Toni Erskine
Biographic Data
| ID | 5651007 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Toni Erskine |
| GIVEN NAMES | Toni |
| FAMILY NAME | Erskine |
| SIGNATURE | ERSKINE T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5352-6319 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 238 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Images of a Statist Ethic in “Western” and Chinese IR Theory
In this article, we identify—and interrogate—one thematic thread that is intricately woven through prominent positions within classical realism, normative international relations (IR) theory, and what Zhang Feng (2012) has called Chinese IR’s “Tsinghua approach.” This thread is the often-controversial notion of a statist ethic for international politics or an ethical perspective that grants priority to one’s state, fellow citizens, and the nation…
Forum
The papers in this Forum, along with eight papers consecutively published in previous and current issues of this journal, constitute a special symposium, which engages in a dialogue between the “Chinese School” of International Relations (IR) theory and “Western” IR theories. The contributors are renowned Western theorists representing various Western paradigms and leading Chinese theorists from the three branches of the Chinese School, namely “m…
Before algorithmic Armageddon
AI-enabled systems will steadily infiltrate resort-to-force decision making. This will likely include decision-support systems recruited to assist with crucial deliberations over the permissibility of waging war. Potential benefits abound in terms of enhancing individual and institutional capacities for cognition, analysis, and foresight. Yet, I argue that we have reason to worry. Our interaction with these systems – as citizens, political and mi…
AI and the decision to go to war
This short article introduces our Special Issue on 'Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making'. We begin by stepping back and briefly commenting on the current military AI landscape. We then turn to the hitherto largely neglected prospect of AI-driven systems influencing state-level decision making on the resort to force. Although such systems already have a limited and indirect impact on decisions…
AI and the future of IR
Intelligent machines – from automated robots to algorithmic systems – can create images and poetry, steer our preferences, aid decision making, and kill. Our perception of their capacities, relative autonomy, and moral status will profoundly affect not only how we interpret and address practical problems in world politics over the next 50 years but also how we prescribe and evaluate individual and state responses. In this article, I argue that we…
Alexander Wendt, Quantum mind and social science
Alexander Wendt's Quantum Mind and Social Science hypothesizes that all intentional phenomena, including both psychological and social facts, are macroscopic quantum mechanical processes. Whether right or wrong, the suggestion highlights the fact that the social sciences, including IR, have until very recently never systematically discussed the potential relevance to our work of the quantum revolution a century ago. According to Wendt, that has l…
Existential threats, shared responsibility, and Australia’s role in ‘coalitions of the obligated’
In the face of the current proliferation of existential threats-the risk of nuclear war, anthropogenic climate change, COVID-19, and (arguably) disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence-it is imperative that Australia embrace the notion of shared responsibility in international politics. Individual states have limited capacities to effectively tackle such large-scale, complex emergencies on their own. Highlighting the moral implication…
Still avoiding Armageddon
Frequently inspired by the spectre of existential risk, Australian IR scholars have made – and continue to make – a crucial contribution to the evolution of normative IR theory. In defending this position, this article takes three steps. First, it outlines key catalysts that prompted the emergence of this sub-field as a distinct and self-aware area of study approximately forty years ago and refines the story of its genesis by recognising pioneeri…
Intergovernmental Organizations and the Possibility of Institutional Learning
One type of change that has lurked at the edges of scholarly discussions of international politics—often assumed, invoked, and alluded to, but rarely interrogated—is learning . Learning entails a very particular type of change. It is deliberate, internal, transformative, and peaceful (in the sense of being uncoerced). In this contribution to the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” I ask whether intergovernmental organizat…
International Relations Theory Today
Coalitions of the Willing and Responsibilities to Protect
