This article interrogates the meaning of ‘justice’ for religious actors in Africa, comparing the post-independence period to the contemporary one. The treatment and meaning of justice by these actors today differs in important ways from ideas about justice during previous generations’ struggles for freedom. This is because (a) the promise of independence entailed a proactive, emancipatory and pan-African overhaul of oppressive and inegalitarian practices; while justice talk today occurs in a neoliberal context of more reactive and sometimes accommodationist measures to redress problems of violence and poverty; and (b) African leaders and religious thinkers themselves defined the meaning and components of justice in the past, while today much of the discourse around justice emanates from issues identified by transnational nongovernmental organizations and agencies. A neo-Weberian approach helps distill significant characteristics of the complex faith-justiceglobalization relationship in these different periods, as well as their imbrication into religiously-plural and syncretic religious contexts.

Robert Jackson's recent book The Global Covenant is a work in the tradition of the international society school that extends the perspective of that school to today's world events and theoretical debates. Jackson's argument has several important components: that we live in a society of states that operates according to particular norms having significant ethical implications for the conduct of world politics; that this society of states can be distinguished from both the amoral perspective of the (neo)realists and the universalism of cosmopolitans; that this world must be examined primarily through the words and actions of statespeople, its primary articulators; that this world is distinguished by values of antipaternalism, normative pluralism, and the observance of sovereign rights of nonintervention and self-determination; and that recent crises (e.g., the Persian Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, etc.) demonstrate more the continued durability of this world (which has existed roughly since Westphalia) than its decline or demise.

Islamic NGOs are critical to the nexus of humanitarianism and peacebuilding in many parts of the world, even in societies with a non-Muslim majority. An important example is provided by Kenya. However, Islamic groups in most of the Global North and much of the Global South also operate in a context shaped by global trends, especially the discourse of suspicion perpetuated by the global ‘war on terror’. In Kenya, this discourse has both constrained and provided opportunities for Islamic NGOs. To understand the resulting constraints and opportunities, the relationship between Islamic organisations and Christian, interfaith and transnational groups needs to be taken into account. This article employs insights from constructivist international relations to analyse: 1) how the goals and programmes of Kenyan Islamic groups are affected by the ‘war on terror’, and 2) the resulting obstacles and opportunities for peacebuilding, development and interfaith dialogue.

Just as Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes became etched into the minds of international relations scholars as the oracles of realpolitik during the Cold War, Immanuel Kant appears to be well on his way to becoming the prophet of “progressive international reform” in the post—Cold War era. Not only has Kant's thought provided the underpinnings of one of the major traditions of international law, but there is a groundswell of interest among international relations scholars today in the question of whether contemporary events, particularly the proliferation of republican states and attempts to create them, signal the march forward to the Kantian ideal of republican peace. Yet, prior to asking what contemporary events signify for the attainment of the Kantian ideal, we should analyze the conflicting interpretions fo Kantian political thought so as to understand the meaning and implications of the ideal itself. Such a task is not merely pedantie—it is necessary to determine the utility of political philosophy for providing understanding and guidance in the real world.

This article explores an important as peel of peace movements· impact on international relations. It focuses in particular on the articulation and promotion of international legal norms by Anglo-American peace movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Social forces, in the form of peace movements, have, since the post-Napoleonic period, attempted with great energy and considerable success to influence norms underpinning international law. Norms promoted by these movements include constraints on stales' right to wage war and the requirement that slates attempt to resolve conflict' peacefully before using force, which over time have been embodied in treaties and agreements such as the Hague Conventions, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the 1928 Pact of Paris and the UN Charter. Additional norms promoted by peace movements include the constitutive principles or universalism (the notion that all political actors should participate in decisions about peace, security, and the improvement of international life) and equality of status (the notion that they should do so on an equal basis, and that rights should be granted to and obligations binding upon all) that provide the foundation for twentieth century global international organisations such as the League or Nations and the United Nations. Social movements have made these attempts as part of a much less successful endeavour to promote law as a means of ensuring international peace.

Theological and religious thinking can contribute considerably to debates about culture in international politics. While students of international relations such as Elshtain, Rengger, Loriaux, Falk, and Connolly have begun to break down Enlightenment barriers to understanding theological ethics, the analysis of religious thinking and praxis by students of world politics more generally is lacking. Even much contemporary ’critical’ international relations remains dominated by Enlightenment worldviews that cast religious belief, thought, and action in overly essentialist terms. Religious and theological thinking need to be seen as evolving rather than reified. This article traces the development of debates about culture in general, and multiculturalism in particular, in contemporary religious thinking. It analyses several specific theological views on religious pluralism, from exclusivism to syncretism and apologetics. Each of these perspectives, like others before them, mirrors historical developments as well as trends in political philosophy in interesting ways. Thus, while much of our political debates over the role of religion remain mirrored in exclusivist analyses, contemporary religious thought provides new ways of thinking about the socio-political implications of the multiple systems of belief present in the world. It is thus critical to reincorporate the study of religious thinking into debates about the purpose of political community and the interaction between ethical thinking and historical praxis. © Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2000.

Current approaches for understanding and analyzing religion in international politics insufficiently incorporate the role of ethics in the practices of religious actors. Primordialist approaches essentialize religion, instrumental approaches consider it to be an epiphenomenon, and cosmopolitan approachesa prioridowngrade alternative ethical constructs as insufficiently universalist. An approach to religion that begins with a constitutive understanding of religious belief and economic, social, and political practice as outlined in Weber’sSociology of Religion, is more helpful. However, because Weber’s method insufficiently addresses ethical intentionality, the ‘neo-Weberian’ approach I advance here incorporates the concepts of ‘common good’ and ‘popular casuistry’ into socio-historical contextualization. This approach provides a way to understand and theorize how religious adherents connect religious guidelines to moral action that avoids the essentialization of religion which is often characteristic of other perspectives.