1
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism∗
By Clement Wayne Hudson∗∗
In this paper I argue that it may be possible to respond to
globalisation by developing cosmopolitan republican moderations of the
state, citizenship and civil society.
Although republicanism is often
deemed an outmoded political tradition, I argue that it can be reinvented
in cosmopolitan terms as a way of advancing proposals for public debate.
In part one of the paper I discuss various meanings of the vogue word
‘globalisation’ and distinguish seven different patterns, each of which is
often singly or in concert called ‘globalisation’. These different ways of
understanding the changing nature of our global neighbourhood suggest
there is no such thing as ‘globalisation’ in a literal, singular or unified
sense.
In part two I argue that republicanism needs to be rethought in
cosmopolitan
terms
in
the
context
of
globalisation,
without
underestimating the need for strong states at the national state level,
without endorsing abstract utopias of world government, and in ways that
take account of contemporary social differentiation, dispersion and
complexity. In the context of cosmopolitan political reform, I argue for
cosmopolitan republican moderations of existing
∗
arrangements as
Dr. Hudson has presented this article recently at a conference hosted by Tamkang
University. This article is a revised version of a chapter of his book, The Reform of
Utopia. It was published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
∗∗
Dr. Hudson, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law, Griffith
University and the United Nations University. Dr. Hudson is a Ph.D. of Oxford
University, and also the Winner of Australian National Teaching Award Arts and
Humanities, Canberra 2004.
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
proposals that deserve to be discussed. I also advocate a network of
interlocking institutions, and procedurally binding organizational
commitments to a new global order. The thrust of the paper is that we
need to respond to globalisation in realistic, but constructive utopian
terms.
Key words: Cosmopolitanism, Republicanism, Utopianism,
Constructive Civil Society, Citizenship
I
Although there are countless references to ‘globalisation’ in the
press and in diverse scholarly literatures, it is rare to find a coherent
account of what ‘globalisation’ means.1 Instead, talk of ‘globalisation’
currently covers different problems. We would do well, both in theory and
in practice, to distinguish between them and the different logics to which
they relate. At a minimum, it is useful to distinguish at least seven
different patterns, each of which is often singly or in concert called
‘globalisation’:
1
For recent literature on globalisation, see F. J. Lechner & J. Boli eds The Globalization
Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), B. Holden ed Global Democracy: Key Debates
( London: Routledge,. 2000), J. Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004), L.Panitch, C. Leys, A. Zuege & M. Konings eds. The
Globalization Decade: A Critical Reader (London: Merlin Press, 2004), U. Beck, What is
Gobalization? (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), S. Sassen, Globalization and its Discontents
(New York: The New Press,1998).
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
3
1. the emergence of global currency markets since the deregulations of the
1980s;
2. the transnationalisation of technology and rapidity of redundancy;
3. the competitive pressure of corporations to become global;
4. the globalisation of political activity and transnational economic diplomacy;
5. the intensification of global cultural flows, communications, and migrations;
6. the breakdown of geographical boundaries and the emergence of new
connections between cities, regions and governance structures;
7. the loss of faith in the capacity of government to manage their domestic
problems.
Similarly, it is useful to distinguish at least nine common claims:
1. That the globe is now a single unit for the purposes of decision-making;
2. That capital, goods and services move more freely throughout the world;
3. That national economies have been opened up to global markets;
4. That the role of the nation-state in shaping national policies has been reduced;
5. That the rate of economic interaction between nation-states and national
economies has accelerated;
6. That organisation of production has changed from Fordism to post-Fordism or
has become ‘flexible’ or has been ‘internationalised’;
7. That social relations are acquiring relatively distanceless and borderless
qualities;
8. That migration patterns have shifted from South to North (i.e. from less
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
developed to the highly industrialised countries).
One minimal working definition of ‘globalisation’ takes
globalisation to be the growth of economic, political, social and
cultural relations across borders. This definition invites historical
exploration of the dynamics of social change, by which the
permeability of the political borders of the nation-states has become
intensified. It is also useful in stressing that ‘globalisation is not
simply an economic problem’. Many scholars associate globalisation
with the development of the world as a single society or with the
world becoming a single place. But this blurs the crucial distinction
between an outcome and a process that leads to it. Similarly, the idea
of a single process of globalisation is suspect, not least because
economic transformation, technological change, and cultural change
are different things. Indeed, there may be no single process of
globalisation with its own logic.
Further, many writers assume that globalisation is harmful and
confuse it with neoliberalism. Obviously, it is crucial to decide
whether globalisation is:
•
a process of global integration occurring since the dawn of history, which
has recently and suddenly accelerated
•
an integral feature of ‘modernisation’
•
a specific phase of capitalism
•
bound up with post-industrialisation and/or postmodernisation and/or the
disorganisation of capitalism
•
primarily an effect of an information revolution.
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
5
These different ways of understanding the changing nature of our
global neighbourhood suggest there is no such thing as ‘globalisation’ in a
literal, singular or unified sense. Rather ‘globalisation’ is shorthand for a
diversity of related developments and we need to be careful not to give
our shorthand a moral personality. Globalisation as shorthand for many
things is neither good nor bad. It does, however, have many implications
for the way we structure our social, economic and governmental affairs. It
challenges us to reform our existing system of government because it has
reduced the effectiveness of political and economic arrangements which
once worked well, and by confronting us with problems of scale,
temporality and supraterritoriality which our existing institutions find
difficult to encompass. Globalisation challenges monolithic conceptions
of national identity. It also casts a shadow over essentialist conceptions of
geography as a basis for identity. In the context of these challenges it may
be useful to revisit republicanism as a doctrine of governance.
