International Authority, the Responsibility to Protect and the Culture of the International Executive

London Review of International Law, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 148-157, 2013

Sydney Law School Research Paper No. 14/01

8 Pages Posted: 18 Jan 2014 Last revised: 20 Jan 2014

Date Written: January 16, 2014

Abstract

In her book, 'International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect,' Anne Orford compellingly demonstrates how the doctrine of responsibility to protect can be seen as providing a normative foundation for international authority already exercised through 'pre-existing practices of protection' on the part of the international executive. She does so through a close historical analysis of practice on the part of the UN, and particularly the work of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. In doing so, she positions Hammarskjöld as the 'founding father' of international executive action, and treats the expansion of international authority justified by reference to protection largely as a result of the implementation of Hammarskjöld’s vision for the development of international executive rule. Focusing on Hammarskjöld in this way provides the basis for an illuminating and coherent narrative of the development of the responsibility to protect concept. However, it also obscures questions of the social and institutional context within which Hammarskjöld’s ideas took effect. Quite evidently, it was not Hammarskjöld alone, but a whole bureaucratic machinery which performed the ‘protracted process’ of consolidating international executive power by reference to the concept of protection. But this social history of the responsibility to protect is largely missing from Orford’s narrative. As a result, Orford’s account of the ‘pre-existing…practices of protection,’ which responsibility to protect emerged to justify, is only partial, and leaves critical questions – such as the nature of those exercising international authority – unanswered. In this piece I therefore argue that Orford’s consideration of the political philosophy and intellectual history of the responsibility to protect needs to be supplemented by greater attention to its sociology, through an analysis of how practices of international executive action to 'protect life' developed through the institutional life – or 'culture' – of international bodies. Such an analysis not only offers a more complete picture of the consolidation of international executive authority based on protection, but also provides a basis for understanding how the responsibility to protect concept might affect the future practices of international institutions exercising executive power.

Keywords: International law, responsibility to protect, international authority, culture, sociology, Bourdieu

JEL Classification: K10, K30, K33

Suggested Citation

Mowbray, Jacqueline F, International Authority, the Responsibility to Protect and the Culture of the International Executive (January 16, 2014). London Review of International Law, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 148-157, 2013, Sydney Law School Research Paper No. 14/01, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2380480

Jacqueline F Mowbray (Contact Author)

University of Sydney - Faculty of Law ( email )

New Law Building, F10
The University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW 2006
Australia

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