Bruce Cronin

Prof. Cronin was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He has also taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Cronin's specialties are in the fields of international law, international organizations, and human rights. He is currently writing a book on the manipulation of the international law of armed conflict by states whose military organizations are generally committed to following the laws and customs of war. The book focuses on how such states exploit their technological superiority by engaging in a form of warfare that is technically legal but recklessly disregards the basic principles underlying International Humanitarian Law.

Books

Bruce Cronin and Ian Hurd, The UN Security Council and the Politics of International Authority (Routledge, 2008)

Observes how the growth of the political authority of the Council challenges the basic idea that states have legal autonomy over their domestic affairs. The individual essays survey the implications that flow from these developments in the crucial policy areas of: terrorism; economic sanctions; the prosecution of war crimes; human rights; humanitarian intervention; and the use of force. In each of these areas, the evidence shows a complex and fluid relation between state sovereignty, the power of the United Nations, and the politics of international legitimation. Demonstrating how world politics has come to accommodate the contradictory institutions of international authority and international anarchy, this book makes an important contribution to how we understand and study international organizations and international law. Written by leading experts in the field, this volume will be of strong interest to students and scholars of international relations, international organizations, international law and global governance.

Bruce Cronin, Institutions for the Common Good: International Protection Regimes in International Society (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Bruce Cronin develops a theory that links international stability with progress in building a cohesive international order. He examines how states attempt to provide for international stability by creating International Protection Regimes–multilateral institutions designed to protect clearly defined classes of people within sovereign states. Cronin argues that, in the aftermath of major systemic changes, states try to create international orders by regulating the relationship between governments and their populations, particularly in newly formed and reorganized states.

Bruce Cronin, Community Under Anarchy (Columbia University Press, 1999).

How do states distinguish friends from enemies, partners from competitors, and communities from outsiders?Community Under Anarchy shows how the development of common social identities among political elites can lead to deeper, more cohesive forms of cooperation than what has been previously envisioned by traditional theories of international relations. Drawing from recent advances in social theory and constructivist approaches, Bruce Cronin demonstrates how these cohesive structures evolve from a series of discrete events and processes that help to diminish the conceptual boundaries dividing societies.

Community Under Anarchy supports this thesis through a new and original interpretation of the Concert of Europe, the Holy Alliance, and the political integration of Italy and Germany. In the wake of the upheavals created by the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848, political elites helped to validate new forms of governance by creating transnational reference groups from which they could draw legitimacy. As a result, European states were able to overcome the polarizing effects of anarchy and create a concert system, a common security association, and two amalgamated security communities. The empirical cases demonstrate how socially derived identities can shape state preferences and create new roles for state leaders.