ABSTRACT
As a political phenomenon, “hegemony” merits attention. 1 It raises the question of enforcement, that is, of implementation and execution of norms, as distinct from their conception. Conceiving a norm – for instance that of a just peace (une bonne paix) – is one thing. Enforcing the norm is another. The actual enforcement of international pacts, and sometimes their design and fashioning, might rest more on the political intervention of a hegemonic super-state or states as arbiter-broker than on cosmopolitan imperatives or transcendental values. In the international as in the domestic sphere, “Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words”. 2
