Abstract
This article examines how evil has been conceptualised in the discipline of international relations and contributes to a body of critical literature that treats evil as a legitimacy bestowing label. By drawing on securitisation theory, it suggests developing a performative approach to evil as an alternative to descriptive and normative approaches. It is argued that such an approach would not only be valuable for understanding the effects of naming and grading evil, but also fulfils three additional functions. First, it facilitates a shift away from applying intention as the primary measure for determining matters of guilt and condemnation. Second, it challenges the privileged position of the powerful when appointing particular phenomena/adversaries as evil. Finally, it provides an analytical starting point for understanding conflict constellations where different parameters of legitimacy seem to clash. This last function requires particular sensitivity towards the audience and the cultural context of ‘evilising’ moves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
In this article the term ‘culture’ is not understood as a meta-civilisational category, but is applied as a term denoting that its members share a set of beliefs and notions of validity that serve as a frame for their actions and decisions. Shared meaning can be found in sub-categories of, or a cross-cut of, civilisational categories and faith traditions.
Rengger argues that the just war tradition has remained relevant in the twenty-first century because it can account for and legitimise Western societies’ decisions to go to war. Attempts to make it into a theory represent the need for ‘a kind of moral slide-rule from which legitimate instances of the use of force can be read off whenever necessary’ (Rengger, 2002, p. 360).
My survey of the appearance of ‘evil’ in articles published by Millennium, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, World Politics and International Security during the past decade shows that there are also normative and descriptive ways of approaching evil. However, it seems that poststructuralist and constructivist approaches have been dominant in the treatment of evil in IR in the past decade. Yet, it should be noted that part of descriptive posture of evil is found in literature on transitional justice and truth commissions published in journals other than the above mentioned.
The term ‘securitisation’, coined by Ole Wæver in 1995, was developed into a comprehensive theory in Buzan et al (1998). Overall, the Copenhagen School of security studies represents a poststructuralist approach to security and contributes with a broadened perception of security by conceptualising it as a speech act, that is, security as something that is done by uttering it, rather than something that ‘is’.
The applicability of securitisation is broader and can potentially embrace securitisations in many different contexts, thus referring to processes involving threats to the environment, a company, a nation and so on, and the dynamics of evilisation would not always be relevant.
For this point, see also Asad (2007).
Tradition here implies the same as the term ‘culture’ as applied in this article (see Footnote 2): ‘A tradition is an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined’ (see McIntyre, 1988, p. 12).
References
Anderson, J.F. (2006) The rhetorical impact of evil on public policy. Administration and Society 37 (6): 719–730.
Arendt, H. (1963) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press.
Asad, T. (2007) On Suicide Bombing. New York: Columbia University Press.
Austin, J.L. (1962) How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Baaz, M.E. and Stern, M. (2009) Why do soldiers rape? Masculinity, violence, and sexuality in the armed forces in the Congo (DRC). International Studies Quarterly 53 (2): 495–518.
Balzacq, T. (2005) The three faces of securitization: Political agency, audience and context. European Journal of International Relations 11 (2): 171–201.
Behnke, A. (2004) Terrorising the political: 9/11 within the context of the globalisation of violence. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33 (2): 279–312.
Bernstein, R.J. (2005) The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Religion and Politics since 9/11. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Butler, J. (1997) Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. London and New York: Routledge.
Buzan, B., Waever, O. and Wilde, J. (1998) Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Elsthain, J.B. (2003) Just War Against Terror: Ethics and the Burden of American Power in a Violent World. New York: Basic Books.
Gunn, G. (2012) Ethics, global. In: H.K. Anheier, M. Juergensmeyer and V. Faessel (eds.) Encyclopedia of Global Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 517–521.
Hayden, P. (2007) Superfluous humanity: An Arendtian perspective on the political evil of global poverty. Millennium; Journal of International Studies 35 (2): 279–300.
