Cosmopolitan liberalism and the faces of injustice in International Relations

Abstract

The most significant intellectual contribution of Charles Beitz's book, Political Theory and International Relations, was captured by his use of the word ‘and’ in the book's title to connect the previously estranged fields of political theory and international relations (IR). His book constituted a bold challenge to a prevailing realist view in the field of IR, that was sceptical ‘about the status of moral principles’ in a Hobbesian state-eat-state world. Beitz's work also challenged the traditional orientation of contemporary political theory, that took for granted the bounded rather than ‘universal community’ as the locus of inquiry about issues of justice and political morality. The marriage of political theory and IR has produced in the past twenty-five years a rich and diverse body of international political theory that engages, in a direct and rigorous fashion, previously obscured or marginalised normative dimensions of international issues ranging from war and intervention to global poverty and economic inequality.