Princeton expert proposes global licensing system to prevent abuse of power in countries' foreign policies
Barbara Buckinx stated at the ICS that "more and more citizens are concerned about coherence between national and international policies in their countries".
In order to avoid the domination of some countries over others through their foreign policies, Barbara Buckinx, a researcher at Princeton University (USA), launched three proposals in the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra: "On the one hand, the design of a global governance to prevent each state from having its own independent foreign policy program; on the other hand, that foreign policies go through an international institution that measures its Degree of domination. Finally, a system of global licenses could be proposed with which countries could guarantee that they can carry out their foreign policies without abuse of power".
According to Professor Buckinx, every foreign policy is potentially dominant: "Just the fact of having an independent one means that the state possesses some power over other countries, beyond the control of the people who are affected". Regarding the latter, she clarified that "someone is dominated when they are not protected from the ability of another to arbitrarily intervene in their decision making."
Protests against warssubject The Princeton researcher pointed out that, although citizens of democratic states have some control over their governments - for example through voting - "more and more people are concerned about the coherence between the national and international policies of their countries. This concern explains the many protests against wars that have taken place in recent decades," he said.
Professor Buckinx's seminar , graduate 'The Foreign Policy of a Non-Dominating State', opened the third edition of the ICS Ethics and Society Forum, a series of sessions addressing issues related to the improvement of communal life and society, whether from the perspective of ethics, legal theory, Economics, political and social Philosophy , or the social sciences in general.