Abstract
Domingues takes the discussion of political modernity to a higher scalar level. If the discussion in the former chapters concentrated on the national level, due to how the global system is organized, for analytical reasons and because this is how in modernity we have seen ourselves, the categories and trends that feature so far are also taken to this new scalar dimension. Rights, citizenship and the law, state and para-state international organizations, sovereignty and the right to protect, state and societal political systems, these are the elements that categorially organize the analysis. International relations theory, with a clear sociological tack, is the main theoretical interlocutor of the chapter. It ends with a discussion about global modernity, the diverse approaches to its understanding, hybridization, colonialism, post-colonialism, ecumenical global critical theory and civilizational analysis.
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03 August 2019
An error in the production process unfortunately led to publication of this chapter prematurely, before incorporation of the final corrections. The version supplied here has been corrected and approved by the author.
Notes
- 1.
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, [1949] 1967), especially pp. 97, 106–58; Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, [1959] 2001), chaps. 1–3.
- 2.
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977). A critique of realism within a more limited view of ‘regimes’ of rules implying interdependence (frequently asymmetrical and not entailing cooperation) is found in Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1977).
- 3.
Emer de Vattel, Le droit des gens, ou Principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des Nations et des Souverains (London: Liberus Tutior, 1758), vol. 1, pp. 9, 18, 19, 6; vol. 2, pp. 1–2; Jens Battleson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the World Wars (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005); Jean L. Cohen, Globalization and Sovereignty: Rethinking Legality, Legitimacy, and Constitutionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Krishan Kumar, Visions of Empire: How Five Imperial Regimes Shaped the World (Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 2017).
- 4.
John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1832, 1861, 1885] 1995), Lecture VI, pp. 1117ff.
- 5.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1820), in Werke, vol. 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), §§ 211–40, pp. 490–503. In Grotius’ view of the ‘law of nations’, sovereignty was the ‘moral power’ of governing a state, that ‘perfect association of free men’, in its three branches—legislative, executive, judicial. It included war and peace-making powers, unimpeded by any other human will, internal or external. Private individuals still could, under certain circumstances, make war against foreign states. Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, [1625, 1646] 2005), Book I, chap. 3.4. The complex relations of his ideas to colonialism, especially concerning dominium and imperium (or ‘rule’ in some translations), as well as the validity of natural law everywhere but, in turn, also the untroubled acceptance of slavery in a just society (especially Book I, chap. 4, Book III, chaps. 7–8) are other elements to be taken into account.
- 6.
Cohen, op. cit.
- 7.
Daniel Chernillo, A Social Theory of the Nation-State: The Political Forms of Modernity beyond Methodological Nationalism (London and New York: Routledge, 2007).
- 8.
Saskia Sassen, A Sociology of Globalization (New York: W. W. Norton & Cia., 2006), pp. 14ff.
- 9.
Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. 2 (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, [1997] 2004), pp. 356ff.
- 10.
See Renée C. van der Hulst, ‘Terrorist networks: the threat of connectivity’, in John Scott and Peter J. Cunington (eds), The Sage Handbook of Network Analysis (London: Sage, 2011); Walter Endlers and Todd Sandlers, The Political Economy of Terrorism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [2006] 2012).
- 11.
Peter D. Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Truth of America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007); Eric Wilson (ed.), The Dual Parapolitics, Carl Schmitt and the National Security Complex (Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012).
- 12.
John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); S. Sassen, Losing Control: Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), chap. 3.
- 13.
Laurence Cockcroft, Global Corruption: Money, Power and Ethics in the Global World (London: I. B. Taurus, 2013).
- 14.
The idea that international law could be equivalent to a basic norm to which national constitutions somehow correspond and adjust, with interstate violence as the expression of sanctions for its violation, leads to convoluted reasonings and hardly makes sense, for instance, in Hans Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre. Einführung in der rechtswissenschaftliche Problematik (Vienna: Verlag Österreich, [1934, 1960] 2000, 2nd edition), chap. 7. Simply speaking of a global (or ‘transnational’) ‘constitution’ bereft of properly defined norms does not suffice either, contrary to Christopher Thornhill, A Sociology of Transnational Constitutions: Social Foundations of the Post-National Legal Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 7. It is more adequate to think of international law as a ‘set of rules’ with similar elements, which need, however, to be precisely identified regarding ‘rules of recognition’. Herbert L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1961] 1994), chap. 10. For the actual limitation of sovereignty, see Gunther Teubner, Verfassungsfragmente. Gesellschaftlicher Konstitutionalismus in der Globalisierug (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2012), pp. 21–31. His idea of ‘societal constitutions’ in an increasingly complex global society (pp. 13ff), based on a theory of self-referential systems, begs too many questions, though.
