The Buck Stops Here: Understanding Special Responsibilities in World Politics

Abstract

Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power. By Mlada Bukovansky, Ian Clark, Robyn Eckersley, Richard Price, Christian Reus-Smit, Nicholas J. Wheeler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 263 pp., $29.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-1-107-69169-8). The book sets out to offer a theoretically compelling and empirically useful account of special responsibilities , defined as differentiated obligations that are collectively agreed upon. Approaching the subject from an English School orientation, the authors are well positioned to synthesize ideational and material variables, as well as power-centric and normative understandings of world order. This theoretical synthesis, using the concept of responsibilities as its vehicle, is largely attractive. For this reason, students of international relations theory are likely to take these ideas quite seriously. The concept of special responsibilities offers a persuasive alternative to more power-centric theories of hegemonic stability that have dominated thinking in international relations. Special responsibilities imply power, to be sure, but are socially constructed and conferred. For this reason, students of norms and world order should give the book's core argument very close consideration. Refreshingly, the authors venture into terrain rarely approached by mainstream international relations: normative theory. This foray represents a much-needed corrective to the obstinately empirical quality of most IR scholarship. For this reason, thinkers who, following Aristotle, understand that a science of politics is both empirical and normative, will be inclined to engage this text on substantive grounds and perhaps embrace it as a model for how quality and practically useful social science might be done. Academic works that attempt theoretical synthesis …