The foundation of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) was celebrated as a cornerstone for a new international order after 1918. Article 14 of the Covenant gave the PCIJ a double function ‘to hear and determine any dispute of international character’ as well as to ‘give an advisory opinion upon any dispute or question referred to by the Council or by the Assembly’. The second clause contained a novel instrument for an international court, that of the advisory opinion. It empowered the newly founded League of Nations (LoN) to initiate the advisory jurisdiction and thus opened new ways in which the court could shape international politics. The chapter will explore the advisory jurisdiction during the interwar period and examine not only how the LoN used the PCIJ’s new function but also how the PCIJ adopted its new role in international politics. The experimental character of the advisory opinion will be the focus of this chapter. It first examines how the drafters imagined the new instrument of an advisory opinion to work as part of the court’s procedure. A second part discusses various examples of PCIJ’s advisory opinions by examining the motives of the LoN to use this new tool and how the PCIJ dealt with the new task. A third part highlights the scope and limitations of the advisory jurisdiction. The chapter shows that the advisory jurisdiction was a popular instrument used to resolve conflicts at an early stage but also demonstrates the PCIJ’s reluctancy to adopt its new function.
This chapter argues that the League of Nations, claiming to be the first universal world organisation, had a decisive and enduring impact on the conceptualisation and practices of the malleable yet timeless concept of state sovereignty. These concepts and practices, in turn, played an instrumental role in shaping the international order. While many historians have emphasised the supposedly globalised and shared sovereignty managed by the League, given the emergence of numerous transnational actors, nodes and networks around it, this chapter demonstrates the ongoing significance of the sovereign state concept and the recognition or dispute of sovereignty within the intergovernmental organisation’s operations. It does so through an analysis of recent research findings from various disciplines. The chapter shows that rather than limiting the model of the sovereign nation-state, the League standardised, strengthened, expanded and globalised it. The League became a tool through which certain claims for sovereignty were deemed legitimate while others were not, leading to the recognition of some entities as sovereign and the denial of sovereignty to others. Moreover, League interventions compelled states to defend their domestic sovereignty, thereby expanding, strengthening or refining their own roles and responsibilities. Furthermore, in some cases, national governments sought to utilise the League and its internationalist instruments to bolster their sovereignty.
This chapter analyses how instruments of imperial arms control were adapted to the international system of the interwar period and what their role was in maintaining racialised global hierarchies. The focus is on the question of how British authorities tried to categorise different kinds of weapons so that arms trade regulations could function as effective instruments of imperial control. First, I will show that colonial powers drew on colonial laws and practices from the pre-war era and inscribed them into the new international order with the aim of creating not only a European peace but a global one – yet a peace that meant to create and to reinforce the hierarchies between imperial powers and their colonial subjects. To reach this goal, the British government used race as a determining factor to categorise arms by linking them to spatial concepts. Second, I will argue that it was not so much the governments of the colonial powers who pushed for the integration of these instruments into the League of Nations agenda, but primarily liberal internationalists whose goal was the creation of internationally binding disarmament instruments.
Structures of colonial governance such as ‘protectorates’ and ‘associated states’ are most frequently treated as extensions or puppets of Metropolitan sovereignty. Their practices, ideology and institutions are therefore often assumed to be extensions of the governance structures of the colonial power that control them. After the Second World War, however, French colonial administrations in Indochina – and later in Algeria – acted with impunity against orders, carried out their own diplomatic efforts, misled their governments as to their actions, countered policies from Paris and even started their own wars. This raises three key interrelated questions as to its character and practices as an instrument of international order and racial governance; how it made such contradictions possible; and the ideas that propelled such behaviour. These are explored through analysis of archival evidence of the case of French Indochinese colonial governance, diplomatic ideational and military practices from 1944 to 1949. This chapter reveals insights of relevance to understanding how colonial international instruments shaped aspects of contemporary global politics and sovereignty. Colonial administrations practised major sovereign privileges, particularly in diplomacy and policymaking. This was possible because sovereignty over the 1940s colony was removed from indigenous peoples through a mechanism of deferral, which established that until they were ‘ready’, sovereign powers should devolve not only to the colonial Metropole, but especially to European administrators and settlers. Deferred sovereignty made colonial governments into quasi-independent international actors that acted to defend the ethnic and racial theories and hierarchies that informed its very existence, institutions and practices – even against the will of the Metropole. Ultimately, the instrument of deferred sovereignty shaped not only colonies, their subjects and their administration, but also the metropoles and post-war international relations.
This book presents the most comprehensive theory of the common good of the European Union (EU) currently available and proposes concrete policies to improve its achievement. It begins with a discussion of EU values, which are seen to provide a basis for identifying a transnational common good. The author discusses the distinctive nature of the EU common good, which he associates with three main conditions: maintaining liberal democracy, enabling decent standards of social welfare, and ensuring a high level of environmental protection. Relying on a constructivist understanding of national interests, the author recommends a set of reforms that would allow the EU common good to be more strongly represented in the process of national interest formation in domestic politics. At the same time, he proposes significant changes in the Brussels institutional apparatus with a view to democratising the pursuit of the common good, including the creation of an EU Citizens’ Assembly and the election of the presidents of the European Commission and the European Council. Furthermore, this book argues that a willingness by EU citizens to recurrently sacrifice their interests for the sake of an EU common good would require stronger bonds of civic friendship among them. The author proposes several policies to achieve this goal, including reducing socioeconomic inequalities in the EU, curtailing barriers against freedom of movement and creating a transnational curriculum on EU citizenship.