- 15.
Cohen, op. cit., pp. 5, 26–27; David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), chaps. 1–6, 12; Rob B. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Hauke Brunkhorst, Critical Theory of Legal Revolutions: Evolutionary Perspectives (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2014), chap. 3. I refrain from using the term ‘governance’ due to its vague and problematic definitions. Claus Offe, ‘Governance: an empty signifier?’, Constellations, vol. 16 (2009).
- 16.
Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere (Turin: Einaudi, [1929–35] 2001), vol. 2, pp. 964–65; vol. 3, pp. 1562–63, 1618, 1628–29; René Zavaleta Mercado, ‘Problemas de determinación dependiente y la forma primordial’ (1979), in El Estado en América Latina (Cochabamba and La Paz: Los Amigos del Libro, 1990), pp. 128–30; Robert Cox, ‘Gramsci, hegemony, and international relations: an essay on method’ (1983), in Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). The concept of hegemony employed here differs from the more usual one in international relations theory used to speak of the overwhelming power, in very material terms, of a single state. For ‘soft power’, see J. S. Nye, ‘Soft power’, Foreign Policy, no. 80, autumn (1990).
- 17.
Amazingly, considering its importance, the World Bank has been poorly studied. See, that notwithstanding, João Marcio Mendes Pereira, O Banco Mundial como ator político, intelectual e financeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2011); José Maurício Domingues, ‘Social liberalism and global domination’ (2013), in Breno Bringel and Heriberto Cairo (eds), Critical Geopolitics and Regional Reconfigurations: Interregionalism and Transnationalism between Latin America and Europe (New York and London: Routledge, forthcoming).
- 18.
S. Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [2001] 2006, updated edition). She thinks these are powerful ‘trends’, which she describes empirically, while trying to grasp them through an ‘analytics’ concerned with ‘tipping points’ and ‘foundational changes’ (pp. 9–16).
- 19.
G. Teubner, ‘Breaking frames: economic globalization and the emergence of lex mercatoria’, European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 5 (2002).
- 20.
In this respect, dependency theory is still valid, especially Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependencia y desarrollo en América Latina. Ensayo de interpretación sociológica (Mexico: Siglo XXI, [1969] 1972). World systems theory resumed its main ideas, with a reductive stress on the state and featuring ‘core’ instead of ‘central’ countries. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, vols 1–3 (New York: Academic Press, 1974, 1980, 1989). I have revised these concepts especially in J. M. Domingues Global Modernity, Development, and Contemporary Civilization: Towards a Renewal of Critical Theory (New York and London: Routledge, 2012); Idem, Desarrollo, periferia y semiperiferia en la tercera fase de la modernidad global (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2012).
- 21.
Bull, op. cit., pp. 20, 276–78.
- 22.
For classical works, see Claus von Clausewitz, Vom Krieg (Bonn: Dümmler, [1832] 1991); Morgenthau, op. cit. In sociology, Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. 2. The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), chaps. 11, 12; Anthony Giddens, The Nation State and Violence (Cambridge: Polity, 1985), chap. 9; Hans Joas and Wolfgang Knöbl, Kriegsverdrängung. Ein Problem in der Geschichte Sozialtheorie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhramp, 2008).
- 23.
S. Sassen, Losing Control?; Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
- 24.
Richard Falk, Human Rights Horizon: The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), Part 1 for conceptual matters; Cohen, op. cit., pp. 176, 208ff. She opts for a dualist approach, rejecting a monist view of constitutionalization of international law and the Pandora’s box of R2P, such as conceived in an expansive and unspecified fashion.
- 25.
Idem, pp. 164, 195ff, 196ff. See also Breno Bringel and J. M. Domingues (eds), Global Modernity and Social Contestation (London and New Delhi: Sage, 2015), where this is discussed in a number of chapters, particularly concerning Argentina; and, from a top-down/bottom-up and regionally based movement, featuring Argentina and South Africa, Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011).
