Issue 24.1
Briefly Noted
This section contains a round-up of recent notable books in the field of international affairs.
War in an Age of Risk by Christopher Coker
This book adds several new elements to the relation between war and the risk society. They are anxiety, complexity, and the future, writes reviewer Claudia Aradau.
The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days by Karen Greenberg
The lesson of the first 100 days of Guantanamo is not one of how truth and justice triumphed, but of how efficiently a bureaucratic machine on a war footing circumvented ethical norms and suppressed dissent, writes reviewer Petra Bartosiewicz.
The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy by Daniele Archibugi
This book provides not only an exhaustive treatment of the benefits and drawbacks of cosmopolitan democracy, but also the most detailed statement to date of how some form of cosmopolitan democracy could be realized, writes reviewer Luis Cabrera.
Terrorism, Resistance, and the Idea of “Unlawful Combatancy”
When faced with security threats from terrorism and other forms of nonstate political violence, how should liberal-democratic states respond? Finlay discusses books by Tamar Meisels, Seumas Miller, and Timothy Shanahan.
Deliberation and Global Criminal Justice: Juries in the International Criminal Court
Juries could bolster the ICC’s legitimacy by promoting public trust, increasing procedural fairness, foregrounding deliberative reasoning, and embodying democratic values. ICC juries would present novel logistical, philosophical, and legal problems, but these could be overcome.
Public Accountability and the Public Sphere of International Governance
Steffek advocates a return to a conception of public accountability as accountability to the wider public. He investigates the prospects for this beyond the state, which depends on the emergence of a transnational public sphere, consisting of media and organized civil society.
Democracy in a Pluralist Global Order: Corporate Power and Stakeholder Representation
Global democratization cannot be achieved by simply replicating familiar democratic institutions on a global scale. We must explore alternative institutional means for establishing democratic institutions at the global level within the present pluralist structure of global power.
