In much of the current literature on global and European governance, “public accountability” has come to mean accountability to national executives, to peers, to courts, and even to markets. I argue that such a re-conceptualization of “public accountability” as an umbrella term blurs a crucial dimension of the original concept: the critical scrutiny of citizens and the collective evaluation of government through public debate. In this article I critically discuss the advance of managerial and administrative notions of accountability that accompanied the steep rise of the governance concept. I advocate a return to a conception of public accountability as accountability to the wider public. I investigate the prospects for such public accountability beyond the state, which depends upon the emergence of a transnational public sphere, consisting of media and organized civil society. The function of such a transnational public sphere is to put pressure on governance institutions in case of massive maladministration, and to make sure that emergent political concerns and demands are recognized in the process of international policy making.

With the exception of Raphael Lemkin's efforts on behalf of the 1948 Genocide Convention, no idea has moved faster in the international normative arena than “the responsibility to protect” (RtoP), which was formulated in 2001 by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). Friends and foes have pointed to the commission's conceptual contribution to reframing sovereignty as contingent rather than absolute, and to establishing a framework for forestalling or stopping mass atrocities via a three-pronged responsibility—to prevent, to react, and to rebuild. But until the international military action against Libya in March 2011, the sharp end of the RtoP stick—the use of military force—had been replaced by evasiveness and skittishness from diplomats, scholars, and policy analysts.

This essay examines the idea of the pluriverse as one response to recent calls for the decolonization of international and global ethics. It argues that taking pluriversality seriously challenges prevailing understandings of global ethics as the acquisition and application of moral expertise. Instead of aiming to know the meaning of global justice and then apply it to particular contexts, a pluriversal ethics addresses the question of how to cultivate a practical ethic of coexistence and collaboration with others in an ontologically plural and radically hierarchical world.

The war in Iraq has reignited the passionate humanitarian intervention debate. President George W. Bush surprised many observers in his second inaugural address when he promised to oppose tyranny and oppression, and this in a world not always willing or ready to join in that fight. Humanitarian intervention is again on the forefront of world politics.

In the field of interstate military affairs it makes sense to talk of an American empire; but not in interstate economic affairs where the world remains thoroughly multipolar. So says Joseph Nye. This essay disagrees with the second part. It proceeds by way of a thought experiment. Imagine you are an aspiring modern-day emperor in a world of sovereign capitalist states. What sort of framework do you create such that (a) it sets the context in which all states and firms have to operate if they are not to exclude themselves from the world economy; (b) it channels normal market competition so as to benefit your firms and citizens disproportionately; and (c) it allows your economic statescraft to operate with fewer constraints than it imposes on everyone else's? The essay argues that the United States has indeed created such a framework since the 1970s, based on dollar dominance and American-centered private (not public) international financial relations. The framework allows the United States to keep spending far more abroad than it earns there–to have more butter and more guns (including military bases)–to a degree that other states cannot; and allows the United States to make the dollar swing high or low in accordance with American conditions, regardless of the costs inflicted on others. This is the paradox of economic globalization: it looks like the “powerless” expansion of communications and markets, but works to enhance the ability of the United States to harness the rest of the world to its rhythms and fortify its empire-like power. Concerted action between Europe and China and the East Asia countries is a vent for hope.

First imagine a case in which a person uses violence in self-defense; then imagine a case in which two people engage in self-defense against a threat they jointly face. Continue to imagine further cases in which increasing numbers of people act with increasing coordination to defend both themselves and each other against a common threat, or a range of threats they face together. What you are imagining is a spectrum of cases that begins with acts of individual self-defense and, as the threats become more complex and extensive, the threatened individuals more numerous, and their defensive action more integrated, eventually reaches cases involving a scale of violence that is constitutive of war. But if war, at least in some instances, lies on a continuum with individual self- and other-defense, and if acts of individual self- and other-defense can sometimes be morally justified, then war can in principle be morally justified as well. It follows that the only coherent forms of pacifism are those that reject the permissibility of individual self- or other-defense—for example, those based on an absolute prohibition of violence or killing.

It would be rather unusual for someone to argue publicly that the world's rich have no obligations at all with respect to the global poor. Many, however, claim that the obligations of the affluent countries are both fairly weak and minimal. This claim is typically arrived at via two premises: one is normative, the other factual. The normative premise asserts that while we are under a strict obligation not to harm others, the obligation to benefit people who we have not harmed is rather weak (and is, for instance, best left to private charitable efforts rather than government action or institutional reform). The factual premise is that the affluent are not, individually or collectively, harming the world's poor by causing their poverty (p. 12). Following Thomas Pogge, I will sometimes refer to this view simply as “libertarianism.” According to a second view, which I shall call the “need-based” view, we have a very strong and extensive set of duties to come to the assistance of the global poor: duties that are grounded in the neediness of the poor. In its most pure form, this view rejects altogether the ethical significance of the distinction between harming and failing to help. On a morally demanding version of the need-based view we have duties of assistance to anyone who is worse off than us, not merely those who are severely in need.

