Global citizenship, anyone? Cosmopolitanism, privilege and public opinion

Global Society

Volumn 19, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 331-359

  Furia, Peter A ^a  

^a WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CITIZENSHIP; SURVEY;

EID: 25844474569     PISSN: 13600826     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13600820500242415     Document Type: Review

References (129)

1. I am grateful for the research assistance of Benjamin Verney and for the critical comments of Jennifer Rubenstein.
2. See David Held, Democracy and the Global Order (Cambridge: Polity, 1995);
3. Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.), For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002);
4. Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss, "Toward Global Parliament", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 1 (2001), pp. 212-220;
5. and Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). I Provisionally define cosmopolitanism as the extension of serious moral and political consideration to individuals beyond the borders of the country in which one resides. I return to definitional issues later in the essay.
6. See Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence and Morality", Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1972), pp. 229-243;
7. Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979);
8. Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982);
9. cf. Richard Falk, A Study of Future Worlds (New York: Free Press, 1975).
10. On the formal-institutional critique of cosmopolitanism, see Michael Walzer, "Spheres of Affection", in Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.), op. cit., pp. 125-130;
11. and Amy Gutmann, "Democratic Citizenship", in Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.), op. cit., pp. 66-71. Defenders of cosmopolitanism have offered two main responses to formal-institutional critiques of the cosmopolitan ideal. (1) Globalisation in general, and the rise of global civil society (transnational NGOs and social movements) in particular, provides increasingly meaningful opportunities for international citizen action; and (2) while weaker than states, genuinely transnational political organisations (IGOs) are nonetheless expanding at a rate that has no parallel in recorded history.
12. On NGOs and cosmopolitanism, see Martin Koehler, "From the National to the Cosmopolitan Public Sphere", in Daniele Archibugi, David Held and Martin Kohler (eds.), Re-imagining Political Community (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), pp. 231-251;
13. John Dryzek, "Transnational Democracy", Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1999), pp. 30-51;
14. and Daniele Archibugi, "Cosmopolitan Democracy and its Critics: A Review", European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2004), pp. 437-473.
15. On IGOs and cosmopolitanism, see Daniele Archibugi, "The Reform of the United Nations and Cosmopolitan Democracy", Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 30, No. 3 (1993), pp. 301-315;
16. Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community (Cambridge: Polity, 1998);
17. and Derek Heater, "Does Cosmopolitan Thinking Have a Future?", Review of International Studies (special issue), Vol. 26 (2000), pp. 179-197.
18. See generally Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings (ed. V. Gourevitch) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997);
19. J.G. Herder, Herder on Social and Political Culture (ed. F.M. Barnard) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969);
20. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (New York: Penguin, 1986);
21. and Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (New York: Garland, 1971).
22. See Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998);
23. Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country (London: Oxford University Press, 1995);
24. Robert Dahl, "Can International Organizations be Democratic? A Skeptic's View", in Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (eds.), Democracy's Edges (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
25. Robert Pinsky, "Eros against Esperanto", in Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.), op. cit., pp. 85-90;
26. and Benjamin Barber, "Constitutional Faith", in Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.), op. cit., pp. 30-37.
27. It is not unfair to characterise early Stoic cosmopolitanism, with its belief that only the wise could be global citizens, as elitist.
28. Barber, op. cit., p. 34.
29. In invoking Pastor Brand, Barber also echoes a rather old-fashioned canonical argument against cosmopolitanism: namely, that the parochialism of ordinary people may be the product of a providential wisdom greater than that of even the wisest philosophers (see Herder, op. cit;
30. Burke, op. cit.;
31. Smith, op. cit.).
32. Leo Marx, "Neglecting History", in Martha Nussbaum (and respondents), "Patriotism or Cosmopolitanism", The Boston Review, Vol. 19, No. 5 (1994), pp. 19-20.
