In praise of folly

International Administration and the Corruption of Humanity

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3725945
AutoresWilliam Bain (0000-0003-3429-8311, Aberystwyth University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2006
Volumen82
Número3
Páginas525-538
Fecha de publicación2006-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Affairs (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-5850 • E-ISSN: 1468-2346
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1468-2346.2006.00549.x
OpenAlexW2006375347
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas13

Advocates of international administration tend to embrace conduct and utterance that proposes to vindicate fundamental human rights and freedoms by suspending an important part of its content: the principle that human beings should not be subject to coercion except where they have given their consent. This article begins by arguing that the character of this dilemma is obscured by a vocabulary of technique that divests the category ‘international administration’ of its normative coherence. In fact, international administration discloses two distinct modes of association—contract and trust—which presuppose different values, different obligations, and different expectations. The article proceeds in arguing that a trust instituted among equals is susceptible to objection in so far as trustee and beneficiary are necessarily joined in a coercive relationship that rules out the possibility of consent. The article concludes by arguing that recent attempts at reconciling this sort of relation with the demands of human rights entails a kind of corruption that is intelligible in making ordinary language correspond with the ideal, so that what was once described as the denial of human dignity—subjection to alien rule—is now described as the promotion and protection of fundamental human rights

Administration (probate law) · Dignity · Formality · Human rights · Law and economics · Political science · Praise · Principle of legality · Sociology · Utterance · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Law and Human Rights · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Psychology · Social Psychology