Abstract
In her recent book Gillian Brock argues that states’ legitimacy depends on their being part of a just state system that protects human rights. Here I discuss some practical limitations raised by Brock’s legitimacy framework: mainly, (1) the problematic real-world implications of such an account, and (2) the epistemic challenges that judgements inspired by this account would have to face, were we to proceed solely on the basis of it.
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Notes
Brock 2020. In-text page number citations will refer to this work.
Any single human rights violation in one country on its own (especially given the long list of human rights, some more important than others) will not do much to undermine the legitimacy of the state system and thus compromise the claim to self-determination of all other states. We are thus talking of significant failures in the protection of the most important human rights.
Of course, individuals (and non-state collective agents such as corporations) may contribute to or be complicit with human rights violations in their own country or elsewhere (think of arms traffickers). Can we not thus say that they have duties as well to promote a just state system since those human rights violations count towards whether the state system is just or not? Notice, however, that individuals’ behaviour contributes to an unjust state system only insofar as states fail to correct or prevent such behaviour. Because of this, we could argue that the states in question are the only ones liable for the ensuing unjust state system, while the individuals themselves are only liable for their individual human rights violations.
After all, some states (such as Russia) have used external citizens’ rights as a pretext for invading another country (Ukraine). And since many states have external kin minorities, any weakening of the doctrine of self-determination might be used opportunistically by some states to justify their unwarranted intervention or interference in another country’s politics.
Although the surrounding text seems to suggest that by ‘robust’ right(s) to self-determination, Brock means right(s) that can be defended through robust justification rather than referring to the actual scope or expansiveness of these right(s), which would allow for the gradations discussed here (see pp. 39, 37, 33, 5).
For example, we should expect way more from affluent states that have almost eradicated poverty within their borders (e.g., Scandinavian states), states that carry significant weight in world politics or that are permanent members of the UN Security Council. As ‘leaders of the free world’ and arbiters on the world scene, states such as the United States should have magnified responsibilities because their internal record sets an example for the rest of the world.
E.g., they may devote significant aid to post-conflict reconstruction while their arms trade is contributing indirectly to human rights violations and conflict.
Libya comes to mind.
References
Brock, G. 2020. Justice for people on the move. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dryzek, J. S., and A. Tanasoca. 2021. Democratizing global justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tanasoca, A., and J. S. Dryzek. 2021. Democratic altruism. International Theory 13 (2): 205–230.
Funding
Research on this paper was funded through Macquarie University Research Fellowship MQRF0001054.
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Tanasoca, A. Assessing States’ Claims to Self-Determination in the Real World. Res Publica 28, 445–450 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09533-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09533-0