II
In this part of the paper I argue that republicanism needs to be
rethought to take account of cosmopolitan perspectives.2 This, I submit,
can be done without underestimating the need for strong states at the
2
For recent literature on cosmopolitanism, see S. Vertovec and R. Cohen eds
Conceiving Cosmopolitanism-Theory, Context, Practice (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002), and for a different version of cosmopolitan republicanism to mine, see
J.Bohman, ‘Cosmopolitan Republicanism’ in The Monist vol 84, 1, Jan 2001. Cf T.
Pogge, ‘Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty”’ in Ethics, vol 103, 1, October 1992.
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
nation state level, without endorsing abstract utopias of world
government, and in ways that take account of contemporary social
differentiation, dispersion, and complexity. By applying a constructive
utopianism to the problem of how to rethematise ‘the public’ and
‘governance’ in the context of cosmopolitan political reform, I argue for
cosmopolitan republican moderations of the nation state, civil society, and
citizenship as a constellation of proposals, traversed by utopian elements,
that deserve to be discussed. I also advocate a network of interlocking
institutions, and procedurally binding organizational commitments to a
new global order,3 where these proposals are primarily contributions to
public debate. In contrast to populist republican fantasies and to various
radical democratic and communitarian positions, the approach I advocate
assumes the need for a strong nation state and for ethically formative
institutions to make both government and governance work more
effectively at both national and international levels.
Republicanism as a form of political theory has attracted significant
interest in recent years. In contrast to neo-liberalism which attempts to
solve contemporary social and political problems by relying on
autonomous individuals, a market economy and a procedural state,
3
My approach here differs from, but is indebted to, that of the distinguished British
political theorist, David Held. For Held, the concept of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ refers
to a model of political organization in which citizens, wherever they are located in the
world, have a voice, input and political representation in international affairs, in parallel
with and independently of their own governments. According to Held, the challenge is to
create and entrench democratic institutions at regional and global levels –
complementing those at the nation-state level – which would enable the peoples of the
world to express and deliberate upon their aims and objectives in a progressively more
interconnected global order. See D. Held, Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge, Polity
Press, 1995a) and Democracy and the Global Order From the Modern State to
Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995b).
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
7
republicanism rejects neutrality as an approach to governance and accepts
the need to pursue substantive ethical objectives through institutions and
organizational forms. It advocates a strong active state that structures
some of the spaces in which actors pursue their life chances, and attempts
to promote mixed government, universal access, rotation of office, and
wider distributions of different types of political, economic, social and
cultural power. Republicanism also promotes the ideal of dominion or
self-government, although this ideal should be construed as a set of
arrangements for governance rather than as an impossible imperative.4
Today, however, republicanism needs to be rethought to take account of
globalisation and the problems associated with it. Specifically, it needs to
be reworked by proposing institutions which integrate cosmopolitan and
nation state perspectives, even if the early efforts in this direction are
largely inadequate.5
In contrast to older forms of republicanism, a cosmopolitan
republicanism has a radically discursive character based on the ascription
to every human being of cosmopolitan capacities, rights and obligations
4
A major problem for many forms of modern republicanism is how to reconcile the
utopian postulate of self-government with the practical realities of actual systems of
government, national, corporate or personal. An answer with a long history is to legislate
‘a republic’ in the sense of a republican constitution. Historical experience, however,
suggests that this answer exaggerates the degree to which constitutions shape actual
politics. Self-government is a complex utopian postulate which needs to be distinguished
from both self-ownership and dominion. Obviously many arrangements required for
effective governmental, administrative and bureaucratic regimes set limits to or even
erode the capacity for self-government — whether by the nation-state, corporate bodies
or individual persons.
5
Cosmopolitan republicanism on this account is closer to neo-Roman civic
republicanism based on non-domination than to neo-Athenian republicanism based on
participation. See here Philip Pettit brilliant discussion in ‘Reworking Sandel’s
Republicanism’, The Journal of Philosophy XCV (February 1998): 73-96.
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
follow. This change of stance means that cosmopolitan republicanism
does not assume a single ethnic identity, a single culture, consensus about
virtues, or the notion that membership of a political community provides
one’s primary identity. It also excludes ‘political’ religion and various
forms of civic enthusiasm, while embracing emergent international,
transnational, and global organizational objectives. On the other hand, a
cosmopolitan republicanism can address both the weaknesses of both
traditional republican theory and contemporary liberalism and build on
what was right in social democracy, including the attempt to relate
economic policies to rational social goals.
What is at issue here is the need to rethink the public and
governance. Contemporary understandings of ‘the public’ do not preserve
the wider utopian indications associated with the res publica. Clearly the
emergence of the eighteenth century public sphere theorised by Habermas
does not provide a technically developed model for contemporary
rationality, not only because of the problematic nature of attempts to
construe public and private as separate domains (with obvious
ramifications for the regulation of women and sexuality), but because the
economic opportunities and the information available to citizens are now
sometimes not under the control of national governments.6 Today what
properly belongs to the public sphere is disputed, and activities that were
once assigned to the private sphere, especially reproductive behaviour
have become issues in the public domain. To this extent, there is a need to
apply utopian reason to the contemporary task of reinventing the
institution of ‘the public’, while at the same time recognising that the
6
See J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into
a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
9
‘public’ in the future may not be narrowly tied to the nation state.7 This
opens up the utopian horizon of giving the ‘public’ school, ‘public’ office
and ‘public’ service new cosmopolitan republican inflections.
The term ‘governance’ captures the dispersion of contemporary
political and economic power. Governance is the sum of the many ways
individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their affairs. It
includes multinational corporations, the mass media, non-governmental
organisations and citizens’ movements, as well as the governments found
in nation states.8 A cosmopolitan republican approach to governance aims
to achieve a strong nation-state governance with cosmopolitan
commitments. Unlike many forms of communitarianism, however, it is not
incompatible with the actual forms the commercial republic has taken
(contrast Bellah 1985). Nor, in contrast to some forms of traditional
republicanism, is it nostalgic for small communities based on direct
democracy. Nor does it make democracy (cosmopolitan or otherwise) an
unproblematic solution to all political organizational problems. And,
unlike purely Romantic forms of globalism, it recognises the continuing
importance of the nation-state as a crucial site for struggles over collective
7
For attempts to redirect political studies to the improvement of political institutions,
see S.L. Elkin and K.E. Soltan (eds) The New Constitutionalism Designing Political
Institutions For A Good Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Cf. O.
