Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics: Online-First Articles

The power of old ideas newly expressed

Building legitimacy and the new discourse of humanitarian intervention

ORCID logo | California State University, Chico
This article tracks the legitimization practices deployed to change the discourse regarding coercive interventions to protect human lives which, at the end of the 1990s, became both acceptable practices discussed in multilateral settings and deeply controversial issues. It focuses on the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) and two important strategies. The first is the proposition to change the ways in which we talk about (military) intervention for human protection purposes, i.e. a passage from “humanitarian intervention” and the “right to intervene” towards R2P. The second is the practices that agents hoped would give legitimacy to their ideas, especially regarding postcolonial states, historically skeptical and critical of humanitarian intervention. I argue that the agents were able to reframe the debate using more legitimate discourse while adopting legitimization practices to raise the acceptability of R2P.
Keywords: responsibility to protect, humanitarian intervention, international commissions, legitimacy.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Building legitimacy
  • 3.The humanitarian intervention question
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Legitimization practices and R2P
    • 5.1Changing the language
    • 5.2Creating an international commission
    • 5.3The “Fiction” of geographic diversity
  • 6.Interlude — R2P agreed upon at the 2005 World Summit
  • 7.R2P as an “African concept”
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgement
  • References
Published online: 31 October 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22185.bel
References (45)
References
Ambrosetti, David. 2009. Normes et rivalités diplomatiques à l’ONU: le Conseil de sécurité en audience. Bruxelles: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anghie, Antony. 2014. “Towards a Postcolonial International Law.” In Critical International Law: Postrealism, Postcolonialism, and Transnationalism, ed. by Prabhakar Singh and Benoît Mayer, 123–142. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Annan, Kofi. 1999. “Two Concepts of Sovereignty.” The Economist 352 (8138): 49–50.Google Scholar
Ban Ki-moon. 2009. A/63/677 — Implementing the Responsibility to Protect. Report of the Secretary General. New York: United Nations.Google Scholar
Barnett, Michael N. 1997. “Bringing in the New World Order: Liberalism, Legitimacy, and the United Nations.” World Politics 49 (4): 526–551. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011. Empire of Humanity. A History of Humanitarianism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Bélanger-Vincent, Ariane. 2020. “‘Bypass the UN’: Diplomatic Practices and Change in Multilateral Settings.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 43 (1): 21–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bellamy, Alex J. 2005. “Responsibility to Protect or Trojan Horse? The Crisis in Darfur and Humanitarian Intervention after Iraq.” Ethics & International Affairs 19 (2): 31–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006. “Whither the Responsibility to Protect? Humanitarian Intervention and the 2005 World Summit.” Ethics & International Affairs 20 (2): 143–169. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bellier, Irène. 2005. “Anthropology of Institutions and Discourse Analysis: Looking Into Interdisciplinarity.” In A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis, ed. by Ruth Wodak and Paul Chilton, 243–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984 [1979]. Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 1990 [1980]. The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig. 2010. “The Idea of Emergency: Humanitarian Action and Global (Dis)Order.” In Contemporary States of Emergency: The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions, ed. by Didier Fassin and Mariella Pandolfi, 29–58. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Cooper, Andrew F., and John English. 2005. “International Comission and the Mind of Global Governance.” In International Commissions and the Power of Ideas, ed. by Ramesh Thakur, Andrew F. Cooper and John English, 1–26. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.Google Scholar
Deng, Francis, Sadikiel Kimaro, Terrence Lyons, Donald Rothchild, and William I. Zartman. 1996. Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa. Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAIT). 2000. “Changes Made to the Proposal For Canada to Launch an International Commission After Consultations with Missions and Inputs from Stakeholders,” obtained by the author through the Access to Information Act, emphasis in the original.Google Scholar
Dillon, Michael, and Julian Reid. 2001. “Global Liberal Governance: Biopolitics, Security and War.” Millenium 30 (1): 41–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duffield, Mark. 2001. Global Governance and the New Wars. The Merging of Development and Security. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Evans, Gareth. 2005. “Foreword.” In International Commissions and the Power of Ideas, ed. by Ramesh Thakur, Andrew F. Cooper and John English, x–xii. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.Google Scholar
. 2008. Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 2005. “Blair’s Contribution to Elaborating a New Doctrine of ‘International Community’”. Journal of Language and Politics 4 (1): 1–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Analysing Discourse. Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, n.d. “What is R2P?” Accessed October 2, 2022. [URL]
Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. 1997. “Discipline and Practice: ‘The Field’ as Site, Method, and Location in Anthropology.” In Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science, ed. by Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, 1–46. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gusterson, Hugh. 1997. “Studying Up Revisited.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 20 (1): 114–119.Google Scholar
. 2001. “Elites, Anthropology of.” In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, ed. by Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, 4417–4420. Oxford: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hehir, Aidan. 2019. Hollow Norms and the Responsibility to Protect. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
ICISS. 2001a. The Responsibility to Protect. Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre.Google Scholar
. 2001b. The Responsibility to Protect. Research, Bibliography, Background. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre.Google Scholar
Malkki, Liisa H. 1992. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity Among Scholars and Refugees.” Cultural Anthropology 7 (1): 24–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marcus, G. E. 1995. “Ethnography in/of the World System : The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography.” Annual Review of Anthropology 241: 95–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McRae, Rob, and Don Hubert, ed. 2001. Human Security and the New Diplomacy. Protecting People, Promoting Peace. Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nader, Laura. 1999 [1972]. “Up the Anthropologist — Perspectives Gained from Studying Up.” In Reinventing Anthropology, ed. by Dell Hymes, 284–311. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Reyes, Antonio. 2011. “Strategies of Legitimization in Political Discourse: From Words to Actions.” Discourse & Society 22 (6): 781–807. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strauss, Hekkehard. 2009. “A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush — On the Assumed Legal Nature of the Responsibility to Protect.” Global Responsibility to Protect 1 (3): 291–323. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thakur, Ramesh. 2002. “Intervention, Sovereignty and Responsibility to Protect: Experience from ICISS.” Security Dialogue 33 (3): 323–340. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thakur, Ramesh, and Thomas Weiss. 2009. “R2P: From Idea to Norm — and Action?” Global Responsibility to Protect 1 (1): 22–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
UN. 1993. United Nations Year Book 47. New York: United Nations.Google Scholar
UNGA. 2005. 2005 World Summit Outcome. A/RES/60/1. [URL]
Weber, Max. 1978. “The Types of Legitimate Domination.” In Econony and Society — Volume 1, ed. by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 212–301. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Weiss, Thomas, Tatiana Carayannis, and Richard Jolly. 2009. “The ‘Third’ United Nations.” Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations 15 (1): 123–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wheeler, Nicholas J. 2000. Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wright, Susan, and Sue Reinhold. 2011. “‘Studying through’: a Strategy for Studying Political Transformation. Or Sex, Lies, and British Politics.” In Policy Words. Anthropology and Analysis of Contemporary Power, ed. by Cris Shore, Susan Wright and Davide Pero, 86–104. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar