Medhat Maher Al-Laithy Ethics in International Politics: Theory and Practice

Abstract

Objective: This paper aims at reviewing the causes and justifications of the growing renewed interest in international ethics trend within western theorizing in the past two decades, reflecting, thereby, on transformations in international politics, and highlighting the ongoing debate about the concept of international ethics, and the different approaches to its possible role in foreign policy making. Method: The paper provides a comparative epistemic, logical, and conceptual analysis, highlighting the comparison between the epistemic systems that stand behind different concepts. Accordingly, the paper consists of three major themes. The first theme highlights the aspects of the growing interest in ethics in international politics throughout the past decades; the second theme discusses the ongoing debate on the definition of ethics in international politics, and the multitude of categorizations of international ethics adopted; while the third theme discusses the theoretical and practical justifications of this development and the importance assigned to the impact of ethics on foreign policy. Results: The paper concludes that international theory is facing epistemological, methodological, and ontological problems in its efforts to recall the role of ethics in explaining international politics and in foreign policy making. Conclusion: a review must be made of the epistemological paradigm behind the theory of international relations and the difficulty of regaining its values, which opens the door to contributions from other non-western approaches and epistemic systems.