Höffe, Political Justice: Foundations for a Critical Philosophy of Law and the State.
Trans. J.C. Cohen (London: Blackwell, 1994), and Korsgaard, C.M. The Sources of
Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For the active/ passive
distinction, see B. Yack ‘Active and Passive Justice’ in B. Yack (ed.) Liberalism Without
Illusions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) ch.13. For the weaknesses of a
universalist approach to economic justice, see P.D. McClelland, The American Search
For Economic Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).
8
See The Governance of the Global Economy (UNDP Human Development Report,
1977).
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outcomes. At the same time, it makes proposals designed to modify the
organization of the nation-state in order to give it integral cosmopolitan
features.
Today the classical republican tradition increasingly fails to match
up with the technical problems facing real world governments. Classical
republicanism assumed publicly enforced moral unity and moral
consensus, military conceptions of the civic, oligarchic notions of the
political, and patriarchal models of the citizen,9 all of which are now
generally regarded as indefensible. As a result, many abandon
republicanism altogether, but this may be hasty. Unlike classical
republicanism, contemporary republicanism can take account of
difference, alterity, and diversity, even though classical republicanism
failed to do so. It can also outgrow the desire to force citizens into a single
prescribed ethical mould and come to terms with political and ethical
pluralism.
10
To
do
so
successfully,
however,
contemporary
republicanism needs to combine utopian and anti-utopian features.
Republicanism and utopianism are both ancient traditions in
political and social thought, even if their interconnections are historically
contingent and variable. There are historical precedents from Plato on for
9
Classical republicanism lacks adequate theoretical terms for the analysis of
contemporary government, both public and private, and its nostalgia for a shared civic
ethos need to be rethought to take account of reflexivity and pluralism. It is also
obviously no longer satisfactory to tie ethics to the survival needs of armed states or to
make civic identity central to moral identities. On the other hand, the political realism
behind such ideas is often still relevant, especially the recognition that freedom may
sometimes be the product of coercion and restraint. See P. Pettit, op. cit..
10
It is also important to distance a cosmopolitan republicanism from the national
democratic republicanism (associated with republicanism in both France and the United
States) for which the republic is a people saying ‘We’.
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
11
admixing utopianism and republicanism(The Republic, The Laws). In the
Western political tradition some utopians envisaged republics (e.g.
Campanella), while some republicans wrote utopias (e.g. Henry Neville).
The utopia of setting up a republic did not remain in fictional texts: it was
striven for in actual political and legal arrangements. Nonetheless, it is a
mistake to assume that utopian approaches to republicanism only took the
form of politically dangerous fantasies. Students of Renaissance utopias
have noted for some time that some humanist utopias were technical and
practical rather than fantasies of ideal societies or human perfectibility,
just as there were works on the perfect moral commonwealth, such as Sir
Thomas Elyot’s The Boke named the Governor (1521) and Sir John
Eliot’s The Monarchie of Man (1622), which envisaged moral renewal on
the basis of existing institutions. Moreover, these utopias included
republican utopias concerned with detailed models for the arrangement of
the political order.
Perhaps the most instructive example of realistic utopianism is
provided by James Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656).11
Harrington
exemplifies
the
‘political
architecture’
approach
to
republicanism which relies on an array of institutions and technical
proposals to deal with irreducible diversity and ethical conflict and to
ensure balanced good government. His Oceana was a practical and a
technical republican utopia offering a series of constitutional proposals
11
. See my ‘Republicanism and Utopianism’ in W. Hudson and D. Carter (eds) The
Republicanism Debate, (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1993), ch. 11. For
useful comparison, see David Hume ‘s Harringtonian tract, ‘Idea of A Perfect
Commonwealth’ (1740) in G. Claeys (ed.) Utopias of the British Enlightenment
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) :56-69. Also William Hodgson ‘The
Commonwealth of Reason’ (1795) in ibid.:201-247.
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designed to be implemented in Oliver Cromwell’s England. It was based
on two fundamental principles: the need for a balance of property and the
need for rotation in the holding of public office. Harrington grasped the
fact that constitutional forms operated according to the predominant
pattern of the ownership of land, and his insight into the degree to which
the organization of the economy determined the actual government of a
country led him to advocate economic reforms that would make the
representative institutions he favoured workable. His programme of
practical reforms included agrarian land reform, university reform
compulsory free school education policed by government inspectors,
army reform (resort to democratic election), electoral reform (the ballot,
rotation and indirect election), the separation of civil and military and
executive, legal and judicial powers, self-government for colonies and the
establishment of new national institutions such as an Academy to promote
the education of the people.
Harrington’s approach, albeit still largely classical and agrarian,
assumed that republican technical innovations were required because
human beings were imperfect, not perfectible. His methodology was to
design a better institutional order on the basis of the complexities of
actual historical experience, not to deduce a polity from first principles. At
the same time Harrington drew upon political and legal theorists such as
Machiavelli and Grotius for both technical doctrines of governance and
theories of political and legal psychology. Harrington’s work, however,
did not explain if, when, and why utopian ideals were needed in addition
to technical proposals He left the problem of the relationship between
realistic technical proposals and utopian ideals largely unaddressed, and
did not solve the problem of how to construe technical proposals
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
13
involving utopian ideals that cannot be realised.