In 2001, 178 of the world's nations reached agreement on a treaty to combat global climate change brought on by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Despite the notable omission of the United States, representatives of the participants, and many newspapers around the world, expressed elation. Margot Wallström, the environment commissioner of the European Union, went so far as to declare, “Now we can go home and look our children in the eye and be proud of what we have done.”

In this article, I argue for two theses. First, the rhetoric and euphoria surrounding the 2001 deal is misplaced. This is not, as is often said, because the Kyoto agreement is too demanding but rather because it is much too weak. In particular, the Kyoto agreement does little to protect future generations. On the contrary, (at best) it seems to be a prudent wait-and-see policy for the present generation, narrowly defined. Hence, even those countries who have endorsed the Kyoto agreement should be wary of looking their children in the eye, and none should relish facing their children's children.

Second, the failure of the Kyoto agreement can be explained in terms of the underlying structure of the problem. Climate change involves the intersection of a complex set of intergenerational and intragenerational collective action problems. This structure, and in particular its intergenerational aspect, has not been adequately appreciated. Yet until it is, we are doomed to an ineffectual environmental policy.

Hunger continues to be one of humanity's greatest challenges despite the existence of a more-than-adequate global food supply equal to 2,800 kilocalories for every person every day. In measuring progress, policy-makers and concerned citizens across the globe rely on information supplied by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an agency of the United Nations. In 2010 the FAO reported that in the wake of the 2007–2008 food-price spikes and global economic crisis, the number of people experiencing hunger worldwide since 2005–2007 had increased by 150 million, rising above 1 billion in 2009. However, in its State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 (SOFI 12) the FAO presented new estimates, having revamped its methods and reinterpreted its hunger data back to 1990. The revised numbers for the period 1990–1992 to 2010–2012 reverse the trend to a steadily falling one. Based on the FAO's new calculations, extreme undernourishment peaked in 1990 at a record-breaking one billion, followed by a significant decline through 2006, when progress stalled but did not reverse (see chart below).

In the early years of the twenty-first century the narrative of “emerging powers” and “rising powers” seemed to provide a clear and powerful picture of how international relations and global politics were changing. Yet dramatic changes in the global system have led many to conclude that the focus on the BRICS and the obsession with the idea of rising powers reflected a particular moment in time that has now passed. The story line is now about backlash at the core; and, with the exception of China, rising powers have returned to their role as secondary or supporting actors in the drama of global politics. Such a conclusion is profoundly mistaken for three sets of reasons: the continued reality of the post-Western global order; the need to understand nationalist backlash as a global phenomenon; and the imperative of locating and strengthening a new pluralist conception of global order.

What are the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on human rights in the next three decades? Precise answers to this question are made difficult by the rapid rate of innovation in AI research and by the effects of human practices on the adaption of new technologies. Precise answers are also challenged by imprecise usages of the term “AI.” There are several types of research that all fall under this general term. We begin by clarifying what we mean by AI. Most of our attention is then focused on the implications of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which entail that an algorithm or group of algorithms will achieve something like superintelligence. While acknowledging that the feasibility of superintelligence is contested, we consider the moral and ethical implications of such a potential development. What do machines owe humans and what do humans owe superintelligent machines?

Ideas about the presence, absence, and growth of democracy in global politics take different forms. After surveying the basic justifications for global democracy, three frames for making sense of the significance of particular developments and proposals are canvassed. “Soup” involves the proliferation of democratic practices, though the consequences of this proliferation for the overall shape of international politics remain open. “Society” stresses the democratization of processes that affect constitutive norms and discourses. “System” identifies differentiated yet ordered parts, geared to the production of collective outcomes. The soup framing is undemanding yet limited. System provides a way to pinpoint democratic deficiencies and possibilities, but its requirements can be highly demanding, and it leaves open the question of normative integration. Understanding global democratization requires both society and system framings.

Today, the nuclear regime is widely perceived to be in crisis. While part of this crisis has to do with direct challenges to the regime posed by the illicit nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, from the perspective of much of the developing world, the issues facing the nonproliferation regime are overwhelmingly about the justice and fairness of the regime's norms, rules, and procedures. Indeed, it is difficult to identify a security regime today where equity issues are more central to debates about its future than the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Of the three regimes for controlling weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, and nuclear), it is in the nuclear regime that issues of justice and fairness appear most critical to long-term sustainability and viability.