33. See David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995);
34. Anthony Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity, 1995);
35. Alex Wendt, "A Comment on Held's Cosmopolitanism", in Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (eds.), op. cit., pp. 127-133;
36. Timothy Brennan, "Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism", New Left Review (second series), No. 7 (2001), pp. 75-84;
37. Peter Gowan, "The New Liberal Cosmopolitanism", in Daniele Archibugi (ed.), Debating Cosmopolitics (London: Verso, 2003), pp. 51-66;
38. Craig Calhoun, "The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travelers: A Critique of Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism", in Daniele Archibugi (ed.), op. cit., pp. 86-116;
39. and Pat Buchanan, "The Millennium Conflict: America First or World Government", Public Lecture, Boston World Affairs Council (6 January 2000), available: .
40. See Calhoun, op. cit., p. 86.
41. Elaine Scarry, "The Difficulty of Imagining Other People", in Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.) op. cit., p. 106.
42. See Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994);
43. Will Kymlicka, "Citizenship in an Era of Globalization: Commentary on Held", in Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (eds.), op. cit., pp. 112-126
44. and compare Jeremy Waldron, "Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan Alternative", University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Vol. 25, Nos. 3 &4 (1992), pp. 751-793.
45. For a more comprehensive analysis of demographic covariates of "supranational" identities, see Pippa Norris, "Global Governance and Cosmopolitan Citizens", in Joseph Nye and John Donahue (eds.), Governance in a Globalizing World (Washington: Brookings Press, 2000).
46. See Danilo Zolo, Cosmopolis: Prospects for World Government (Cambridge: Polity, 1997);
47. Will Kymlicka, op. cit.;
48. Timothy Brennan, op. cit.;
49. Calhoun, op. cit.;
50. Peter Gowan, op. cit.;
51. Nadia Urbinati, "Can Cosmopolitical Democracy be Democratic?", in Daniele Archibugi (ed.), op. cit.;
52. Michael Dorris, "No Place Like Home", in Martha Nussbaum et al., "Patriotism or Cosmopolitanism", op. cit., p. 18;
53. Leo Marx, op. cit.;
54. Nathan Glazer, "Limits of Loyalty", in Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.), op. cit., pp. 61-65;
55. Immanuel Wallerstein, "Neither Patriotism nor Cosmopolitanism", in Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.), op. cit., pp. 122-124;
56. Gertrude Himmelfarb, "The Illusions of Cosmopolitanism", in Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.), op. cit., pp. 72-77;
57. and Scarry, op. cit.
58. Many proponents of this view infer the greater empirical prevalence of cosmopolitanism in wealthy or Western countries from what are ostensibly the ideal's Western philosophical roots. For a critique of this intellectual procedure, see Amartya Sen, "Humanity and Citizenship", in Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.), op. cit., pp. 111-118. The intellectual-historical charge of "Westernness" could, moreover, be just as easily lodged against "patriotism", "nationalism", and cosmopolitanism's other philosophical challengers.
59. Michael Dorris, op. cit., p. 18.
60. Upon learning about 11 September weeks after it happened, Masai pastoralists in Kenya made a donation of several cows to the nearest US consulate, citing their shock at the universally terrifying notion of having to choose between death by falling and death by fire. See "Where 9/11 News is Late, But Aid is Swift", New York Times (3 June 2002).
61. Peter Singer, One World, op. cit., p. 164.
62. While a few proponents of European integration have occasionally suggested that popular objections to supranationalism should be brushed aside by powerful elites (see Andrew Moravcsik, "In Defence of the Democratic Deficit", Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4 (2002), pp. 603-624), I know of no attempt to defend an equally anti-democratic argument on a global scale. While it is controversial enough to argue that elites in Brussels understand better the true interests of non-elites in Oslo than do those non-elites themselves, it would be still more controversial to argue that global elites understand better the true interests of non-elites in, say, Bangladesh.
63. See Richard Falk, A Study of Future Worlds, op. cit.;
64. Falk, "Revisioning Cosmopolitanism", in Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.), op. cit., pp. 53-60;
65. Falk, Predatory Globalization (New York: Polity, 1999);
66. and Falk, "Revisiting Westphalia, Discovering Post-Westphalia", Journal of Ethics, Vol. 6 (2002), pp. 311-352.