A cosmopolitan republicanism takes up both challenges. It rejects
the utopia of a perfect constitution, and reposes the issue of a
constitutional framework in terms of institutions which promote
domain-specific forms of socially useful conflict and constraint. This, it
may be said, is the genius of Madison’s version of federalism and the
group interest approach to managing the commercial republic with which
he is associated. A contemporary republicanism, however, has to go
beyond Madison and develop a republican approach to a globalising
world order as an integral part of nation-state governance. To do so, it
modifies the idealistic republicanism advocated by Kant.
Kant’s republicanism was both unrealistic (he postulated a perfectly
constituted state which would realise ‘nature’s secret plan’) and explicitly
theological. On the other hand, Kant grasped, as many later republicans
have not, many of the limitations of a purely intra-societal approach to
republicanism, and the fact that a planetary republican ideal which did not
imply an abstract model of world government might have significant
historical effects. To this extent, his cosmopolitanism can be reprojected.
Of course, a contemporary cosmopolitan republicanism cannot be
‘cosmopolitan’ in an eighteenth century sense, or mainly as a matter of
conversation and dialogue. It has to be less tied to moral philosophical
principles, more piecemeal, strategic, and open to the tensions and
stresses which follow from mixing diverse political organizational logics.
On the other hand, it is a mistake to assume that Kant’s republicanism
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cannot be historically productive simply because it is flawed.12
A cosmopolitan republicanism can learn from Kant’s idealistic
republicanism in so far as he argued for a republicanism that was
differential and processual.13 Kant’s republicanism was differential in the
sense that he held that republicanism had to be related differentially to
historically contingent regimes and circumstances. Kant noted that actual
regimes were far from ideal in their origins or in their operations. In these
circumstances he did not seek to overthrow existing regimes or to
establish an ideal republic, but to bring republican perspectives to bear
upon actual regimes to a degree and in a manner consistent with actual
political, economic and cultural circumstances. Kant’s republicanism was
processual in that he argued for a process of republicanisation, whereby
actual political practices would be modified in some states, and long-term
progress would be made towards world governmental arrangements
12
The transformative potential of Kant’s ideas are much greater than criticism of them
as doctrines would suggest. For example, Kant’s utopia of the rational autonomous
individual, although subject to cogent criticism by feminist and other scholars, arguably
promotes quests for alternatives to conventional models of social organization. Similarly,
Rawls shows how much may be made of Kant in the context of a new ‘law of peoples’.
See J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 1999).
13
On Kant’s republicanism, see H. Reiss’s introduction to Kant’s Political Writings
(1977), 21-33. The celebrated essays ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’ (1795)
and ‘Idea For A Universal History With A Cosmopolitan Purpose’ (1784) in H. Reiss
(1977), 93-130 and 41-53 respectively, and, more advanced, Kant’s Rechtslehre ed. and
trans. by W. Hastie 1887 as The Philosophy of Law, Edinburgh. For the German texts,
see I. Kant 1964 Werke Suhrkamp: Frankfurt a.M. vol.XI, 91-251 and 31-61. Cf R.W.
Beck (ed.) 1957 Kant On History Bobbs-Merril: Indianapolis; pp.11-26. For a discussion
of Kant’s view which captures the complexity and follows the German text, see Thomas
Mertens ‘Cosmopolitanism and Citizenship: Kant against Habermas’, in The European
Journal of Philosophy 4, 3, (1996): 328-347. Cf. R. Abbianett, ‘Politics and
Enlightenment: Kant and Derrida on Cosmopolitan Responsibility’, in Citizenship
Studies 4, 1 (February 1998).
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
15
which would ensure ‘perpetual peace’. Here Kant’s republicanism
provides an alternative to the more familiar idea of establishing a republic
by
legislating
a
fundamental
written
law
or
constitution.
Republicanisation, in Kant’s sense, implies that political and social reform
cannot be safely located in a mythological moment: the moment of the
founding of a republic. On the contrary, republicanisation needs to be
understood as a continuing social and political process with material
institutional conditions-- a process that must be renegotiated over time as
interests and circumstances change. Given this perspective, it may indeed
be possible to achieve a long term shift from nation -state republicanism
to republicanism based on capacities or human rights, whether or not
human rights are deduced from a theory or are construed as constructions
which now attach to persons.
III
I now introduce a cosmopolitan republican approach to a range of
governance issues.14
14
On governance issues, see L. Weiss ed. States in the Global Economy: Bringing
Domestic Institutions Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), T. Pogge,
‘Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty’ Ethics no. 1. October, 1992, V. Cable, Globalization
and Global Governance (London:Pinter/Cassell, 1999), R. Falk, ‘Humane Governance
for the World: Reviving the Quest’ Review of International Political Economy vol.7 (2),
2000, Summer, A. Prakash & J. A. Hart (eds) Globalization and Governance (London:
Routledge, 2000), A. Carter, The Political Theory of Global Citizenship (London;
Routledge, 2001), G. Stokes, ‘Transnational Citizenship: Problems of Definition, Culture
and Democracy’ Cambridge Review of International Affairs vol (17) 1 2004 April.
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
Citizenshp
In the case of citizenship major developments are gradually
occurring in the context of citizenship with global citizenship, world
citizenship, cosmopolitan citizenship and transnational citizenship being
widely discussed. Today citizenship has to be theorised as multilevel to
take account of differences between different citizenships; for example,
nation state, global, cosmopolitan and transnational citizenships
15
Moreover, contemporary work on citizenship increasingly rejects
uniformitarian approaches to citizenship which model citizenship as
unified, single and homogenous, and advocates instead multilevel,
heterogenous, and differential citizenship.