This article focuses on the expanding role of multinational corporations (MNCs) in developing countries, within the context of globalization and free trade. It demonstrates that the current state of globalization does not conform to the conventional notion of free trade. Therefore, given the prevailing circumstances, MNCs have an unfair advantage in expropriating a greater share of gains from efficiency and productivity from international trade than would be possible if labor had greater mobility or more equitable bargaining power.

The article presents evidence that the arguments advanced by MNCs in defense of their position are factually incorrect and logically flawed. Next, the article examines the efforts made by MNCs to ameliorate some of the adverse conditions arising from their overseas manufacturing and sourcing operations. The findings show that most of these efforts are more rhetorical than substantive.

Finally, it outlines a framework that allows multinationals to undertake meaningful actions that would both minimize the adverse consequences of, and enhance the positive benefits emanating from their overseas operations. These actions must be independently verifiable and transparent if MNCs are to gain credibility and public trust.

A failure to undertake meaningful reforms will retard or even reverse the process of globalization, thus depriving all concerned of globalization's attendant benefits. Even more ominously, such a failure would seriously undermine democratic values and erode the very foundations of political and economic freedom in large parts of the world that sustain private enterprise, property rights, respect for individual freedom, and protection of human rights.

Since the beginning of the second intifada in the fall of 2000, Israel has pursued a policy in which alleged Palestinian terrorists have been hunted down and killed by government order. The policy is not one of assassination and is consistent with international law because Israel is engaged in armed conflict with terrorists, those targeted are usually killed by conventional military means, not through deception, and the targets of the attacks are not civilians but combatants or are part of a military chain of command. Targeted killing has also been affirmed by Israel's High Court.

Although targeted killing has been pursued by Israel throughout its history, the scale of the present effort and the use of sophisticated military assets such as helicopter gunships and jet fighters set it apart from earlier practices. The effectiveness of the policy is called into doubt because it has not prevented–and may have contributed to–record numbers of Israeli civilians being killed. The policy has also resulted in informers being revealed, intelligence resources diverted, potential negotiating partners eliminated. It has also produced murderous retaliation and international condemnation of Israel. Benefits of the policy include impeding the effectiveness of terrorist operations, keeping terrorists on the run, and deterring some attacks. In addition, it affords the Israeli public a sense of revenge and retribution.

Because it targets the actual perpetrators of terrorism, targeted killing provides a proportionate and discriminate response to the threat Israel faces. Improving the policy will require better civilian oversight, greater care to eliminate harm to innocent bystanders, and refraining from killing political leaders. Despite its many shortcomings, Israel is justified in pursuing this policy so long as it faces a terrorist threat that the Palestinian Authority will not or cannot control.

Ten years since its adoption by the UN General Assembly, the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) has become an established international norm associated with positive changes to the way that international society responds to genocide and mass atrocities. In its first decade, RtoP has moved from being a controversial and indeterminate concept seldom utilized by international society to a norm utilized almost habitually. This is an assessment that stands in contrast to the widespread view that RtoP is associated with “growing controversy,” but is one that rests on evidence of state practice.

Adler and Barnett demonstrate how changes occurring in international politics create the nostalgia of security communities, a concept made prominent by Karl Deutsch nearly forty years ago. The realist-based models in security debates are giving way to the constructivist approach to possibilities of peace by establishing communities rather than by balancing power. By thinking the unthinkable - that community exists at the international level, shaping security politics and developing a pacific disposition - the authors intend to draw attention to the concept's importance for understanding contemporary events.

Who should pay the costs associated with anthropogenic climate change, how much should they pay, and why? This burden-distribution problem has become the central question of climate justice among scholars and activists, and it remains the primary obstacle to the development of an effective climate regime. The costs are expected to be significant and varied, but can generally be categorized in terms of mitigation—that is, those costs associated with reducing further human contributions toward the increasing atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) that cause climate change; and adaptation—that is, those costs that result from attempting to insulate humans from the harms associated with the anthropogenic environmental damage of climate change. Since mitigation actions undertaken by developed countries under the auspices of the Kyoto Protocol are self-financed and mitigation targets accepted by developing countries are widely viewed as contingent upon financing from developed countries, imperatives to reduce GHGs are fundamentally matters of allocating mitigation costs. Adaptation intervenes in the causal chain between climate change and human harm, allowing the former but preventing the latter, but when this is not possible, a third category of compensation costs must be assigned in order to remedy failed mitigation and adaptation efforts. Because the formulas for assessing liability for adaptation and for compensation are identical, and since climate justice requires adaptation efforts that render compensation unnecessary, for the purposes of this essay the category of adaptation shall be understood to include prevention of harm as well as ex post compensation for it. As expected, the “Copenhagen Accord” that emerged from the Fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 2009 failed to satisfactorily address this core burden-allocation issue, making its resolution the primary problem to be addressed at the COP16 in Cancún, Mexico, at the end of 2010.