AUTHOR COPY Original Article The ‘Good State’ debate in international relations Peter Lawler School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. E-mail: peter.lawler@manchester.ac.uk Abstract The idea of the State as embodying moral virtue has a long, mostly inwardly focussed history. In international relations thought, sporadic Liberal explorations of the state as a ’good international citizen’ have been vulnerable to Realist scepticism or dismissal. The Cold War’s end saw a revival of Liberal enthusiasm for the Good State, but the translation of this into the foreign policies of key Western states generated new lines of critique focussing on the underlying universalism. Drawing upon aspects of much less-discussed Scandinavian inter- nationalist discourse, the possibility of a more modest, open and thus sustainable understanding of the Good State is explored. International Politics (2013) 50, 18–37. doi:10.1057/ip.2012.26 Keywords: good state; good international citizenship; English School; Scandinavian internationalism; liberalism The depiction of the state as embodying moral virtue can be traced back through neo-Hegelian idealism and Hegel to classical Greek thought. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of most explorations of the possibility of such a Good State are inwardly focussed on the relations between a state and its people, as the idea of a state embodying goodness does not travel well. Even if most states claim to act virtuously in the world of states, they are rarely believed, so powerful and widespread is the idea that any state’s pursuit of right conduct in its external relations will, either because of necessity or because of its primary moral obligations to its own people, at some point, breach ordinary or settled standards of domestic morality. Niebuhr (1932, p. 7) most gloomily expressed this in observing that, as individuals, ‘men believe they ought to love and serve each other and establish justice between each other. As racial, economic and national groups they take for themselves, whatever their power can command’. Such claims point up the challenges confronted in the reconciliation of internationalism – the pursuit of a progressive world order – with addressing perceived national imperatives, which are also suffused with r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1384-5748 International Politics Vol. 50, 1, 18–37 www.palgrave-journals.com/ip/