A tale of two sovereigns: the responsibility to protect and the competing notions of responsible sovereignty

At the 2005 United Nations World Summit, member states unanimously acknowledged the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Despite this apparent unity, states have remained divided over the correct interpretation of the agreement. In this article, I propose that one of the issues sparking controversy relates to the exact characteristics of the kind of ‘responsible sovereign’ that R2P seeks to generate. Examining the first three formal General Assembly debates on R2P, I argue that the critics and advocates of the doctrine have proposed competing sets of requirements that reflect the fundamental disagreement on the meaning of R2P. Drawing upon Quentin Skinner’s ideas on illocutionary intentions and equipped with the teachings of the English School, I examine what kinds of ideal types of responsible sovereignty emerge from the debates when interpreted through the concepts of pluralism and solidarism. I conclude that whereas the responsible pluralist sovereign aspires to protect human rights by safeguarding the rights of states, its solidarist counterpart is prepared to disregard sovereign rights to protect the rights of those abused by their own governments.