“Coalition of the willing” is a phrase that we hear invoked with frequency in world politics. Significantly, it is generally accompanied by claims to moral responsibility. Yet the label commonly used to connote a temporary, purpose-driven, self-selected collection of states sits uneasily alongside these assertions of moral responsibility. This article explores how the informal nature of such associations should inform judgments of moral responsib…
Understanding Tragedy and Understanding International Relations
Tragedy is one of the oldest conceptual lenses of Western culture. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that tragedy is constitutive of Western culture itself. Writing more than two millennia ago, Thucydides thought that tragedy was an appropriate lens through which to view international relations.1 We interrogate this assumption. Does tragedy offer a plausible framework for examining international relations? If so, in what ways can the…
Tragedy and International Relations
Introduction: Understanding Tragedy and Understanding International Relations T.Erskine & R.N.Lebow PART I: RECOVERING THE TRAGIC DIMENSION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Tragedy, Ethics and International Relations M.Frost Tragedy, Progress and the International Order J.Mayall Tragedy or Skepticism? Defending the Anti-Pelagian Mind in World Politics N.Rengger Tragedy, Politics and Political Science R.N.Lebow PART II: TRAGEDY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIO…
Whose progress, which morals? Constructivism, normative IR theory and the limits and possibilities of studying ethics in world politics
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Special forum on Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics
In a dialogue discussing issues of the relation between empirical and normative theory, four contributors comment upon the edited volume by Richard Price, Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics , and Richard Price responds. The contributions principally revolve around the following themes: (1) whether a division of labor between normative and empirical theory can or should be overcome, which in turn presupposes notions of (2) just what con…
Kicking Bodies and Damning Souls
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Locating Responsibility
Questions of moral agency are fundamental to the study of world politics. Who — or what — can bear the related moral burdens of duty and blame for specific acts and outcomes has serious implications for practice and theory. This article begins with a discussion of where moral responsibility can reasonably be located in world politics. It then presents the implicit and consequential assumptions regarding moral agency that are held in common by a n…
Embedded Cosmopolitanism
This book offers a challenging and original normative approach to some of the most pressing practical concerns in world politics —including the contested nature of the prohibitions against torture and the targeting of civilians in the war on terror. The author’s vision of ‘embedded cosmopolitanism’ responds to the charge that conventional cosmopolitan arguments neglect the profound importance of community and culture, particularity and passion. B…
How Should We Respond to ‘Delinquent’ Institutions
In international politics, institutions – in the sense of formal organisations – are frequently portrayed as important bearers of duties and appropriate objects of blame. This makes eminent sense. Many states, multinational corporations, and intergovernmental organisations, to name a few types of institutional actor, have considerable capacities to respond to crises, address injustices – and, indeed, cause harm on a grand scale. When the United S…
Teaching the Ethics of War
Providing students with the understanding and confidence to critically engage with the vast literature on ethics and the use of force is a challenging endeavour. One way to achieve this is to encourage them to apply the range of concepts and approaches encompassed within this literature to real problems and events in international affairs. This article proposes both detailed seminar plans and structured small-group activities for use as part of a…
Qualifying Cosmopolitanism? Solidarity, Criticism, and Michael Walzer's ‘View from the Cave’
Blood on the UN's Hands''? Assigning Duties and Apportioning Blame to an Intergovernmental Organisation
The United Nations is frequently the object of blame for ""failing' ' to act in response to what are deemed to be ethical imperatives. Implicit in such condemnations is an understanding of the United Nations as a body that has moral duties, and possesses the various capacities for deliberating and acting that would make this a reasonable conception. Yet this portrayal of the United Nations as a moral agent is one that should only be invoked with …
Can Institutions Have Responsibilities?
