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Reconsidering the State: Cosmopolitanism, Republicanism and Global Governance

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Questioning Cosmopolitanism

Part of the book series: Studies in Global Justice ((JUST,volume 6))

Abstract

Cosmopolitan arguments for global forms of democracy and governance have intensified in the last decade because of the increasing impact of transnational interconnections on questions of justice and the inability of states to address global problems in a consistently effective manner. However, despite cosmopolitanism being central to efforts to rethink global governance and despite possessing a strong ethical rationale, questions remain as to how cosmopolitan proposals are going to be realized in practice. This chapter criticizes David Held’s praxeological articulation of cosmopolitan democracy and advocates considering the potentially productive role of the state in global governance. It contends that many forms of cosmopolitan thought are too quick to dismiss the state as a potential locus of ethical global governance and that republican arguments for redeveloping the state are an important counterpoint to cosmopolitan thought.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the Global Order. Cambridge: Polity Press; Falk, Richard. 1995. On Humane Governance. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  2. 2.

    Nussbaum, Martha. 1996. Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism. In For Love of Country, ed. Joshua Cohen. 3–22, 7. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

  3. 3.

    Rengger, Nicholas. 2000. Political Theory and International Relations: Promised Land or Exit from Eden. International Affairs 76/4: 755–770, 763.

  4. 4.

    Beitz, Charles. 1999. International Liberalism and Distributive Justice. World Politics 51: 269–296, 287. For a similar conception see Nussbaum, Martha. 1996. op. cit. 7–8.

  5. 5.

    Pogge, Thomas. 2002. World Poverty and Human Rights. 169. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  6. 6.

    For example, Pogge criticizes the way Intellectual Property Rights relating to pharmaceutical patents neglect the unwell in the developing world. He suggests redesigning these institutional arrangements so that pharmaceutical patents are rewarded to the extent they alleviate the burdens of disease and illness around the world. See Pogge, Thomas. 2005. Human Rights and Global Health: A Research Program. Metaphilosophy 36/1–2: 182–209.

  7. 7.

    See Linklater, Andrew. 1997. The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  8. 8.

    Shapcott, Richard. 2002. Cosmopolitan Conversations: Justice, Dialogue and the Cosmopolitan Project. Global Society 16/3: 221–243.

  9. 9.

    Beitz, Charles. 1999. op. cit. 287.

  10. 10.

    Archibugi, Daniele and David Held. 1995. Editor’s Introduction. In Cosmopolitan Democracy: An Agenda for a New World Order, eds Daniele Archibugi and David Held. 1–16, 3. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  11. 11.

    Pogge, 2002. op. cit. 15–20.

  12. 12.

    Held, David. 1998. Democracy and Globalization. In Re-imagining Political Community; Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy, eds. Daniele Archibugi et al., 11–27. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  13. 13.

    Held, David. 1995. op. cit. 99–140.

  14. 14.

    Kant, Immanuel. 1983. Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey. 118–119. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.

  15. 15.

    Held, David. 1995. op. cit. 228.

  16. 16.

    Ibid. 228.

  17. 17.

    Ibid. 233.

  18. 18.

    Held, David. 2004. Global Covenant. 113. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  19. 19.

    Ibid. 98–101.

  20. 20.

    McGrew, Anthony. 1997. Democracy Beyond Borders? Globalization and the Reconstruction of Democratic Theory and Politics. In The Transformation of Democracy, ed. Anthony McGrew, 231–266; 250. Cambridge: The Open University.

  21. 21.

    Held, David. 2006. Reframing Global Governance: Apocalypse Soon or Reform! New Political Economy 11/2: 157–176, 166.

  22. 22.

    Held, David. 1995. op. cit. 278. This also raises the clear need for procedures and rules to determine what sorts of issues are dealt with at which level of governance. Held’s response to this question is to instantiate the principle of subsidiarity and establish a boundary court that determines public issues on the basis of the number of people affected, the intensity of effect of the issue on people and the “comparative efficiency” of dealing with issues at lower levels of governance. See Held, David. 1995. op. cit. 236.

  23. 23.

    Held, David. 2006. op. cit. 167.

  24. 24.

    Ibid. 168–169.

  25. 25.

    Held, David. 2004. op. cit. 156.

  26. 26.

    Held, David. 1995. op. cit. 279; Held, David. 2004. op. cit. 73–88.

  27. 27.

    Slaughter, Anne-Marie and Thomas N. Hale. December 21, 2005. A Covenant to Make Global Governance Work. Open Democracy <http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalizationvision_reflections/covenant_3141.jsp> Accessed 20 May 2008.

  28. 28.

    Patomäki, Heikki. 2003. Problems of Democratizing Global Governance: Time, Space and the Emancipatory Process. European Journal of International Relations 9/3: 347–376, 357.

  29. 29.

    Keck, Margaret and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. 32–34. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  30. 30.

    Sklair, Leslie. 1997. Social Movements for Global Capitalism: The Transnational Capitalist Class in Action. Review of International Political Economy 4/3: 514–538.

  31. 31.

    Linklater, Andrew. 1998. Citizenship and Sovereignty in the Post-Westphalian European State. In Re-imagining Political Community, eds. Daniele Archibugi et al. 113–137, 118. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  32. 32.

