CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Friedmann, Viktor |
|---|---|
| Title | Towards a Genealogy of Great Powers and Responsibility: China in Western Conceptions of Governing the World |
| Summary | The fundamental principles of liberal international order leave little room for the traditional idea of great powers as holders of international authority. Yet, a discourse on great powers has recently made a comeback in response to the rising power of states whose compatibility with that order is in doubt. According to this language of ʻresponsible power’ or ʻresponsible great power’ – present both in the discourse of the practitioners of international politics and in academic literature – growing power comes with correspondingly increasing and special responsibilities set by the international social order, and it is meeting these latter that secures a state legitimate great power status. The equivalence between greatness and responsibility, however, is paradoxical if the latter stands for accountability for the fulfilment of obligations. Such an understanding of responsibility is fully internal to a pre-given structure of order with its norms, social and functional roles, and criteria of legitimacy. The assertion of greatness, on the other hand, requires an actor to reveal itself outside any pre-given standard, and to have its own standards recognised as equal – hence the historical centrality of war to claiming great powerhood. Asserting one's greatness by fulfilling the required responsibilities therefore seems paradoxical. The dissertation argues that despite this paradoxical relationship the discourses of great powerhood and responsibility have in fact been reconciled historically in diverse ways, but that in order to see this, we need to move away from an exclusive focus on responsibility modelled on obligations and we need to include into our account the concept of responsibility as a character trait or disposition. The dissertation examines, in a genealogical manner, how this concept of being responsible has come to occupy a fundamental position in modern understandings of social order and how it became a crucial element in re-articulating the concepts of great powerhood and great power management detached from the European legal and spatial order in relation to which they were originally defined. In three case studies – Sino-British relations in the early 19th century; Washington's opening to China in 1969; and the European Union's invitation of China as a partner in administering African development – the dissertation offers contributions to a genealogy of great powers and responsibility by focusing on how China was understood in the light of Western conceptions of governing the world. The developments traced in these case studies indicate that while the liberal international order might not allow for great power authority, it can still be compatible with a practice of great power management articulated in terms of a neoliberal art of administering the world. |
| Supervisor | Astrov, Alexander |
| Department | International Relations PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/friedmann_viktor.pdf |
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