Can institutions, in the sense of formal organizations, be considered vulnerable to moral burdens? The contributors to this book critically examine the idea of the 'collective' or 'institutional' mora
Citizen of nowhere’ or ‘the point where circles intersect’? Impartialist and embedded cosmopolitanisms
Ethical cosmopolitanism is conventionally taken to be a stance that requires an ‘impartialist’ point of view—a perspective above and beyond all particular ties and loyalties. Taking seriously the claims of those critics who counter that morality must have a ‘particularist’ starting-point, this article examines the viability of an alternative understanding of cosmopolitanism: ‘ embedded cosmopolitanism’. Using moral justifications for patriotism a…
Assigning Responsibilities to Institutional Moral Agents
Determining who, or indeed what, is to respond to prescriptions for action in cases of international crisis is a critical endeavor. Without such an allocation of responsibilities, calls to action–whether to protect the environment or to rescue distant strangers–lack specified agents, and, therefore, any meaningful indication of how they might be met. A fundamental step in arriving at this distribution of duties is identifying moral agents in inte…
International Relations Theory Today
Assigning Responsibilities to Institutional Moral Agents
Determining who, or indeed what, is to respond to prescriptions for action in cases of international crisis is a critical endeavor. Without such an allocation of responsibilities, calls to action–whether to protect the environment or to rescue distant strangers–lack specified agents, and, therefore, any meaningful indication of how they might be met. A fundamental step in arriving at this distribution of duties is identifying moral agents in inte…
Coalitions of the Willing and Responsibilities to Protect
“Coalition of the willing” is a phrase that we hear invoked with frequency in world politics. Significantly, it is generally accompanied by claims to moral responsibility. Yet the label commonly used to connote a temporary, purpose-driven, self-selected collection of states sits uneasily alongside these assertions of moral responsibility. This article explores how the informal nature of such associations should inform judgments of moral responsib…
Embedded Cosmopolitanism and the Case of War
(2000). Embedded Cosmopolitanism and the Case of War: Restraint, Discrimination and Overlapping Communities. Global Society: Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 569-590
Blood on the UN's Hands''? Assigning Duties and Apportioning Blame to an Intergovernmental Organisation
The United Nations is frequently the object of blame for ""failing' ' to act in response to what are deemed to be ethical imperatives. Implicit in such condemnations is an understanding of the United Nations as a body that has moral duties, and possesses the various capacities for deliberating and acting that would make this a reasonable conception. Yet this portrayal of the United Nations as a moral agent is one that should only be invoked with …
Citizen of nowhere’ or ‘the point where circles intersect’? Impartialist and embedded cosmopolitanisms
Ethical cosmopolitanism is conventionally taken to be a stance that requires an ‘impartialist’ point of view—a perspective above and beyond all particular ties and loyalties. Taking seriously the claims of those critics who counter that morality must have a ‘particularist’ starting-point, this article examines the viability of an alternative understanding of cosmopolitanism: ‘ embedded cosmopolitanism’. Using moral justifications for patriotism a…
Whose progress, which morals? Constructivism, normative IR theory and the limits and possibilities of studying ethics in world politics
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Kicking Bodies and Damning Souls
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Qualifying Cosmopolitanism? Solidarity, Criticism, and Michael Walzer's ‘View from the Cave’
AI and the decision to go to war
This short article introduces our Special Issue on 'Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making'. We begin by stepping back and briefly commenting on the current military AI landscape. We then turn to the hitherto largely neglected prospect of AI-driven systems influencing state-level decision making on the resort to force. Although such systems already have a limited and indirect impact on decisions…
Intergovernmental Organizations and the Possibility of Institutional Learning
One type of change that has lurked at the edges of scholarly discussions of international politics—often assumed, invoked, and alluded to, but rarely interrogated—is learning . Learning entails a very particular type of change. It is deliberate, internal, transformative, and peaceful (in the sense of being uncoerced). In this contribution to the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” I ask whether intergovernmental organizat…
Existential threats, shared responsibility, and Australia’s role in ‘coalitions of the obligated’
In the face of the current proliferation of existential threats-the risk of nuclear war, anthropogenic climate change, COVID-19, and (arguably) disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence-it is imperative that Australia embrace the notion of shared responsibility in international politics. Individual states have limited capacities to effectively tackle such large-scale, complex emergencies on their own. Highlighting the moral implication…
Still avoiding Armageddon
Frequently inspired by the spectre of existential risk, Australian IR scholars have made – and continue to make – a crucial contribution to the evolution of normative IR theory. In defending this position, this article takes three steps. First, it outlines key catalysts that prompted the emergence of this sub-field as a distinct and self-aware area of study approximately forty years ago and refines the story of its genesis by recognising pioneeri…
Before algorithmic Armageddon
