Cosmopolitanism and realism: Towards a theoretical convergence?

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 69-96

  Beardsworth, Richard ^a  

^a AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS   (France)

Author keywords

Cosmopolitanism; Legitimacy; Realism

Indexed keywords

EID: 50549087130     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0305829808093731     Document Type: Article

References (121)

1. This article works in part with present attempts to redefine realism and emphasize, contra the structural realism of Kenneth Waltz and its avatars in mainstream American political science, its ethical component. See, particularly, Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
2. and Michael Williams, The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). I nevertheless push the question of the principles of power further than present reconfiguration of classical realism allows.
3. The article's focus on the constitutive relation between legitimacy and power resembles constructivist meta-theoretical focus on the constitutive relation between ideas and power: see especially Alex Wendt, Social Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Chapter 3.1 do not pursue resemblances here. I thank the anonymous reviewers of the original manuscript for encouraging me to underscore present theoretical contexts. I also thank several colleagues, particularly Garrett Brown and Peter Haegel, for their comments.
4. See Immanuel Kant, 'Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose', and 'Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch', in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 41-53 and 93-132;
5. Martha Nussbaum, 'Kant and Cosmopolitanism', in Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal, eds. J. Bohman and M. Lutz-Bachmann (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 29-36;
6. Derek Heater, World Citizenship and Government (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996);
7. David Held, 'The Principles of Cosmopolitan Order', in The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, eds. G. Brock and H. Brighouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 10-32.
8. Martha Nussbaum, 'Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism', in For Love of Country, eds. M. Nussbaum and J. Cohen (New York: Beacon Press, 2002),
9. 'Kant and Cosmopolitanism', in Perpetual Peace, 29-36;
10. and Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998);
11. Brian Barry, 'The Cosmopolitan Idea', in International Society, eds. D. Mapel and T. Nardin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998)
12. and Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ethics in a World of Strangers (London: Allen Lane, 2006).
13. See especially Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996);
14. Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, 2nd edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999);
15. and Thomas Pogge, 'An Egalitarian Law of Peoples', Philosophy and Public Affairs 23, no. 3 (1994): 196-220
16. and 'A Cosmopolitan Perspective on the Global Economic Order', in The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, eds. G. Brock and H. Brighouse (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005), 92-110.
17. See especially Habermas, 'Kant's Idea of Perpetual Peace with the Benefit of Two Hundred Years' Hindsight', in Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal, 113-54
18. and 'Does the Constitutionalization of Law StiU Have a Chance?', trans. Ciaran Cronin, in The Divided West (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 115-94.
19. Daniele Archibugi, 'Cosmopolitical Democracy', in Debating Cosmopolitics, ed. D. Archibugi (London: Verso, 2003), 1-16;
20. see the various articles in Daniele Archibugi and David Held, Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1995);
21. and David Held, Global Covenant (Cambridge: Polity, 2004).
22. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: The Postnational Constellation, trans. M. Pensky (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1980);
23. and The Divided West.
24. Habermas, The. Divided West, 167.
25. Habermas, Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 83-106.
26. Edward Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, ed. M. Cox (London: Palgrave, 2001)
27. and Hans Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest (Alfred Knopf: New York, 1952).
28. See particularly, David Held, 'Democracy and the New International Order', in Cosmopolitan Democracy, 96-120;
29. D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995);
30. D. Held, Global Covenant;
31. and D. Held, 'Principles of Cosmopolitan Order', in The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, 10-32.
32. David Held, 'Executive to Multilateral Cosmopolitanism', in Taming Globalization: Frontiers of Governance, eds. D. Held and M. Koenig-Archibugi (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), 160-86, 174.
33. Ibid., 181.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 168.
36. Compare B. Buzan, D. Held and A. G. McGrew, 'Realism versus Cosmopolitanism: A Debate', Review of International Studies 24, no. 3 (1998): 387-98.
37. Patrick Hayden, Cosmopolitan Global Politics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
38. Ibid., 37, 65.
39. Ibid., 11-37.
40. Ibid., 71, 96, 122.
41. Ibid., 1, 9, 67-9, 73,108.
42. Ibid., 79.
43. Ibid., 71.
44. Ibid., 73.
45. See Brian Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations (New York: SUNY Press, 1998).
