Description
The paper addresses the question whether the concept of political order, specifically international order, can ever be solely analytical, value free. By re-examining the work of Stanley Hoffmann and Judith Shklar, which was prompted by the crisis of international order in the 1930s, the paper demonstrates, firstly, that there is always a normative dimension in the concept of order and, secondly, that the specific way in which liberal progressivist norms were associated with the 20th century international liberal order prevented analysists from identifying its crucial problems before the challenges of the 21st century laid them bare. Hoffmann and Shklar wrote about those as early as the 1960s. Misrecognition of its normativity has only contributed to the current crisis of the liberal international order. Using Weberian sociology, the paper finally explores how international order might be salvaged as an analytical, normative and praxeological concept by forefronting its normativity in an ontologically weak, ‘of fear’ manner, to borrow Shklar’s seminal attribute.
