The Strauss Center and the Department of Government hosted Michael Barnett, director of the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Policy at the University of Minnesota to discuss his paper "International Paternalism:  A Reconsideration" on February 8, 2010.

The paper is based on the idea that paternalism is one of the organizing principles of the international humanitarian order.  Is this a reason to condemn the humanitarian order, the paper asks, or suggest that paternalism is not a problem?

One of the complexities of paternalism, and why we tend to find it distasteful, is that it involves acting without the consent of its subjects.  But the problem with consent serving as a moral litmus test for appropriate government action, either with regard to its own people or the people of another state, is that it erects an extremely high bar, one that threatens the legitimacy of most government action.  Consent, when understood quite literally as actively and freely given, is hard to obtain.  Barnett writes, “exercises of power need not always involve force.  Formal institutions are designed to limit choice, they do so by setting the agenda, removing some options from consideration, creating incentives and disincentives for some kinds of actions, and manipulating information.” 

If domestic governments act without consent in ways that we tend to consider legitimate, we cannot criticize international interventions that are paternalistic simply because they are done without consent.  But even if consent were a decisive factor in legitimizing an intervention, should it be obtained from potentially tyrannical governments of target states, or rather from states’ dispersed, diverse and possibly desperate populations?  In the case of humanitarian emergencies, even if consent could be obtained, would consent given under such duress even be valid?

Michael Barnett is the Harold Stassen Chair of International Relations at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Barnett teaches and researches topics in international relations, international organizations, humanitarian action, the United Nations and the politics of the Middle East. He is the author of over 60 articles and nine award-winning books, including Confronting the Costs of War: Military Power, State and Society in Egypt and Israel (Princeton, 1992), Dialogue in Arab Politics (Cambridge, 1998), Security Communities (Cambridge, 1998, co-edited with Emanuel Adler), Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda (Cornell, 2002), Rules for the World: International Organizations in World Politics (Cornell, 2004, with Martha Finnemore) and Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power and Ethics (Cornell, 2008, co-edited with Tom Weiss). Currently, Dr. Barnett is working on several projects related to humanitarianism and directing a Luce Foundation-funded project on religion and humanitarianism.