While the 1990s gave rise to a wealth of literature on the notion of ethical foreign policy, it has tended to simply focus on a version of realism, which overlooks the role of ethics in international affairs. This book explores ethical realism as a theoretical framework.

While the 1990s gave rise to a wealth of literature on the notion of ethical foreign policy, it has tended to simply focus on a version of realism, which overlooks the role of ethics in international affairs, lacking an empirical analysis of foreign policy decision-making, with relation to ethical values in the post-Cold War period. This book addresses this gap in the literature by exploring ethical realism as a theoretical framework and, in particular, by looking at US humanitarian interventions at an empirical level to analyse ethical foreign policy in practice. Furthermore, it moves beyond the debate on legality or legitimacy of humanitarian interventions and focuses on whether a state would intervene for humanitarian purposes. Chang provides a deeper understanding of ethical foreign policy in theory and practice by applying ethical realism as a theoretical framework to evaluate the Clinton administration's foreign policy on humanitarian intervention. She addresses concepts of moral leadership and pragmatic foreign policy in the field of international relations in general and foreign policy analysis in particular.

This new volume moves beyond the limits of current debate to show how today’s foreign policy is increasingly about values rather than interests and why ethics are now playing a central role. Rather than counterposing interests and ethics, trying to find ‘hidden agendas’ or emphasizing the double-standards at play in ethical foreign policy, this book brings together leading international theorists, and a variety of stimulating approaches, to develop a critical understanding of the rise of ethical foreign policy, and to analyze the limits of ethical policy-making on its own terms. They deal with the limits of ‘ethical foreign policy’ both in the light of the internal dynamic of these policies themselves, and with regard to the often unintended consequences of policies designed to better the world. This book also shows how the transformation of both the domestic and the international spheres of politics means that ethics has become a rallying point for non-state actors and experts who gather around values and norms in order to force institutions to justify their behavior. This process results from different structural changes and the transformation of the international system, the individualization of Western societies and the growing importance of expertise in the justification of decisions in risk adverse societies. It leads to a transformation of norms and to a redefinition of a global ethical framework that needs to be clarified. This book will be of great interest to all students and researchers of foreign policy formation, politics and international relations.

Democratic citizenship possible: MERVYN FROST

On 12 May 1997, the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, launched a mission statement for New Labour's foreign policy. This essay asks whether New Labour have re-orientated the path of foreign policy from that established by the Conservatives.

This ground-breaking volume considers the ethical aspects of foreign policy change through five interrelated dimensions: conceptual, security, economic, normative and diplomatic. Defining ethics and what an ethical foreign policy should be is highly contested. The book includes many very different viewpoints to reflect the strong divergence of opinion on such issues as humanitarian intervention, free trade, the doctrine of preemption, political corruption and human rights. The thematic approach provides this volume with a clear organizational structure, giving readers a balanced overview of a number of important conceptual and practical issues central to the ethical analysis of states' conduct and foreign policy making. An impressive group of international scholars and practitioners, including a New Zealand Foreign Minister, a US National Security Advisor, and an ICJ Justice, makes this volume ideally suited to courses on international relations, security studies, ethics and human rights, philosophy, media studies and international law.

Having written widely about human rights and international relations, Chandler does not here attempt a history of them or their interrelationship. Rather he analyzes why the ethical agenda of human rights has become widely accepted since 1990, and indicates areas in which there appear to be limitations or at least important questions over the implications of this shift in approach. Distributed in the US by Stylus. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR