Punitive practices are highly revealing of a society’s social fabric, its normative order, and power structure, as shown in classic texts from Émile Durkheim to Michel Foucault. The social sciences and humanities have hitherto studied punishment mostly in the context of the nation-state, however, by examining how people, organizations, and legal institutions punish individual offenders. Our project examines the penal philosophies and practices of a society that has barely been approached from such a perspective: international society.
Linet Durmusoglu, Jan-Willem van Prooijen and I examined citizens’ responses to second- and institutional third-party punishment in international and interpersonal relations in two experimental studies. We find that citizens consider the delegation of punishment to a third party more legitimate than second-party punishment not only in the context of the nation-state but also internationally. Even so, the difference in support between second- and third-party punishment is more pronounced at the individual level than at the international level. Confidence in punitive institutions appears to be an important factor in citizens’ support for punishment across settings. The results are published in the edited volume below.
Linet Durmusoglu, Barbora Hola, Ronald Kroeze, Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Wouter Werner and I have edited this book with Oxford University Press.
Table of contents and introduction can be found here.
We will celebrate the publication of our book on 22nd March and look forward to comments by Susie Protschky and Paul van Lange.
This research was generously supported by the VuVereniging.
Wolfgang Wagner 