    Eckersley, Robyn. 2004. The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty. 6. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  33. 33.

    See Cerny, Phillip. 1997. Paradoxes of the Competition State: The Dynamics of Political Globalization. Government and Opposition. 32/2: 251–274; Gill, Stephen. 1998. European Governance and New Constitutionalism: Economic and Monetary Union and Alternatives to Democracy. New Political Economy 3/1: 5–26; Sassen, Saskia. 2006. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; Sassen, Saskia. 2003. The State and Globalization. Interventions. 5/2 2003: 241–248.

  34. 34.

    Sassen, Saskia. 2003. op. cit. 242.

  35. 35.

    Slaughter, Anne-Marie and Thomas N. Hale. December 21, 2005. op. cit. 3; See also Neff, Stephen. 1999. International Law and the Critique of Cosmopolitan Citizenship. In Cosmopolitan Citizenship, eds. Kimberley Hutchings and Roland Dannreuther, 105–119. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

  36. 36.

    Habermas, Jürgen. 2001. The Postnational Constellation. 108. Cambridge: Polity Press. See also Walzer, Michael. 1994. Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. 2–4. Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press; and Resnick, Philip. Global Democracy: Ideals and Reality. In Globalization and Europe, ed. Roland Axtmann, 126–143; 136. London: Pinter.

  37. 37.

    Slaughter, Anne-Marie and Thomas N. Hale. December 21, 2005. op. cit. 2.

  38. 38.

    Ibid. 3.

  39. 39.

    See Linklater, Andrew. 1997. op. cit. This argument is also made by Robyn Eckersley. See Eckersley, Robyn. 2007. From Cosmopolitanism Nationalism to Cosmopolitan Democracy. Review of International Studies 13/3: 329–356.

  40. 40.

    Sassen, Saskia. 2003a. The Participation of States and Citizens in Global Governance. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 10/1: 5–28, 15.

  41. 41.

    Laborde, Cécile and John Maynor. 2007. The Contribution of Republicanism to Contemporary Political Theory. In Republicanism and Political Theory, eds. Cécile Laborde and John Maynor, 1–28. Oxford: Blackwell. See also Pettit, Philip. 1999. Republicanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Skinner, Quentin. 1998. Liberty Before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  42. 42.

    Pettit, Philip. 1999. op. cit. 80.

  43. 43.

    Ibid. 129–170.

  44. 44.

    Dagger, Richard. 2006. Neo-republicanism and the civic economy. Politics, Philosophy and Economics 5/2: 151–173, 153.

  45. 45.

    Viroli, Maurizio. 1995. For Love of Country. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  46. 46.

    Pettit, Philip. 1999. op. cit. 296. See also Pettit, Philip. 1999b. Republican Freedom and Contestatory Democratization. In Democracy’s Value, eds. Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordón, 163–190, 296. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Pettit, Philip. 2005. Two-Dimensional Democracy, National and International. IILJ Working Paper (History and Theory of International Law Series) 2005/8: 1–21, 16.

  47. 47.

    Bellamy, Richard. 2007. Republicanism, Democracy and Constitutionalism. In Republicanism and Political Theory, eds. Cécile Laborde and John Maynor, 159–189. Oxford: Blackwell.

  48. 48.

    See Deudney, Daniel. 2007. Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  49. 49.

    Pettit, Philip. 1999. op. cit. 152.

  50. 50.

    Deudney, Daniel. 2007. op. cit. 161–192.

  51. 51.

    This is elaborated further in Slaughter, Steven. 2005. Liberty Beyond Neo-liberalism: A Republican Critique of Liberal Governance in a Globalizing Age. 210–217. Houndsmills: Palgrave Press, 2005.

  52. 52.

    Pettit, Philip. 2005. op. cit. 14–15.

  53. 53.

    Ibid. 16–20.

  54. 54.

    Viroli, Maurizio. 1995. op. cit. 12. See also White, Stuart. 2002. Republicanism, Patriotism, and Global Justice. In Forms of Justice, eds. Daniel A. Bell and Avner de Shalit, 251–268, 258. Langham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

  55. 55.

    Viroli, Maurizio. 1995. op. cit. 13.

  56. 56.

    Skinner, Quentin. 1984. The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives. In Philosophy in History, eds. Richard Rorty et al. 193–221, 214. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  57. 57.

    Slaughter, Steven. 2007. Cosmopolitanism and Republican Citizenship. In Globalization and Citizenship: The Transnational Challenge, eds. Wayne Hudson and Steven Slaughter. 85–99. London: Routledge.

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  1. Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Steven Slaughter

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  1. Fac. Arts, Deakin University, Burwood Highway 221, Burwood, 3125, Victoria, Australia

    Stan van Hooft

  2. Centre for Logic & Philosophy of Science, Philosophy & Moral Science Dept., Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, Gent, 9000, Belgium

    Wim Vandekerckhove

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Slaughter, S. (2010). Reconsidering the State: Cosmopolitanism, Republicanism and Global Governance. In: van Hooft, S., Vandekerckhove, W. (eds) Questioning Cosmopolitanism. Studies in Global Justice, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8704-1_12

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