Just Politics: Human Rights and the Foreign Policy of Great Powers (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) - Hardcover

Walldorf Jr., C. William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801446333 ISBN 13: 9780801446337

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2008

Synopsis

Many foreign policy analysts assume that elite policymakers in liberal democracies consistently ignore humanitarian norms when these norms interfere with commercial and strategic interests. Today's endorsement by Western governments of repressive regimes in countries from Kazakhstan to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the name of fighting terror only reinforces this opinion. In Just Politics, C. William Walldorf Jr. challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that human rights concerns have often led democratic great powers to sever vital strategic partnerships even when it has not been in their interest to do so.

Walldorf sets out his case in detailed studies of British alliance relationships with the Ottoman Empire and Portugal in the nineteenth century and of U.S. partnerships with numerous countries―ranging from South Africa, Turkey, Greece and El Salvador to Nicaragua, Chile, and Argentina―during the Cold War. He finds that illiberal behavior by partner states, varying degrees of pressure by nonstate actors, and legislative activism account for the decisions by democracies to terminate strategic partnerships for human rights reasons.

To demonstrate the central influence of humanitarian considerations and domestic politics in the most vital of strategic moments of great-power foreign policy, Walldorf argues that Western governments can and must integrate human rights into their foreign policies. Failure to take humanitarian concerns into account, he contends, will only damage their long-term strategic objectives.

About this title

About the Author

C. William Walldorf Jr. is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University.

From the Back Cover

"Just Politics is a very important contribution to the growing body of scholarship that examines how, why, and when the foreign policies of states are shaped by human rights."--Michael Barnett, Stassen Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota, and coeditor of Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics

"Just Politics is an exceptionally clear and well-conceived book demonstrating the conditions under which legislatures in Britain and the United States pressure executives to terminate commitments to allies because of the allies' poor humanitarian behavior. C. William Waldorf Jr. takes domestic politics and institutions seriously in explaining foreign policy outcomes and breaks new ground as he demonstrates the power of norms to shape behavior."-Mlada Bukovansky, Smith College

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801446333
• ISBN 13: 9780801446337
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248