In the name of human rights: the problematics of EU ethical foreign policy in Africa and elsewhere
This doctoral research project explores avenues to research ethically defined foreign policy differ ently, i.e. in ways that more systematically account for its counterproductive elements. Building on the specific case of the European Union’s foreign policy in sub-Saharan Africa, embodied by the 2000 Cotonou Agreement and the 2007 Joint Africa-EU Strategy, through four papers and one books review, the study firstly develops the Ethical Intervener Europe analytical framework to account for the embedded problematics in the EU’s ethical foreign policy. Secondly, through an eclectic theoretical approach, the study seeks to theoretically pin-point some alternatives to think about ethical foreign policy and finally, looks to concretize it through its application on the case of rela tive autonomous peace- and state-building in Somaliland. This research report briefly introduces the different findings and addresses the need for further research in view of a decolonial approach to the study of ethical foreign policy in a context of structural inequality.
Multi-ethnic democracy as an autoimmune practice: The case of international missions in Kosovo
This article explains how the international project for building multi-ethnic democracy in Kosovo undermines itself by effectively opposing the very concept of democracy. Derrida explained this with ‘autoimmunity’, a term which describes the failed attempt of an organism to recognize its own constituent parts as self, leading to an immune response against its own cells and tissues. Unlike Derrida, I provide that the promotion or the building of multi-ethnic democracy in Kosovo commits suicide in its insemination because it is intrinsically undemocratic and because it defines the constituting elements of democracy on basis of ethnic lines while discriminating other identity forms such as gender, social, or economic class. First, the article contributes to the critique of ‘liberal interventionism’ and the logic of transposing ‘models of governing’ in third countries; second, it redefines Derrida’s concept of autoimmunity with regard to international projects for democracy building.
An Essay on the Nature and Significance of the Normative Nature of Economics
It is conventional in economics to distinguish between the normative and the positive. The normative has to do with goodness and badness, and with what ought and ought not to be done;1 and the positive has to do with objective description and/or explanation, with what is and with what is necessary given some normative end. The normative has to do with desirability; the positive has to do with truth (in the sense of either descriptive accuracy or serviceability of a means to a given end).2