16
Citizenship is now
heterogeneous, especially in technologically advanced countries because
there is no comparability between many forms of citizenship and no
single administrative level at which conflicts between them can be
resolved. Further, citizenship is now differential in the sense that multiple
and irreducible types of citizenship negotiated by the exercises of multiple
civic capacities have to be recognised which cannot be reduced to a single
uniformitarian citizenship. This means that it is now necessary to accept
that:
15
For discussion, see K. Hutchings and R. Danreuther eds Cosmopolitan Citizenship
(London: Macmillan, 1999), R. A. Falk, ‘The Making of Global Citizenship’ in B. van
Steenbergen (ed.) The Condition of Citizenship (London: Sage, 1994), pp.127-40, R. A.
Falk, On Human Governance: Towards a New Global Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 1995),
and G. Stokes ‘Global Citizenship’ in W. Hudson and J. Kane (eds), Rethinking
Australian Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), ch.18.
16
Differentiated citizenship is usually taken to mean that differences between types of
citizens or groups of citizens need to be recognised and taken into account. Differential
citizenship emphasises that political citizens have access to a vast diversity of
citizenships which cannot be collapsed into a single inclusive uniformitarian citizenship.
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
•
17
citizenship is different on different sites and in different contexts and
domains;
•
different citizenships involve multiple capacities;
•
exercises of civic capacity do not fall under a single citizenship; and
•
citizenships cannot be totalised, for example, by reference to
citizenships persons possess as members of a nation-state.
Of course, everyone knows that what ‘citizenship’ means varies
with discourse and context, but in the literature of citizenship the
implications of this fact are seldom drawn out. Often a citizen is taken to
be a member of something. For example, a member of a city or a
community or a state or an empire or an association or a corporation. At
other times the stress falls on exclusion and clear boundaries. Who gives
citizenship? Who judges disputed cases? Who is denied citizenship? How
can citizenship be lost? At other times the practice of citizenship is held to
be crucial.
Citizenship, however, is not one thing, and monistic approaches
conceal the heterogeneous sites on which diverse citizenship capacities
are exercised. Some forms of citizenship are specific to one site or
particular membership, for example, membership of a voluntary
association, a church, a club, a lodge, a block of home units, a corporation.
Others amount to exercises of capacity: those who do it are citizens in that
domain. In other contexts citizenship implies a positive evaluation of
behaviour. For example, good citizenship in corporate contexts involves
behaving in ways which take account of the rights of other players and
some consideration for the public good. In other cases again, citizenship is
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an ethic by which existing arrangements can be evaluated and judged.
It is also no longer controversial to refer to multiple citizenships,
not only in the sense of cases where a person has dual citizenship, but in
the sense that one person has many citizenships or, more subtly, is angled
differently towards distinct citizenships (for example, national citizenship
and reproductive citizenship) because of considerations of race, gender or,
in some countries, religion. Even a common sense approach recognises
that citizenship varies in different domains. Hence scholars currently
distinguish local government, state, national, regional, and international
citizenship, and some add cosmopolitan, transnational and global
citizenship as well. Likewise, it is useful to distinguish between political
citizenship and legal citizenship, where the latter is jurisdictionally
specific, between social and cultural citizenship, where these relate to
capacities and institutional sites, and between economic, corporate and
industrial citizenship. This leaves, at the very least, the crucially different
cases and terrains of sexual, educational, media, military, environmental,
ecological, and religious citizenship, where these are all defined
differently. Further, the tests for each of these citizenships vary, or , in
some cases, are unclear.
Once it is accepted that there are multiple conceptions, forms, and
logics of citizenship, it is impossible to tie all forms of citizenship back to
a legitimating nation --state that allegedly has a transparent overview of
the lives of its citizens. Instead, it may be necessary to recognise that
citizenship is different for different people in different contexts,
depending on race, age, religion and gender; and that some of these
differences are incommensurable. Moreover, once allowance is made for
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
19
discursive forms of citizenship, the range of citizenships extends further
because some forms of citizenship are hermeneutical, in the sense that
there is no ‘fact of the matter’ to fall back upon.
The existence of different logics of citizenship relative to particular
sites and related changes of comportment and ethics can then be taken
systematically into account, especially in the context of the promotion and
good management of civil society. In the context of growing reflexivity
and social differentiation, political citizenship can be construed as
something exercised among other citizenships by individuals who have or
could acquire other citizenships. This shift does not imply a break with
traditional approaches to citizenship so much as a more tensional
conception of citizenship as a set of distributed comportments rather than
a single ethic. These comportments then realise citizenship in diverse and
conflicting domains.
Accepting that citizenships are plural and involve different types of
entities on different sites does not exclude a strong form of civic
citizenship allied to specific arts of governance. Accounts of citizenship
which construct citizens primarily as subjects produced and regulated by
the apparatuses of states need, however, to be supplemented by strong
accounts of agency so that citizenship is understood in terms of
dispositional possibilities as well as in terms of the impact of historically
variable forms of political, economic, and legal regulation. A case for
republican civic citizenship can then be made for some but not other
personae, without reducing citizenship to allegedly permanent attributes
of a single human nature. Republican civic citizenship implies a public
concern with and for the civic formation of citizens, whether they be
20
Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
human persons, companies, or associations. This concern is not simply the
need to secure a healthy res publica in which public officials are kept
honest, but to secure the basic preconditions for free individuals to live in
cooperation and concord. Today this citizenship can extend to include
cosmopolitan concern. It may even extend to initiatives to promote
institutional support for free associations, and organizations that promote
social solidarity and collective goal formation among citizens world-wide.
Today the emergence of an international civil society, long
signalled in the literature of non-government organizations, in
international relations theory, and in the discourse of world feminism,
provides a limiting framework for the operation of the nation state. In this
context, practices of international, transnational and global citizenship can
be inscripted within nation-state structures not designed to accommodate
them, in ways which modify the administrative calculations of
nation-states. This strategy builds on immanent possibilities within
contemporary institutions, popular cultures and emerging planetary law.
Even if global law only prevails over nation-state law in specific areas
covered by particular conventions, the reference to global law itself
becomes an agent for change that modifies nation state law by limiting its
claims to autonomy.