Jackson, R. (2005a) Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics, Counter-Terrorism. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Jackson, R. (2005b) Security, democracy, and the rhetoric of counter-terrorism. Democracy and Security 1 (2): 147–171.
Jeffery, R. (2008) Evil and International Relations: Human Suffering in An Age of Terror. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Juergensmeyer, M. (2008) Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State, from Christian Militias to Al Qaeda. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Klusmeyer, D. and Suhrke, A. (2002) Comprehending ‘evil’: Challenges for law and policy. Ethics and International Affairs 16 (2): 27–42.
Laustsen, C.B. and Wæver, O. (2000) In defence of religion: Sacred referent objects for securitization. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29 (3): 705–739.
Liberman, P. (2006) An eye for an eye: Public support for war against evildoers. International Organization 60 (3): 687–722.
Machiavelli, N. ([1469–1527] 1985) The Prince, Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McIntyre, A. (1988) Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Molloy, S. (2009) Aristotle, Epicurus, Morgenthau and the political ethics of lesser evil. Journal of International Political Theory 5 (1): 94–112.
Morgenthau, H.J. (1945) The evil of politics and the ethics of evil. Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political and Legal Philosophy 56 (1): 1–18.
Morgenthau, H.J. (1946) Scientific Man vs. Power Politics. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Morgenthau, H.J. (1962) Politics in the Twentieth Century. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Morgenthau, H.J. and Thompson, K. (1985) Politics Among Nations. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Rengger, N. (2002) On the just war tradition in the twenty-first century. International Affairs 28 (2): 353–363.
Rengger, N. (2004) Just a war against terror? Elsthain’s burden and American power. International Affairs 80 (1): 107–116.
Rengger, N. and Jeffery, R. (2005) Moral evil and international relations. SAIS Review of International Affairs 25 (1): 3–16.
Rhodes, E. (2004) The good, the bad, and the righteous: Understanding the Bush vision of a new NATO partnership. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33 (1): 123–143.
Sheikh, M.K. (2011) Guardians of God: Understanding the religious violence of Pakistan’s Taliban. PhD dissertation, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen.
Sheikh, M.K. and Wæver, O. (2012) Western secularism: Variation in a doctrine and its practice. In: A.B. Tickner and D.L. Blaney (eds.) Thinking International Relations Differently. London: Routledge, pp. 275–298.
Snyder, J., Shapiro, R.Y. and Bloch-Elkon, Y. (2009) Free hand abroad, divide and rule at home. World Politics 61 (1): 155–187.
Solomon, T. (2009) Social logics and normalization in the war on terror. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 38 (2): 269–294.
Stritzel, H. (2007) Towards a theory of securitization: Copenhagen and beyond. European Journal of International Relations 13 (3): 357–383.
Wæver, O. (1995) Securitization and desecuritization. In: R.D. Lipschutz (ed.) On Security. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 46–86.
Walzer, M. (2004) Arguing About War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Western, J. (2005) The war over Iraq: Selling the war to the American public. Security Studies 14 (1): 106–139.
Wong, B. (2000) Hans Morgenthau’s anti-Machiavellian Machiavellianism. Millennium – Journal of International Studies 29 (2): 389–409.
Acknowledgements
An initial version of this article was presented at the research workshop ‘Evil in International Politics’, Frankfurt, 11–12 May 2012. I owe thanks to Stefano Guzzini and Robin May Schott for their critical comments on earlier drafts. Also a special thanks to Maja Greenwood for excellent research assistance. A later draft was presented at a panel on evil at the 2013 ISA Annual Convention in San Francisco, and I am grateful for the comments provided by discussant Jack Amoureux. Finally, I am grateful for the helpful comments by the anonymous reviewer and by the editors of this special issue, to whom I also owe special thanks for inviting me to explore this intriguing topic.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sheikh, M. Appointing evil in international relations. Int Polit 51, 492–507 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2014.22
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2014.22