- 26.
Immanuel Kant, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht (1784), in Werke, vol. 11 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977). See also, for the foremost representative of the view, with a direct relation to human rights, Jürgen Habermas, Die Einbeziehung des Anderes. Studien zur politischen Theorie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996).
- 27.
Edward Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 148–49; Joaquín Herrera Flores, Los derechos humanos como productos culturales. Crítica del humanismo abstracto (Madrid: Catarata, 2005).
- 28.
A problem incurred in by Nancy Fraser, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalized World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).
- 29.
Brunkhorst, Critical Theory of Legal Revolutions, pp. 321–22, 362, 422–24.
- 30.
Domingues, Modernity Reconstructed, chaps. 1–2; Global Modernity, Development, and Contemporary Civilization, Part II.
- 31.
Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003); Enara Echart Muñoz, Movimientos sociales y relaciones internacionales. La irrupción de un nuevo actor (Madrid: IUCD and Catarata, 2008).
- 32.
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, [1939] 2000), pp. 260–61ff.
- 33.
Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and its Competitors: An Analysis of System Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), chap. 8 and pp. 188–94.
- 34.
Mann, op. cit., chaps. 2, 11; Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriβ der verstehenden Soziologie (Tübingen: J. C. B Mohr [Paul Siebeck], [1921–22] 1980), pp. 520–21. Foreign policy engages several societal collectivities and their state crystallizations, as Mann notes for the nineteenth century (pp. 71ff, 87–88).
- 35.
This was another mechanism suggested in Elias, op. cit., pp. 314–20, 365–73, 412, 436–37.
- 36.
Bull, op. cit.; Keene, op. cit.; Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, [1950] 1974); Nicolas Onuff, ‘“Tainted by contingency”: retelling the story of international law’ (1995), in International Legal Theory: Essays and Engagements, 1966–2006 (New York and London: Routledge, 2008). Hegel (op. cit., § 339, p. 502) observed that at least Europeans built a ‘family’ according to the ‘general principles’ of their legislation, mores and education, with consequences for the ‘law of nations’. Other regions, it goes without saying, were excluded therefrom, irrespective of a purportedly positive, albeit veiled, impact of the Haitian revolution in his early works. If Bull’s ‘international society’ is institutionally very thin (despite participants sharing in a common civilization), Schmitt grudgingly mused on the changes we will discuss below, contemplating the emergence of the US and hoping his own embraced Nazi regime could come to an agreement with that emergent massive global power.
- 37.
Bertrand Badie, L’Etat importé. Essai sur la occidentalización d’ordre politique (Paris: Fayard, 1992); J. M. Domingues, ‘Globalização, reflexividade e justiça’ (2002), in Ensaios de sociologia (Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2003); Global Modernity, Development, and Contemporary Civilization.
- 38.
Sociology has given extremely short shrift to colonialism. The foremost exception was Georg Balandier, ‘La situation colonial: approache théorique’, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, vol. 11 (1951). Marxism was more attentive to colonialism, war and other ugly modern phenomena, especially since Vladimir I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline, in Collected Works, vol. 22 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, [1917] 1964). For ‘internal colonialism’, see Pablo González Casanova, ‘Internal colonialism and national development’, Studies in Comparative International Development, vol. 1 (1965); Rodolfo Stavenhagen, ‘Classes, colonialism and acculturation’, Studies in Comparative International Development, vol. 1 (1965). Apparently unaware of this Latin American strand, check also Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976).
- 39.
H. Bull and Adam Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Domingues, Global Modernity, Development, and Contemporary Civilization.
- 40.
Sudpita Kaviraj, ‘A state of contradictions: the post-colonial state in India’ (2003), in The Imaginary of India: Politics and Ideas (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 210–11. This implies particular attention to the expansion of juridical-political real abstractions, beyond a reductionist opposition between abstract capital and concrete, differential culture (Histories 1 and 2), though he correctly maintains the emancipatory perspective initiated by the Enlightenment, such as put forward by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Post-Colonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [2000] 2007).
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Domingues, J.M. (2019). Global Ramifications: Sovereignty and Autonomy. In: Critical Theory and Political Modernity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02001-9_7
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