67. See Dryzek, op. cit.;
68. Kohler, op. cit.;
69. and Mario Pianta, "Democracy vs. Globalization: The Growth of Parallel Summits and Global Movements", in Daniele Archibuigi (ed.), op. cit., pp. 235-266.Paralleling their criticisms of cosmopolitanism in general, commentators sceptical of global social movements argue that these movements appeal to few people and that their appeal is disproportionately felt among privileged individuals and societies.
70. See Zolo, op. cit.;
71. Brown, op. cit.;
72. and Kenneth Anderson, "The Limits of Pragmatism in American Foreign Policy: Unsolicited Advice to the Bush Administration on Relations with International Nongovernmental Organizations", Chicago Journal of International Law, Vol. 2 (Fall 2001), pp. 371-388.
73. Falk, "Revisiting Westphalia, Discovering Post-Westphalia", op. cit., p. 340.
74. While the literature on global social movements has certainly shown that some non-elites participate in them, it would be difficult to assess the charge of their elitism in a social-scientific sense.
75. Wendt, op. cit., p. 129. Wendt also speaks of the parochial responses that he suspects people might give to a hypothetical "survey of moral intuitions". Wendt also speaks of the parochial responses that he suspects people might give to a hypothetical "survey of moral intuitions"
76. Ibid., p. 131. Despite these criticisms of cosmopolitanism's elitism, Wendt has recently argued that a future world state is inevitable. Wendt also speaks of the parochial responses that he suspects people might give to a hypothetical "survey of moral intuitions" Despite these criticisms of cosmopolitanism's elitism, Wendt has recently argued that a future world state is inevitable
77. See Wendt, "Why a World State is Inevitable", European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2003), pp. 491-542.
78. See Oskar Niedermeyer and Richard Sinnott, Public Opinion and Internationalized Governance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
79. See Heater, World Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Thinking and its Opponents, op. cit.
80. Because she groups citizen commitments to regionalism and globalism via a single "supranationalism" variable, Norris, op. cit., neglects to check this assumption's empirical veracity.
81. See Andrew Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations (London: St. Martin's Press, 1982);
82. Richard Sennett, "Christian Cosmopolitanism", in Martha Nussbaum et al., op. cit., p. 13;
83. Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998);
84. and Thomas Pangle, "Socratic Cosmopolitanism: Cicero's Critique and Transformation of the Stoic Ideal", Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 31, No. 2. (1998), pp. 235-266.
85. See Immanuel Kant, Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
86. Herder, op. cit;
87. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, 1973);
88. Michael Walzer, "Two Kinds of Universalism", in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values XI (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 509-556;
89. Julia Kristeva, Nations Without Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993);
90. Michael Doyle, Ways of War and Peace (New York: Norton, 1997);
91. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002);
92. Peter Mandaville, "Toward a Different Cosmopolitanism - Or, the 'I' Dislocated", Global Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2003), pp. 209-221;
93. and Calhoun, op. cit. The moral distinction is related to the political-institutional distinction, drawn by Kant and many others after him, between a federation of nations and a unitary world state.
94. One such distinction is between what we might call "compartmentalised" and "mélange" multinationalisms. See Julia Kristeva, op. cit., who is an advocate of the former. One such distinction is between what we might call "compartmentalised" and "mélange" multinationalisms. See who is an advocate of the former
95. See Fred Dallmayr, "Cosmopolitanism: Moral and Political", Political Theory, Vol. 31, No. 3 (2003), pp. 421-442;
96. Charles Beitz, "International Liberalism and Distributive Justice: A Survey of Recent Thought", World Politics, Vol. 51 (1999), pp. 269-296;
97. Held, Democracy and the Global Order, op. cit.;
98. and Heater, "Does Cosmopolitan Thinking Have a Future?", op. cit.