Any project to institutionalise commitments to a civilised
globalizing order within how existing nation-state institutions such as
courts, parliaments, banks and stock exchanges work is obviously very
ambitious.
Moreover,
strategic
work
to
introduce
cosmopolitan
dimensions into existing governmental orders can be seen as preparatory
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
21
for global governance. 17 Here it is possible to build on anticipatory
utopian models found not only in both Stoics and Buddhist utopias of
world peace. Granted that nation-states will continue to dominate the
international system, cosmopolitan republican perspectives can be
introduced within nation -state socio-legal cultures, especially as the
determining effects of local geography become less crucial.
18
Specifically, changes to the workings of intra-state legal systems can be
introduced in order to institutionalise internationally agreed social justice
norms, including the implementation of nationally and internationally
agreed indices for social development. Institutionalising international
justice does not mean that utopian expectations can suddenly be realised,
but that organizational structures and bureaucratically intelligible calculi
can be developed which maximize the chances of deliberated rather than
arbitrary or unintentional outcomes.
Those who dismiss this vision as simple-minded have few
alternatives to propose to a world dominated by unregulated financial
17
For an argument for a world state, see K. Nielsen, ‘World Government, Security and
Global Justice’ in Problems of International Justice ed. Steven Luper-Foy (Boulder,
Colo.: Westview, 1988). On global governance, see Commission on Global Governance,
Our Global Neighbourhood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). For the historical
background on republican approaches to international relations, see N.G. Onuf, The
Republican Legacy in International Thought (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press,
1998).
18
Problems of ethnicity and nationalism remain paramount, and cannot be wished away
by abstract utopian schemes. However, these matters require careful treatment. William
McNeill notes that human communities are becoming at least partially detached from
geography. He also argues that ethnic homogeneity is exceptional in world history and
that civilised societies generally merged peoples of diverse backgrounds into ethnically
plural politics. See W.H. McNeill, Polyethnicity and the National Unity in World History
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 72. For a defence of nations, see A.D.
Smith, Nations and Nationalism In A Global Era (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), ch.6.
22
Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
capitalism and characterised by extremes of inequality, poverty and
injustice. By regulating environmental issues, the internet, the
organization of international finance, and the movement of populations,
global governance can be introduced in stages. Obviously realistic
political economy needs to moderate cosmopolitan hopes, just as account
has to be taken of the structural position of particular countries and
path-dependent institutions. Nonetheless, promoting models of a civilized
globalizing order encompassing legal organization, security and economic
concerns is an important contribution because it changes the structure of
reflection within which countries and institutions operate. A utopian
approach to a new global order need not proceed under the illusion that it
will be realised. It can aim instead at complex discursive impacts. Most
approaches to social reform since the Enlightenment have lacked any
clear model of an international order, just as they have lacked worked-out
strategies to secure peace. Utopian proposals that track organizational
strategies for a new world order modify cultural climates and motivate
other discursive partners to modify their own positions in response to
them.
Cosmopolitan Republican Moderations of the Nation State
Many forms of contemporary republicanism are unconvincing
because they are conservative and nostalgic. While proposing new
institutions, they assume a traditional type of state. Arguments then occur
between those who propose to romanticise existing arrangements to make
the state more republican, and those who insist that modern territorial
nation states cannot operate according to the idealising presuppositions of
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
23
republican theorists. A constructive utopianism, however, can show a way
out of this impasse by envisaging a cosmopolitan moderation of the nation
state to give the state attributes that are not derived from the territorial
sovereign nation—state. The outcome would be a nation state with
processual, pervasional and dialogical characteristics, in addition to the
local, territorial, partitional, and spatial characteristics of the modern
nation-state.
Envisaging a nation state of this type is obviously visionary.
However, Hegel’s model of the ‘rational state’ which promotes
universalising identities and rights in moderation of the egoism and
disarray of civil society provides some useful indications.19
A processual
state adopts temporal as well as spatial models of its existence. It also
takes account of postmodernist claims that the state is multiple and
unstable can be incorporated into contemporary state building; for
example, at the level of techniques for regulating social, cultural and
economic life. It is a state regime that distinguishes domains, the
socio-cultural times relevant to them, and the different processual
moments needed to manage the complexity of contemporary information
flows. A contemporary state can be pervasional across partitional
boundaries, especially territorial boundaries, if it has an electronic rather
than a merely spatial or geographic organization Finally, a technologically
advanced state can adopt a dialogical approach to governance in strategic
contexts in place of a generalised top--down model of command because
19
Hegel’s theory of the ‘rational state’ has been widely criticised from Marx onwards.
Nonetheless, it needs to be taken into account as a source of model ideas for a formative
state which is compatible with high levels of disaggregation and complexity. The English
language literature does not do justice to Hegel’s sophistication as a social and legal
thinker.
24
Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
it can discourse with its subjects about the formulation of policy and
attempt to build multiple preferred styles and value options into its
architecture of outputs.20
Granted that there will be contexts in which ‘reasons of state’
need to overrule the discursive option—taking of individuals, the
cosmopolitan nation state makes greater allowance for the self-reflexivity
of agents and for procedures which allow exceptions than traditional top
down state structures. Indeed, in the long run a cosmopolitan republican
nation state may seek to negotiate with, rather than to command, citizens
in key areas such as taxation and war. For example, cases may arise in
which citizens of a nation state opt to pay more taxes if they are allowed
to insist that no part of their taxes should go to the support of the military.
Similarly, as a cosmopolitan republican nation state becomes more
pervasional over time, traditional distinctions between public and private
spheres may be able to be modified.21
It may also be possible to modify practices of governance based on
absolute sovereignty on a dialogical direction. As the nation-state
becomes more open to supraterritoriality and border crossings, traditional
distinctions between public and private spheres may be modified. It may
also be possible to modify practices of governance based on absolute
20
Dialogical rationality here must encompass plural and heterogeneous perspectives; it
cannot bean allegedly impartial and universal rationality which delegitimises the voices
of women and ethnic and religious minorities.
