ABSTRACT
In an influential essay, Martha Finnemore has described the ways in which a norm of humanitarian intervention has been constructed over the last two centuries. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the rhetoric of European imperialism underwent a change, with increasing emphasis on the idea that imperial rule was undertaken in the interests of the inhabitants of the colonies. Non-intervention became the norm of a single international society -but with a high price tag attached. For most of the 1970s and 1980s the doctrine of non-intervention reigned supreme. For the first time in decades, in the 1990s the major powers were faced with situations where it was actually possible to respond positively to calls for humanitarian action. These cases provide ample material for an examination of developments in the international political theory of humanitarian intervention in the 1990s.
