Rescue Beyond Ideals : Guiding action in political theory

Abstract

This thesis explores the issue of international rescue in political theory. The objective is to examine how one ought to go about making political theory on the issue of international rescue in order to hold some level of potential for action-guidance. The reason for examining the issue is twofold. First, the treatment of international rescue and humanitarian intervention in the R2P-debate has been hampered by an unconstructive debate as well as an insufficient focus on guiding policy. Second, contemporary political theory has dealt with the issue in ways that are, in much the same way as with the R2P, not ideally suited for action-guidance. By way of answering the question I present a meta-theoretical framework as a means to clarify the role political theory can or should play on such issues. This framework builds on the debate on ideal and non-ideal theory, which, put simply, has to do with how abstracted from the world in which we live political theory should be and to what extent what theory takes into account impacts on the potential for political theory to be action-guiding. The main theoretical insight from the debate is that while potential for action-guidance can be seen as the output of theory, sensitivity to facts and context is the main intervening variable while the terms ideal and non-ideal theory can be seen as the overarching labels. Based on these insights I suggest a strategy for making theory more sensitive to context by way of cultivating closer contact with empirical political science, seen as a proxy for knowledge about the contextual traits of the world in which we live. I then provide an example as to how this might be done by showing how mini case-studies can help map context and, by consequence, provide an account of what political theory ought to be sensitive to in order to hold more potential for guiding political action.