21
On moral cosmopolitanism, see W. Pogge, ‘Ethics and Global Governance’ in Ethics
103, 1 (October 1992): 48-75. Pogge also argues for a worldwide consensus about
minimal human rights. See T.W. Pogge, Reading Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1989), ch. 5. For the implications of the internet for single polity conceptions of the
political, see R. Shields, (ed.) Culture of Internet, Virtual Spaces, Real Humans, Living
Bodies (London: Sage, 1996).
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
25
sovereignty, especially since any absolute notion of sovereignty is
arguably dangerous in a world with nuclear and other mass-destructive
weapons. It may be necessary to instead exemplify conditional forms of
sovereignty in the nation-state’s daily operations. Of course, a
contemporary nation functioning in regional, transnational and local
government orders would have to be more sensitive to cultural, ethnic and
sexual differences. A cosmopolitan republican state functioning in
regional, transnational and local government orders has to be more
sensitive to cultural, ethnic and sexual difference, and less hegemonic
vis-à-vis its citizens than the absolutist state Bodin envisaged in the
seventeenth century.22 Today there is no need to accept indivisible or
absolute sovereignty or to allow acts of sovereignty to be free from
review and challenge. States which do not claim absolute sovereignty can
still shape collective destinies and recognise public obligations toward
their citizens.23 Equally, however, a strong case can be made that nation
states should not be allowed to break basic rules as international citizens
which corporations or voluntary associations are not allowed to break as
internal citizens of a polity.
22
For recent discussion of Bodin’s work, see D. Engster, ‘Jean Bodin, Scepticism and
absolute Sovereignty’ and J.H.M. Salmon, ‘The Legacy of Jean Bodin: Absolutism,
Populism or Constitutionalism’ in History of Political Thought xvii, 4 (Winter 1996):
469-498 and 500-522.
23
Cf the neo-Roman republicanism of the Commonwealthmen (Skinner 1998, Pettit
1998). No sovereign will has ultimate authority for a republicanism which emphasises
the cognitive independence of citizens as individual interpreters as the arguments of the
English freethinkers such as Anthony Collins make clear. There are important precedents
here in medieval legal theory, see M. Wilks, The Problem of Sovereignty in the Late
Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), G. Post, Studies in
Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State 1100-1322 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1964), and J.M. Blythe, Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution
in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
A state of this type can combine new levels of pluralism with
mechanisms for generating social unities across diverse sites and domains.
Hence republican governance moderates an emphasis on difference by
resort to considerations of solidarity and fairness. Because it involves an
institutionally embedded pluralism, it goes beyond recognising the
difference of ‘the concrete Other’ and seeks to compensate for some of
the exclusions and the repressions involved in particular arrangements in
other contexts.
Cosmopolitan Republican Moderations of Civil Society
A cosmopolitan republican approach can also moderate the
workings of civil society. 24 It can do so by seeking to change the pattern
of civil society/state relations by introducing cosmopolitan elements into
both, where, following Hegel, state and civil society are not separate but
interpenetrate. A strong state able to provide structuring contexts for the
promotion of individual and corporate life can build in cosmopolitan
horizons at legal and administrative levels. Similarly, civil society can be
cosmopolitanised, not only by links between national civil society and
international civil society (for example, through NGOs), but by specific
legislation impacting on nation-state and civil society interactions. For
24
On civil society, see C. Taylor, ‘Modes of Civil Society’, Public Culture 3, 1, Fall
1990); M. Walzer, ‘The Civil Society Argument’, in C. Mouffe (ed.) Dimensions of
Radical Democracy (London, 1992); J. L. Cohen and A. Arato, Civil Society and
Political Theory (Cambridge, Mass, 1992), D. Green, Reinventing Civil Society: The
Rediscovery of Welfare Without Politics (London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit, 1993). T.
Janoski, Citizenship and Civil Society. A Framework of Rights and Obligations in
Liberal, Traditional and Social Democratic Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998).
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
27
example, legislation to link local governments by city worldwide,
legislation to regulate the Internet, and measures to monitor how nation
states are stereotyped in the presses of neighbouring countries, whereas all
of these cosmopolitan relations are legally significant at regional, local
and corporate levels. These changes make sense once civil society is no
longer defined, as it often was in traditional Western discourses, as the
sphere of relations not directly controlled by the state. Instead, a
cosmopolitan republican approach conceives of the state as ethicising
civil society and vice versa. Households, media, markets, churches,
voluntary associations, and social movements are all partially state
controlled in the most successful democracies, and by direct as well as
indirect means.
It is also possible to change the pattern of civil society/state
relations by introducing cosmopolitan elements into how state and civil
society interpenetrate. One way to do this would be to introduce
cosmopolitan features into the ways laws operate, as well as individual
and corporate acts of recognition. This may be partly achieved by
cosmopolitan ‘constitutionalisation’. Constitutionalisation means the
creation and redefinition of institutions through the use of empowering
documents, that have a public character and conform to publicly
acknowledged values. Some of the most effective civil societies—in
Germany, Austria and Switzerland—are partially constitutionalised in this
sense. Cosmopolitan constitutionalisation is not about creating ‘world
government’ but rather the development of cosmopolitan ethical
commitments that are binding on citizens (whether institutions,
corporations or individuals) and new procedures for debating global
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
constitutionalism in specific contexts.