AI-enabled systems will steadily infiltrate resort-to-force decision making. This will likely include decision-support systems recruited to assist with crucial deliberations over the permissibility of waging war. Potential benefits abound in terms of enhancing individual and institutional capacities for cognition, analysis, and foresight. Yet, I argue that we have reason to worry. Our interaction with these systems – as citizens, political and mi…
Special forum on Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics
In a dialogue discussing issues of the relation between empirical and normative theory, four contributors comment upon the edited volume by Richard Price, Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics , and Richard Price responds. The contributions principally revolve around the following themes: (1) whether a division of labor between normative and empirical theory can or should be overcome, which in turn presupposes notions of (2) just what con…
Teaching the Ethics of War
Providing students with the understanding and confidence to critically engage with the vast literature on ethics and the use of force is a challenging endeavour. One way to achieve this is to encourage them to apply the range of concepts and approaches encompassed within this literature to real problems and events in international affairs. This article proposes both detailed seminar plans and structured small-group activities for use as part of a…
Embedded Cosmopolitanism and the Case of War
(2000). Embedded Cosmopolitanism and the Case of War: Restraint, Discrimination and Overlapping Communities. Global Society: Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 569-590
Assigning Responsibilities to Institutional Moral Agents
Determining who, or indeed what, is to respond to prescriptions for action in cases of international crisis is a critical endeavor. Without such an allocation of responsibilities, calls to action–whether to protect the environment or to rescue distant strangers–lack specified agents, and, therefore, any meaningful indication of how they might be met. A fundamental step in arriving at this distribution of duties is identifying moral agents in inte…
Citizen of nowhere’ or ‘the point where circles intersect’? Impartialist and embedded cosmopolitanisms
Ethical cosmopolitanism is conventionally taken to be a stance that requires an ‘impartialist’ point of view—a perspective above and beyond all particular ties and loyalties. Taking seriously the claims of those critics who counter that morality must have a ‘particularist’ starting-point, this article examines the viability of an alternative understanding of cosmopolitanism: ‘ embedded cosmopolitanism’. Using moral justifications for patriotism a…
Can Institutions Have Responsibilities?
Can institutions, in the sense of formal organizations, be considered vulnerable to moral burdens? The contributors to this book critically examine the idea of the 'collective' or 'institutional' mora
Blood on the UN's Hands''? Assigning Duties and Apportioning Blame to an Intergovernmental Organisation
The United Nations is frequently the object of blame for ""failing' ' to act in response to what are deemed to be ethical imperatives. Implicit in such condemnations is an understanding of the United Nations as a body that has moral duties, and possesses the various capacities for deliberating and acting that would make this a reasonable conception. Yet this portrayal of the United Nations as a moral agent is one that should only be invoked with …
Teaching the Ethics of War
Providing students with the understanding and confidence to critically engage with the vast literature on ethics and the use of force is a challenging endeavour. One way to achieve this is to encourage them to apply the range of concepts and approaches encompassed within this literature to real problems and events in international affairs. This article proposes both detailed seminar plans and structured small-group activities for use as part of a…
Qualifying Cosmopolitanism? Solidarity, Criticism, and Michael Walzer's ‘View from the Cave’
Embedded Cosmopolitanism
This book offers a challenging and original normative approach to some of the most pressing practical concerns in world politics —including the contested nature of the prohibitions against torture and the targeting of civilians in the war on terror. The author’s vision of ‘embedded cosmopolitanism’ responds to the charge that conventional cosmopolitan arguments neglect the profound importance of community and culture, particularity and passion. B…
How Should We Respond to ‘Delinquent’ Institutions
In international politics, institutions – in the sense of formal organisations – are frequently portrayed as important bearers of duties and appropriate objects of blame. This makes eminent sense. Many states, multinational corporations, and intergovernmental organisations, to name a few types of institutional actor, have considerable capacities to respond to crises, address injustices – and, indeed, cause harm on a grand scale. When the United S…
Locating Responsibility
Questions of moral agency are fundamental to the study of world politics. Who — or what — can bear the related moral burdens of duty and blame for specific acts and outcomes has serious implications for practice and theory. This article begins with a discussion of where moral responsibility can reasonably be located in world politics. It then presents the implicit and consequential assumptions regarding moral agency that are held in common by a n…
Kicking Bodies and Damning Souls
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Understanding Tragedy and Understanding International Relations
Tragedy is one of the oldest conceptual lenses of Western culture. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that tragedy is constitutive of Western culture itself. Writing more than two millennia ago, Thucydides thought that tragedy was an appropriate lens through which to view international relations.1 We interrogate this assumption. Does tragedy offer a plausible framework for examining international relations? If so, in what ways can the…
