Book Review: David B. MacDonald, Robert G. Patman, and Betty Mason-Parker (eds), The Ethics of Foreign Policy. Dominik Zaum, The Sovereignty Paradox: The Norms and Politics of International Statebuilding. David Chandler and Volker Heins (eds), Rethinking Ethical Foreign Policy: Pitfalls, Possibilities and Paradoxes

This review discusses three volumes published in 2007 on ethics and norms in foreign policy. Informed by a relatively Realist understanding of international relations, MacDonald et al. cover in The Ethics of Foreign Policy a vast amount of topics and positions on morality in foreign policy – both with regard to behaviour and goals. The Zaum monograph, The Sovereignty Paradox, focuses on one specific aspect of ethical behaviour in foreign policy, namely the concept of sovereignty. In Rethinking Ethical Foreign Policy editors David Chandler and Volker Heins gather several authors to highlight different aspects of their more critical and reflexive approach to the perceived ‘ethical turn’ in contemporary foreign policy discourses and practices. The idea is that the ethical turn is
much more an indicator of a political malaise in the West, than an expression of either a heightened sense of common humanity or a simple cover-up in the pursuit of traditional material interests.Details:David B. MacDonald, Robert G. Patman, and Betty Mason-Parker (eds), The Ethics of Foreign Policy. Routledge. ISBN: 9780754643777 (hbk), 266 pp.Dominik Zaum, The Sovereignty Paradox: The Norms and Politics of International Statebuilding. Oxford UP. ISBN: 9780199207435 (hbk), 298 pp.David Chandler and Volker Heins (eds), Rethinking Ethical Foreign Policy: Pitfalls, Possibilities and Paradoxes. Routledge. ISBN: 9780415400190 (hbk), 256 pp.