Punishment in International Society

Abstract

Abstract Punitive practices are highly revealing of a society’s social fabric, normative order, and power structure. The social sciences and humanities have studied punishment mostly in the context of the nation-state by examining how people, organizations, and legal institutions punish individual offenders. This book examines the penal philosophies and practices of a society that has barely been approached from such a perspective: international society. The chapters in this book show the added value of a punitive lens to international politics in at least two ways. First, punitive practices reveal the contours of the international normative order, its structures, and its hierarchies. Such a perspective highlights the prominent position of individuals in the current normative order, but it also reveals a major cleavage in the international normative order between a Global North that emphasizes individualized, retributive punishment for atrocity crimes, even if implemented highly selectively, and a Global South that puts reparations for past colonial wrongs on the agenda. Second, in contrast to a nation-state, the authority to sanction and thus to act in defense of the normative order is far more dispersed and contested in international society. Although there is a demand to embed punitive practices in procedures and institutions, the most legitimate site of such authority remains contested as regional organizations such as the African Union compete with the United Nations for the authority to sanction and act in defense of the normative order.