Abstract
This chapter attempts to use Hannah Arendt’s idea of politics as taking place in a “space in—between” people as a starting point for thinking about politics in a nascent or emerging global civil society that is typically characterized in liberal terms.1 This liberal version has many benefits and attractions, but this chapter suggests that we should not take for granted the idea that liberalism offers the only, or an unproblematic, account of what such a new political space could or should look like. Arendt’s critique of politics within the modern state offers a potentially rich and insightful way of thinking about these transnational political forms in a way that relies less on law, institutions, and “ruling,” and instead sees them as offering scope for a politics of freedom via the active involvement, through dialogue, of individuals who bring with them a rich identity and rootedness, rather than a thinner status as a rights-holding citizen.
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Notes
There is a large literature in this area, but one influential instance of a liberal version of this is to be found in the idea of cosmopolitan democracy, exemplified in the work of David Held and Daniele Archibugi. For example, Daniele Archibugi and David Held (eds.), Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1995).
This comes most clearly in her account of the vita activa and the political nature of action. See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, IL.: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 7–21, 175–247.
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), especially 13–52.
Also Philip Hansen, Hannah Arendt: Politics, History and Citizenship (Cambridge: Polity, 1993), 54–57.
Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (New Edition with Added Prefaces) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), especially 389–391.
James Bohman, “The Moral Costs of Political Pluralism: the dilemmas of difference and equality in Arendt’s ‘Reflections on Little Rock,’” in Larry May and Jerome Kohn (eds.), Hannah Arendt: Twenty Years Later (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1997), 68.
For a useful summary of Arendt’s thought here, see Jerome Kohn, “Freedom: the priority of the political,” in Dana Villa (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
T. H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Development (Westport, CN.: Greenwood Press, 1973).
Margaret Canovan, The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt (London: J. M. Dent, 1974), 68.
Hannah Arendt (ed.), “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing,” Men in Dark Times (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), 18.
For example, see her critique of the absolutism of the French Revolution and its role in its failure. On Revolution, especially 154–159. For a general discussion of her view of political communities, see Bikhu Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1981), 131–172.
For example, Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977)
Robert H. Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
This summary definition of an international society reflects the fuller definition given in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 1.
John Williams, “Territorial Borders, Toleration and the English School,” Review of International Studies, 28, no. 4 (2002).
Hannah Arendt (ed.), “Tradition and the Modern Age,” Between Past and Future: Six Essays in Political Thought (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), 22.
For a discussion of the link between international and world society, see Richard Little, “The English School’s Contribution to International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations, 6, no. 3 (2000). For an account focusing on Arendt, see chapter 7 by Anthony Lang in this volume.
For example, Bull, Anarchical Society; Hedley Bull (ed.), “The Concept of Justice in International Relations,” Justice in International Relations: The Hagey Lectures (Waterloo: University of Waterloo Press, 1984).
Hedley Bull, “The State’s Positive Role in World Affairs,” Daedalus, 108, no. 4 (1979); Jackson, Global Covenant.
John Williams, “The Ethics of Borders and the Borders of Ethics: International Society and Rights and Duties of Special Beneficence,” Global Society, 13, no. 4 (1999); Williams, “Territorial Borders, Toleration and the English School.”
The literature here is very substantial. For a critical summary of its main claims and ideas, see Chris Brown, “Cosmopolitanism, World Citizenship and Global Civil Society,” in Simon Caney and Peter Jones (eds.), Human Rights and Global Diversity (London: Frank Cass, 2001).
For a critique of such claims, see Friedrich Kratochwil, “The Embarrassment of Changes: Neo-Realism as the Science of Realpolitik without Politics,” Review of International Studies, 19, no. 1 (1993).
For example, Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Probably the best introductory, general survey of globalization is Jan Aart Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).
I cannot hope to do full justice to the complexity of this work here. A useful starting point is the prolific work of David Held. For example, Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995).
For example, Barry K. Gills (ed.), Globalization and the Politics of Resistance (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).
For example, Nigel Dower, World Ethics: The New Agenda (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998).
For example, Nigel Dower and John Williams (eds.), Global Citizenship: A Critical Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002).
For a discussion of contemporary debates about the nature of territorial borders, see David Newman and Anssi Paasi, “Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World: Boundary Narratives in Political Geography,” Progress in Human Geography, 22, no. 2 (1998).
For a discussion of the social world, see Hannah Pitkin, The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Conception of the Social (Chicago, IL.: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
Bernard Crick, “Hannah Arendt and the Burden of Our Times,” Political Quarterly, 68, no. 1 (1997): 82–83.
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© 2005 Anthony F. Lang, Jr. and John Williams
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Williams, J. (2005). Hannah Arendt and the International Space In-Between?. In: Lang, A.F., Williams, J. (eds) Hannah Arendt and International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981509_8
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