Gareth Evans (politician) - Contributions To International Relations Thinking - Good International Citizenship

Good International Citizenship

Evans introduced the idea of ‘good international citizenship’ in his first major speeches as Australian foreign minister, and repeated and refined it in subsequent writing. The core notion was that ‘being, and being seen to be, a good international citizen’ should be seen not as the ‘foreign policy equivalent of boy-scout good deeds’, but as a distinct component of any country’s national interest, ‘quite distinct from the familiar duo of security and economic interests’:

The interest in question here is more than just the pleasure of basking in approbation. There are many direct reciprocal benefits to be gained in a world where no country can solve all its own problems: my assistance for you today in solving your drugs and terrorism problem might reasonably lead you to be more willing to help solve my environmental problem tomorrow. But the reputational benefit does also count. The perception of being a country willing to take principled stands for other than immediately self-interested reasons does no harm at all – as the Scandinavians in particular seem to have well understood – when it comes to advancing one’s own commercial or political agendas.

The concept of ‘good international citizenship’ has been specifically attributed to Evans in academic writing; its ‘idealistic pragmatism’ has been seen as a way of bridging or transcending rival doctrines of realism and idealism in international relations theory; and the idea has been advanced as mapping a possible ‘third way for British foreign policy’.