99. The WVS is perhaps the world's most famous survey, and technical information about it can be found at both WVS (2004) and . The author was the primary investigator for the ISA, which was based on a scientific mail survey of US registered voters and which produced 784 completed questionnaires for a response rate of 54.4%. Data from the WVS are weighted according to the WVS "weight" variable that corrects for different sample sizes in different countries; data from the ISA are weighted by a variable of the same name to correct for oversamples of African-American and Hispanic voters. (The ISA data set is available from the author.)
100. These countries are Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Armenia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Belarus, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea (South), Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Vietnam, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. (NB: Azerbaijan, El Salvador, Pakistan and Peru omitted parts of the question in regard to group affiliation, and Colombia omitted parts of the question about confidence in national and international institutions. These countries are thus eliminated from the sample for the respective analyses.)
101. An additional 8.0% of respondents choose the world as a whole as their secondary locus of belonging.
102. The WVS covers countries comprising 80% of the world's people, though we should be cautious in our inferences in so far as the data set is currently set up to weight responses from each country equally.
103. We might likewise note that continental identification is less often articulated by civil society groups than is identification with the world as whole. One potential effect of this phenomenon, and perhaps also a cause of its continuing reinforcement, is that so many more NGOs possess formal "consultative" links to the United Nations than to, say, NAFTA and the European Union.
104. It is also worth noting that the patterns of Figure 1 fail to support either of two familiar accounts of how cosmopolitanism relates to local and national allegiances: contrary to the view that national-patriotic identity trumps all other modes of allegiance, we find that more respondents identify with localities than with countries. Similarly, contrary to the view that "the bigger the 'concentric circle', the weaker its ability to inspire loyalty", we find that the tendency of allegiance to weaken as communities grow larger is by no means monotonic.
105. Unfortunately, only a little over half of the national surveys included an additional question on levels of confidence in "the government in [e.g. Washington]"; 51.1% of respondents to this more generic question about national government expressed "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in it (meaning that generic national governments fared better than parliaments, but still worse than the United Nations). The most recent WVS also includes other items of great interest that were unfortunately asked in fewer than half of all countries (e.g. "with which of these geographical groups do you identify least?").
106. In analysing an earlier "wave" of WVS data, Norris, op. cit., finds a still-stronger tendency to favour international over national institutions.
107. Specifically, while some might argue that the United States is a global rogue state that shows a nationalist disregard for international institutions such as the Kyoto Protocol, others might (in keeping with Hypothesis 3) suggest that America's very status as a privileged hegemon makes the grandeur of cosmopolitanism all the more appealing.
108. By comparison, a full 81.0% of Americans are most strongly drawn to the "patriotic" options, a quite small 6.4% are most drawn to the "localist" options, and only 1.3% of Americans express a primary allegiance to "the West" or "Western countries".
109. Favourable responses are defined as responses of "5" or higher on a "1" to "7" scale on which a "7" connotes strong favourability and a "4" connotes neutrality.
110. See note 54.
111. Education corresponds to variable x025 on the WVS, and income corresponds to variable x047. Note that while the latter measure of intra-national economic privilege is appropriate for my analysis of Hypothesis 2, I will instead analyse inter-national variation in economic privilege in considering Hypothesis 3. Both ordinal variables are treated as quasi-intervals for the purposes of OLS regression analysis.
112. As is well known, to ask about ethnic group membership is illegal in countries such as France, and Spain is the only Western European country in which the fourth-wave WVS includes an ethno-racial question. Moreover, the data that are available are in no way standardised across nations - for example, the Indian survey divides people into 13 different identity categories based on caste, religion, race or a combination of all three.
113. In terms of other US groups, both the WVS and ISA enquire about "African-Americans", "Hispanics", and "Asian-Americans/Pacific Islanders". In addition to an "Other" category the WVS enquires specifically about "South Asians" and "Arabic-Americans". The wording of the ISA question on race/ethnicity is discussed below.
114. Looking at the effects of income and education on absolute levels of confidence in the United Nations is problematic in that poor people express less confidence in almost all types of political institutions, a fact that can be controlled for only by adopting a relative measure. Thus, while a regression of confidence in the United Nations on income and education uncovers small but statistically significant positive effects for both income and education, we observe a still stronger effect for income if we run a parallel regression of the effects of income and education on absolute levels of confidence in parliament. (Notably, neither of these multivariate regressions explains more than 1% of the variance in absolute levels of confidence in either national parliaments or the United Nations.)
