Justice and Inequality: Democracy and Great Powers

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

No centuries have paid greater obeisance to the democratic impulse than the 20th and 21st, but few have witnessed more pronounced hierarchy in the international realm. Not satisfied with the traditional term "Great Power," observers in the second half of the 20th century were driven to the creation of the more dramatic label "Superpower" to describe the elevated status of states possessing nuclear capabilities, and their differentiation from all other states, including traditional great powers. Is such a disjunction between the professed regime type of domestic societies and the character of international society sustainable? How have those with responsibility for conducting the foreign affairs of great powers dealt with the contrast? Does their practical wisdom (or lack thereof) hold lessons for the present?

Sub Unit

• Partner Associations / Eric Voegelin Society

Individual Presentations

• The US as a Great Power: The Long Road to the 19th-Century Acceptance of Rank - David Clinton, Baylor University

• Kennan the Reactionist - Eric Andrew Fleury, Connecticut College

• The Political Ethics of Unipolarity and Multipolarity - Stephen Patrick Sims, Rochester Institute of Technology

• Al-Farabi's Critique of Might as Right in the Virtuous City - Rob L'Arrivee

• Might without Right: Conquest in the Politics of Alfarabi's Ignorant Cities - Alexander Israel Orwin, Louisiana State University

Chair

• Eric Andrew Fleury Connecticut College

Discussant

• Mohammad Moradi Boston University