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* In preparing this article, I have benefitted immensely from comments provided Richard Devetak, Tim Dunne, Luke Glanville, Andrew Phillips, Heather Rae, and the editors and reviewers for the Review of International Studies. I also wish to thank my fellow participants in the workshop on 'Intervention and the Modern International Order' held at the London School of Economics in September 2012, and seminar participants in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland in May 2013.
Since the end of the Cold War, the number of books and articles on intervention in world politics has grown dramatically. Responding to crises in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, the Sudan, Libya, and, most recently, Syria, authors have wrestled with a variety of issues, questions, and dilemmas, some normative, others empirical. When is intervention legitimate? Who is entitled to intervene, and under what conditions? What kinds of domestic problems merit intervention? Under what conditions are interventions successful? What implications do interventionary practices have for the preservation of international order?
Curiously, very little of this work subjects the concept of intervention itself to critical scrutiny. Most reflections on the concept focus on the meaning of its attendant adjectives. What do we mean by 'international' intervention, 'humanitarian' intervention, or 'legitimate' intervention? Do unilateral interventions qualify as 'international', is an intervention 'humanitarian' if the interveners had mixed motives, and are interventions conducted without a Security Council mandate 'legitimate'? Intense debates surround these definitional issues, but the operative noun - that of 'intervention' - is often taken for granted. Scholars frequently preface their analyses with definitional discussions about what intervention is. But these definitions usually take a common form, with intervention conceived within a 'sovereignty frame'. It is assumed that it takes place within a system or society of sovereign states, that the intervening actors are sovereign states, and that the targets of intervention are sovereign states. Furthermore, practices of intervention are understood as violations of sovereignty, of the supreme yet territorially-demarcated authority of the state.
In an international order characterised by universal state sovereignty, such as the one we live in today, intervention may well be practiced and experienced by sovereign states. But historically international orders have taken...