115. As the WVS questions on confidence in the United Nations and national parliaments are scaled from 1 to 4, this measure of political cosmopolitanism ranges from -3 to 3, with 3 representing the greatest possible relative confidence in the United Nations.
116. Even given the enormous research staff and budget of the WVS - by far the most comprehensive resource of its type available - its researchers must limit themselves to asking only a few hundred questions pertaining to the entire spectrum of personal, social and political "values". While other cross-national studies have explored "national" and "pan-European" identity in some detail, the widespread assumption that Hypotheses 1-3 are true may explain why cosmopolitanism per se has not been the topic of more extensive cross-national research.
117. For item "E" of the ISA, respondents are asked to "circle the highest grade of school that you have completed", with options ranging from "1" to "17 + " in accordance with American categories of primary to graduate-level education. Item "F" on the ISA asks respondents to circle one of five categories that best represents the range of their pre-tax household income, with the categories ranging from "less than $20,000" at the minimum to "over $100,000" at the maximum. As above, these ordinal variables are treated as quasi-interval variables for the purposes of OLS regression analysis.
118. The race/ethnicity question on the ISA (item "G") reads, "Please again circle the term that describes you best", offering respondents categories of "Hispanic", "Black (non-Hispanic)", "White (non-Hispanic)", "Asian", "Native American", and "Other".
119. A preliminary analysis of the WVS data from the United States nonetheless confirms the association of cosmopolitanism with minority group membership. Whereas, for example, 17.7% of Caucasian-Americans express a primary identification with the world as a whole, 24.4% of non-Caucasians do the same. Similarly, US minorities score a little higher (87.2%) in their relative support for the United Nations than do Caucasian-Americans (85.6%).
120. See Leo Marx, op. cit.
121. Rhetoric reminiscent of the question about militaries "cooperating to serve a variety of different international interests" was of course adopted by the Bush administration in regard to its assemblage of a "coalition of the willing" to invade Iraq. Although US minorities were systematically less likely to embrace this proposition in 2004, they were systematically more likely to do so in 1999.
122. See Martha Nussbaum et al., op. cit.
123. and Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (eds.), op. cit.
124. In order to cast the claims of cosmopolitanism's critics in the kindest possible light, I follow convention in using the natural logarithm of these values in my regression analysis. If we fail to examine logged values of per capita national income, Hypothesis 3 finds even less support than I suggest below.
125. Although here I follow convention in defining the West in accordance with Huntington's taxonomy, I provide an alternative operationalisation of "Western core" countries below. See Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).
126. Having already tested for "Westernness" on Samuel Huntington's own controversial terms, I split his category of "the West" into "Western Core" and "Eastern European" subcategories. Whereas Huntington's "West" includes, for example, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland and the former Czechoslovakia, I limit my own "Western Core" category to Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Other categories also involve some difficult coding decisions: I place Armenia in "Eastern Europe" rather thart in the Middle East, which I define as stretching from Morocco in the west, to Turkey and Azerbaijan in the north, to Pakistan in the east. My category of the "Middle East" is not, however, a synonym for "Islamic" countries, and I place both Bangladesh and Indonesia in "Asia".
127. 2 or the significance of other coefficients.
128. Jordan's status as by far the world's foremost country in terms of "moral cosmopolitanism" most likely stems in part from the fact that more than half of its population consists of internationally recognised refugees and displaced people. The perceived primary identification of refugees who have fled from their homeland with "the world as a whole" is at once understandable and, arguably, quite different from the "cosmopolitanism of choice" practised by those who remain welcome in the land of their birth. (Were we to remove Jordan from the sample, the Middle East would look low in terms of "moral" cosmopolitanism as well as the other two indicators, though not to a statistically significant extent.)
129. Notably, this finding is largely driven by high levels of UN confidence in countries like Norway and Sweden.