Thinking about international governance issues through the lens of hypocrisy seems particularly important at the moment. The emerging powers are with increasing plausibility challenging the double-standard built deep into the UN’s structure: that while all states are declared in Article 2(1) to enjoy “sovereign equality,” a few have the right (through their Security Council veto power) to ensure that the normal rules don’t apply to them. And that’s just one of many perceived injustices in the international architecture. The question of why certain states may have nuclear weapons while others may not still rankles, as does the American and European hold on World Bank and IMF leadership.

The hypocrisy surrounding the bedrock principle of sovereign equality is increasingly evident in other ways. From different angles, both the war on terrorism and the campaign for a “responsibility to protect” challenge the notion that states are fundamentally equal.