The Politics of Global Legalism and Human Security

Abstract

This article argues that human security discourses and initiatives are made intelligible by the politics of applying legalism to global politics. Human security projects like the International Criminal Court, the Ottawa Treaty on landmines, and coercive interventions like Kosovo are shaped, mobilised, but also limited and constrained by the wider problematic of the legal constitution of global politics. Although human security has been the justification for efforts to liberalise and humanise politics through law, it has also been associated with exceptionalistic and non-universal legal relationships that reinforce the interests of the most dominant actors in global politics. As a result, human security runs the danger of becoming an instrument of hegemony. Nonetheless, the article also argues that there are always progressive political openings in the politics of a global rule of law that can facilitate a wider conception of human security than has been pursued since the mid-1990s.