The Role of Rights in the Social Construction of Wars: From the Crusades to Humanitarian Interventions

Abstract

How did rights become something that people are fighting for, and are willing to die for, in the international arena? This article seeks to answer this question through the lens of social constructivism, by exploring the constitutive impact of intersubjective ideas and norms— concepts of rights—on the social construction of wars. By doing so the article challenges realists' main focus on `Power' in interpreting human conflict, as well as the English School's writing on war and the use of force which is preoccupied with articulating normative theories rather than treating `normative structures' as scientific analytical tools in order to explain why and how norms (of a Hobbesian nature included) matter. To illustrate the theoretical claim, the article examines two distinct historical epochs: the medieval epoch, characterized by conceptions of divine rights and by institutionalized practices of crusade, and the late twentieth century, which witnessed the rise and institutionalization of human rights as an international norm along with the emergence of a new practice of humanitarian wars.