25
In addition, a cosmopolitan republican approach to civil society
implies that the state needs to educate civil society in cosmopolitan
institutional ethics. It envisages that the limitations of representative
democracy may be able to be partially overcome by the use of electronic
technologies; for example, by changing the nature of political
participation. Such extensions of democracy, however, may not be
complex enough responses in some contexts. A variety of political
structures may be needed to allow different countries to choose different
models, including authoritarian models of democracy, at different levels
of their social and economic development. Moreover, conflicting and
contradictory strategies may play a role in shaping an emerging ensemble
of regimes, where these regimes cannot be reduced to a single
philosophical scheme. These anti-theodic concerns are important because
they show that a cosmopolitan republican moderation of civil society is
not imprisoned within the idealisations of Western democratic theory.26
Consistent with this, a cosmopolitan republican approach can move
away from over-generalised notions of democracy and equality. Thus it
25
Constitutionalism need not be naïve. See A. Rosas, ‘State Sovereignty and Human
Rights: Towards a Global Constitutional Project’ in Political Studies, XLIII (1995):
61-78.
26
David Held, the leading contemporary theorist of cosmopolitan democracy, argues
that it is necessary to retheorise democracy in the light of the interconnectedness of
nation-states and the growth of international networks. He speaks of a ‘framework for
utopia’, based on extensions of democracy in economic life and entrenching
cosmopolitan democracy in democratic public law. Held combines a socialist version of
liberalism with the claim that government can be subjected to inviolable principles if the
institutional framework for the regulation of states is expanded. He relies on a Kantian
liberal notion of democracy at both the national state and the global level. See D. Held,
op.cit..
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
29
can accept that monarchic and aristocratic or executive-led organizational
strategies may be useful in specific contexts, just as democracy may be
appropriate rather than equality in particular contexts, depending on the
history of the country concerned. This implies that non-democratic
strategies can be pursued in certain areas, even if compensations across
domains are sometimes needed. Similarly, strategic use can be made of
forms of hierarchy that serve democratic purposes. Clearly a case can be
made for strategic elitism in bureaucracies at certain levels and for
delegated command in time of war. But there are also practical
applications at the level of the cosmopolitan republican moderation of
civil society management. For example, estates (in a reworked Hegelian
sense) could be introduced to involve scientific, legal and medical
professionals in community activities with cosmopolitan features.
A cosmopolitan republican moderation of civil society can accept
that extensions of democracy are possible which are not tied to
representative notions of government, especially if democracy is
retheorised in less totalising and idealising terms. However, it can also
accept levels of subjection to political and economic systems as the price
of certain forms of freedom. In response to the challenges of economic
rationalism and the contractarian state, a cosmopolitan republican
moderation of civil society seeking to promote an institutionally
embodied ethical life (Sittlichkeit) needs to be supported by a network of
interlocking institutions to qualify how the contractarian state operates.
Thus, changes to the status and organisation of political parties and
administration of elections can be proposed to overcome low participation
levels and the current ‘dumbing down’ of democracy. For example,
political parties can be constitutionalised in order to require them to:
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
•
subscribe to minimum political and social justice charters;
•
professionally train political candidates;
•
involve significant numbers of non-members in their administration;
•
consult with a wide variety of social groups, including those opposed
to their policies; and
•
publish detailed funded policies before elections.
Likewise, elections can be regulated by laws to ensure compulsory
participation by all citizens, maximum democratic discussion and debate,
and placing strict limits on financial expenditure of candidates. These
proposals imply the need for public funding of the electoral process (in
contrast to present North American practice) and a reform of the legal
regimes governing elections to eliminate oligarchic control of the
selection of candidates. Associations, trade unions, corporations, banks,
the professions, the media, the armed forces and religious organisations
can also be required to include cosmopolitan republican features into the
detail of their administration. For example, trade unions can be given
transnational political and social justice charters. Trade unions of this type
would be concerned with public economic, social, cultural and
environmental
policy
issues,
both
within
the
nation-state
and
internationally. As socially creative bodies, they would be represented on
national policy boards and also play a role in the management of public
and private corporations. In addition, they would be responsible for
promoting just and ecologically desirable work conditions and lifestyles
for women, children, the retired and Indigenous peoples as well as their
Globalization and Cosmopolitan Republicanism
31
own members. To this end, they would network internationally as well as
nationally with other ethically concerned groups such as churches.
Conclusion
The cosmopolitan republican perspectives introduced in this paper
are clearly utopian. However, my claim is that these perspectives can be
given technical articulations which have more potential than at first
appears. Like the ballot box and the stock exchange, the relative
simplicity of the technical changes proposed is the point. Building
cosmopolitan republican capacity into the features of the nation-state may
help prepare for global democracy more effectively than premature
proposals for world government. Nothing in my argument implies that the
nation-state will necessarily decline or disappear In fact, I envisage that
some nation states may grow stronger.
Nor does anything in my
argument imply that realist international relations perspectives are now
obsolete, or that it is possible to talk about citizenship without reference to
actual political and legal centres of power. Of course, in the longer term,
it will be crucial to develop a cosmopolitan global order to regulate the
world economy and ensure international as well as national security. This
will involve strong international organisations as well as transnational
activities on the part of nation-states.
Similarly, no case has been made in this paper for world
government. Nor have the realities of economic competition and conflicts
between nation state regimes been ignored. Instead, my strategy has been
to widen the ambit of the issues discussed, even if the indicative models
proposed are not detailed enough to be realistic. From the standpoint of a
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modern utopian, this can be seen as an admission of failure. However,
currently our failure to experiment for small technical changes with
utopian features holds us captive to neo-liberal capitalism and to the
substantively irrational rule of a largely instrumental economics, whereas
social dreaming of a better cosmopolitan order can contribute actual
models for practical change as well as to the production of normative
discourses that assist us both to recognise our own lack of ‘upward
carriage27 and to be more specific, in stages and often by way of self
correction, about the institutional architecture which could be put in place
instead.
27
For ‘upward carriage’, see E. Bloch, Natural Law and Human Dignity (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1988) tr. D.J. Scmidt.