This chapter discusses the emergence of civic friendship in the EU, which is regarded as a precondition for the consistent pursuit of the common good by its citizens. The author argues that civic friendship should be regarded as the outcome of certain public choices rather than as a stable feature of political communities to be taken as given. Accordingly, civic friendship could be boosted in the EU if adequate public policies were adopted. The following proposals to strengthen transnational bonds are presented: (i) establishing a robust social level playing field to moderate competition among EU workers, notably by launching an EU labour code; (ii) reducing socioeconomic inequalities in the EU; (iii) increasing the opportunities for participation by EU citizens in shared political institutions; (iv) reducing pervasive administrative, legal and economic barriers against freedom of movement; (v) launching a transnational curriculum on EU citizenship education to be offered in all EU schools; and (vi) increasing defence cooperation in the EU, notably by upgrading the EU mutual defence clause and scaling up the Permanent Structured Cooperation and the European Defence Fund.
This chapter summarises the main arguments of the book and explains how the research questions presented in the introduction have been addressed. The author claims that the discussions of the previous chapters demonstrate that EU member states share a thick understanding of the fundamental conditions and goals that they consider desirable. He suggests that what seems to be currently missing in the European public space is not so much a basic moral consensus but the appropriate institutional setting and sufficiently strong transnational civic bonds to bring these conditions and goals forward. While admittedly ambitious, the package of proposals presented throughout the book would constitute a significant step towards acting and thinking for the common good.
This chapter expands the strategies outlined in the previous chapter, introducing detailed proposals for EU institutional reform. The author presents the following proposals: (i) enhancing the level of impartiality of the European Commission by clearly separating its legislative and supervisory tasks; (ii) directly electing the presidents of the Commission and the European Council; (iii) adopting transnational lists for the elections for the European Parliament and strengthening the links between the European and the national parliaments; (iv) creating an EU Citizens’ Assembly; and (v) launching an advisory body of former presidents of the EU institutions. It is argued that this renewed institutional framework would further orient the EU towards the common good in a variety of ways. First, the European Commission would be less vulnerable to the interests of the national administrations, thus being in a better position to realise the common good. Second, the EU top officials would be accountable to all EU citizens, prompting them to put forward agendas that articulate the diversity of interests in a balanced manner. Third, each Member of the European Parliament would become a representative of all European citizens rather than a representative of their compatriots. Fourth, EU citizens would have a meaningful chance to shape the political agenda of the EU through the new EU Citizens’ Assembly. Finally, a body of former EU leaders could bring valuable expertise and organisational memory to enlighten the present-day choices. This renewed institutional setting would place the common good at the heart of EU policymaking.
This chapter introduces the research puzzle and presents a few conceptual and methodological tools. It claims that the calls and pledges in favour of the greater good made by several national leaders have not been translated into common policies in key areas, such as taxation, migration and public health. Challenging a well-established view, this chapter argues that it is plausible to speak of the common good of the whole EU, despite the moral and cultural diversity of its member states. Subsequently, the author introduces three contested notions from the Treaty on European Union that will structure the discussion of the subsequent chapters. These are (i) EU values, (ii) an institutional framework to promote EU values and (iii) creating an ever closer Union. He claims that the following questions need to be addressed: (i) On what grounds, if any, can we speak of EU values? (ii) What type of institutional framework could best realise the common good in the EU? (iii) What conditions can foster, or jeopardise, the development of stronger civic bonds amongst EU citizens? The author then situates this project within two key branches of literature: (i) communitarianism and (ii) EU normative studies. Reviewing a few of their main insights, he claims that none of these fields has addressed the problem of the common good in the EU in a satisfactory manner. Finally, this chapter overviews the main arguments presented in the book.
This chapter analyses the challenge posed by divergent national interests to achieving the common good of the Union. The author claims that two complementary strategies should be pursued to advance the common good: (i) promoting the convergence of the national interests of the 27 member states by means of better representing the standpoint of the common good in the domestic public spheres and (ii) overcoming conflicts of interests through more effective supranational institutions. First, building on Robert Putnam’s two-level game theory, he argues that EU actors should play a more active role in the processes of national interest formation at the domestic level. It is argued that an effective avenue to achieve this goal would be rethinking the role of the Representations of the European Commission in the EU capitals. Instead of being limited to a ceremonial role, these institutions could actively participate in the public debate, bringing issues that concern the common good of the whole EU to the attention of national authorities and citizens. Second, the author claims that EU institutions should be reformed to allow for a more consistent supranational debate on the common good. In addition to abolishing the unanimity rule, this goal would imply increasing the means at the disposal of EU supranational institutions to realise the common good and making EU institutions more representative of the EU demos as a whole, as opposed to separate national demoi.