Promoting Justice Across Borders

The Ethics of Reform Intervention

Lucia M. Rafanelli

One of the first book-length treatments to examine the full range of activities that qualify as reform intervention, understood as any attempt to promote justice in a foreign society
Bridges the gap between theory and practice by illustrating how ethical principles could (and should) inform real-world political decision-making
Introduces a new typology of various kinds of reform intervention

Promoting Justice Across Borders

The Ethics of Reform Intervention

Lucia M. Rafanelli

Description

Global political actors, from states and NGOs to activist groups and individuals, exert influence in societies beyond their own in myriad ways--including via public criticism, consumer boycotts, divestment campaigns, sanctions, and forceful intervention. Often, they do so in the name of justice-promotion. While attempts to promote justice in other societies can do good, they are also often subject to moral criticism and raise several serious moral questions. For example, are there ways to promote one's own ideas about justice in another society while still treating its members tolerantly? Are there ways to do so without disrespecting their legitimate political institutions or undermining their collective self-determination?

To understand the ethics of justice-promoting intervention, Lucia M. Rafanelli moves beyond the traditional focus of other scholarship in this area on states waging wars or employing other conventional tools of coercive foreign policy. Specifically, Rafanelli constructs a philosophically-grounded and nuanced ethics of intervention to determine when attempts to promote justice in foreign societies are morally permissible.

Promoting Justice Across Borders develops ethical standards for justice-promoting intervention that call on us to rethink received notions about the ordinary bounds of politics, and to abandon the thought that politics does and should take place primarily within the state. These ethical standards also give us a model for how to engage in political struggles for justice on a global scale--not only in conditions of supreme emergency, but in the ordinary circumstances of everyday global politics. They therefore form the basis of a cosmopolitanism that is neither premised upon nor aimed at bringing about the end of politics. Ultimately, Rafanelli shows how the promotion of justice everywhere can be the legitimate (political) concern of people anywhere.

Promoting Justice Across Borders

The Ethics of Reform Intervention

Lucia M. Rafanelli

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Beyond the State, Beyond War: Re-Conceptualizing Reform Intervention
Chapter 2: Toleration as Engagement
Chapter 3: Degrees of Legitimacy
Chapter 4: Collective Self-Determination without Isolation
Chapter 5: Chaos and Consequences: Promoting Justice in a Non-Ideal World
Chapter 6: Conclusion
References

Promoting Justice Across Borders

The Ethics of Reform Intervention

Lucia M. Rafanelli

Author Information

Lucia M. Rafanelli is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University, where she is also an affiliate of the Institute for International Economic Policy. Before joining the George Washington faculty, she worked as a Research Associate at Chapman University's Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy. Rafanelli's primary research interests include contemporary political theory, global justice, and theories of human rights. She also has interests in collective agency and collective personhood, philosophy of law, and the ethics of artificial intelligence. Her work has appeared in outlets such as The Journal of Political Philosophy and Political Studies.

Promoting Justice Across Borders

The Ethics of Reform Intervention

Lucia M. Rafanelli

Reviews and Awards

Runner-Up, 2022 Book Award, International Ethics Section, International Studies Association

"Most global political theory focuses on the most coercive forms of international pressure: on military force, or on monetary coercion. Much of what global agents do, though, involves considerably more subtle and nuanced tools. Lucia Rafanelli's Promoting Justice Across Borders offers a novel and plausible account of how to understand the moral framework with which these tools might be undersood. It is clearly written, lucidly argued, and exemplary in its attention to empirical detail. This is an exceptionally good book on an exceptionally important topic. It deserves to be read by everyone interested in understanding, and building, a just global society." -- Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy, and Governance, University of Washington

"Lucia Rafanelli offers a groundbreaking account of transnational politics that theoretically unpacks the state, the international system, and the range of foreign influence practices. Rafanelli centers boycotts, divestment campaigns, and other neglected forms of transnational activism to offer a nuanced model of intervention. By conceptualizing how normative judgment on intervention is qualified by actors' positions in the international hierarchy, interventions' effects over domestic institutions, and ties between foreign actors and local communities, this book opens exciting new paths forward." -- Inés Valdez, author of Transnational Cosmopolitanism: Kant, Du Bois, and Justice as a Political Craft