans about the ethics of intervention in world politics are disciplined by competing models of the public/private distinction. Taking insights and controversies from feminist political theory, Lu focuses on this construct to illuminate alternative images of 'sovereignty as privacy' and 'sovereignty as responsibility', and to identify new ethical challenges arising from the increased agency of private global civil society actors, and their uneasy relationship with the world of states in contexts of 'humanitarian intervention'.

Catherine Lu is Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Introduction * Public and Private: Towards Conceptual Clarification * Realism and the Tyranny of the Private * Sovereignty as Privacy * The One and Many Faces of Cosmopolitanism * Cosmopolitanism, Liberalism and Intervention * Cosmopolitan Humanitarianism and the Use of Force * Conclusion