Tragedy and International Relations
Introduction: Understanding Tragedy and Understanding International Relations T.Erskine & R.N.Lebow PART I: RECOVERING THE TRAGIC DIMENSION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Tragedy, Ethics and International Relations M.Frost Tragedy, Progress and the International Order J.Mayall Tragedy or Skepticism? Defending the Anti-Pelagian Mind in World Politics N.Rengger Tragedy, Politics and Political Science R.N.Lebow PART II: TRAGEDY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIO…
Whose progress, which morals? Constructivism, normative IR theory and the limits and possibilities of studying ethics in world politics
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Special forum on Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics
In a dialogue discussing issues of the relation between empirical and normative theory, four contributors comment upon the edited volume by Richard Price, Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics , and Richard Price responds. The contributions principally revolve around the following themes: (1) whether a division of labor between normative and empirical theory can or should be overcome, which in turn presupposes notions of (2) just what con…
Coalitions of the Willing and Responsibilities to Protect
“Coalition of the willing” is a phrase that we hear invoked with frequency in world politics. Significantly, it is generally accompanied by claims to moral responsibility. Yet the label commonly used to connote a temporary, purpose-driven, self-selected collection of states sits uneasily alongside these assertions of moral responsibility. This article explores how the informal nature of such associations should inform judgments of moral responsib…
International Relations Theory Today
Intergovernmental Organizations and the Possibility of Institutional Learning
One type of change that has lurked at the edges of scholarly discussions of international politics—often assumed, invoked, and alluded to, but rarely interrogated—is learning . Learning entails a very particular type of change. It is deliberate, internal, transformative, and peaceful (in the sense of being uncoerced). In this contribution to the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” I ask whether intergovernmental organizat…
Still avoiding Armageddon
Frequently inspired by the spectre of existential risk, Australian IR scholars have made – and continue to make – a crucial contribution to the evolution of normative IR theory. In defending this position, this article takes three steps. First, it outlines key catalysts that prompted the emergence of this sub-field as a distinct and self-aware area of study approximately forty years ago and refines the story of its genesis by recognising pioneeri…
Alexander Wendt, Quantum mind and social science
Alexander Wendt's Quantum Mind and Social Science hypothesizes that all intentional phenomena, including both psychological and social facts, are macroscopic quantum mechanical processes. Whether right or wrong, the suggestion highlights the fact that the social sciences, including IR, have until very recently never systematically discussed the potential relevance to our work of the quantum revolution a century ago. According to Wendt, that has l…
Existential threats, shared responsibility, and Australia’s role in ‘coalitions of the obligated’
In the face of the current proliferation of existential threats-the risk of nuclear war, anthropogenic climate change, COVID-19, and (arguably) disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence-it is imperative that Australia embrace the notion of shared responsibility in international politics. Individual states have limited capacities to effectively tackle such large-scale, complex emergencies on their own. Highlighting the moral implication…
Images of a Statist Ethic in “Western” and Chinese IR Theory
In this article, we identify—and interrogate—one thematic thread that is intricately woven through prominent positions within classical realism, normative international relations (IR) theory, and what Zhang Feng (2012) has called Chinese IR’s “Tsinghua approach.” This thread is the often-controversial notion of a statist ethic for international politics or an ethical perspective that grants priority to one’s state, fellow citizens, and the nation…
Forum
The papers in this Forum, along with eight papers consecutively published in previous and current issues of this journal, constitute a special symposium, which engages in a dialogue between the “Chinese School” of International Relations (IR) theory and “Western” IR theories. The contributors are renowned Western theorists representing various Western paradigms and leading Chinese theorists from the three branches of the Chinese School, namely “m…
Before algorithmic Armageddon
AI-enabled systems will steadily infiltrate resort-to-force decision making. This will likely include decision-support systems recruited to assist with crucial deliberations over the permissibility of waging war. Potential benefits abound in terms of enhancing individual and institutional capacities for cognition, analysis, and foresight. Yet, I argue that we have reason to worry. Our interaction with these systems – as citizens, political and mi…
AI and the decision to go to war
This short article introduces our Special Issue on 'Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making'. We begin by stepping back and briefly commenting on the current military AI landscape. We then turn to the hitherto largely neglected prospect of AI-driven systems influencing state-level decision making on the resort to force. Although such systems already have a limited and indirect impact on decisions…
Political science (23 works) · Law (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Law (18 works) · Politics (15 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Environmental ethics (9 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (9 works)