46. See E. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 159-87;
47. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 7th edition, eds. K. Thomson and D. Clinton (New York: McGraw Hill, 2006), 243-7;
48. In Defense of the National Interest (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1952), 25-6, 36, 80;
49. and Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), 111-13.
50. Robert Gilpin, 'A Realist Perspective on International Governance', in Governing Globalization, eds. D. Held and A. McGrew (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2001), 237-48.
51. R. Jervis, 'Realism in the Study of World Polities', International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 971-91.
52. S. Krasner, 'Realism, Imperialism and Democracy: A Response to Gilbert', Political Theory 20, no. 1 (1992): 38-52.
53. Waltz, Man, the State and War, 168-207;
54. K. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 38-61.
55. Held, The Global Covenant, x.
56. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Palgrave, 1977), 41-2.
57. Krasner, 'Realism, Imperialism and Democracy', 48.
58. Kant, 'Idea of a Universal History', 47.
59. Carl Schmitt, The concept of the political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 44-66;
60. more recently, see especially Williams, ITK Realist Tradition, 119 and 186,
61. and Patricia Owens, Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 84-90,105,131,146.
62. Krasner, 'Realism, Imperialism and Democracy', 41.
63. Daniele Archibugi, 'Cosmopolitical Democracy', in Debating Cosmopolitics, ed. D. Archibugi (London: Verso, 2003), 1-15.
64. Ibid., 12.
65. Ibid., 16-26.
66. Ibid., 21. On delegated accountability, compare R. Keohane and J. Nye, 'Redefining Accountability for Global Governance', in Governance in a Global Economy: Political Authority in Transition, eds. M. Kahler and D. Lake (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 386-411.
67. Ibid., 26.
68. An important rehearsal of this argument in the context of the second Iraq war is to be found in Owens, Between War and Politics, in the chapter 'Beyond Strauss: Lies and the War in Iraq'.
69. On the neo-conservative moralization of politics, see also Michael Williams' excellent 'Culture Wars', in Culture and Security (London: Routledge, 2007), 92-119. For both Owens' and Williams' sophisticated versions of realism, the similarity between neo-conservatism and cosmopolitan liberalism (the priority of the moral over the political) outweighs their differences (how this priority is conceived and organized). The similarity is unduly emphasized.
70. Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner, The Limits of International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
71. Ibid., 7.
72. Ibid., 17-23.
73. Hayden, Cosmopolitan Global Politics, 37 and 65.
74. Goldsmith and Posner, The Limits of International Law, 108.
75. Ibid., 110-18, 189-97.
76. Ibid., 218.
77. Ibid., 222.
78. Since there is no unmediated access to the real, the heuristic dimension of theory is also performative.
79. See, particularly, Michael Cox's introduction to E. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, ix-lvii;
80. Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics,
81. and Michael Williams, The Realist Tradition.
82. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 5.
83. Ibid., 11.
84. Ibid., 11.
85. See Waltz, Theory of International Relations, 62-4.
86. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 32-41.
87. Ibid., 26 and 93.
88. Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest, 33.
89. Ibid., 84.
90. Ibid., 216.
91. For a first analysis of the characteristics of complex interdependence, see Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye's important Power and Interdependence, 3rd edition (New York: Longman, 2001), especially, pp. 21-5. Compare Held's political understanding of globalisation on p. 74.
92. I am arguing, therefore, that the modern principles of international legitimacy - state sovereignty, sovereign equality, non-interference, domestic jurisdiction - are being limited by the generalization of political modernity, whatever the specific responses to interdependence (nationalism, regionalism, internationalism or cosmopolitanism). Compare Jean Cohen, 'Whose Sovereignty?', Ethics and International Affairs 18, no. 3 (2004): 1-24
93. and Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics, 284-302.
94. Compare Joseph Nye's analysis of 'soft power', see Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990);
95. The Paradox of American Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002);
96. and Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). In the context of my concerns, I will look at Nye's work in a separate article.
97. See Robert Jervis, 'Realism, Neoliberalism and Cooperation: Understanding the Debate', International Security 24, no. 1 (1999): 42-63;
98. Helen Milner, 'The Acceptance of Anarchy in International Relations Theory: A Critique', in Neo-Realism and Neo-Liberalism: The Contemporary Debate, ed. D. Baldwin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993);
99. V. Aggerwal and C. Dupont, 'Collaboration and Coordination in the Global Political Economy', in Global Political Economy, ed. John Ravenhill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
100. See Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics, 264-302;
101. and Richard Beardsworth, 'Tragedy, World Politics, and Ethical Community', Journal of International Relations 22, no. 1 (2008): 127-37.
102. See Bull, The Anarchical Society, Part 1, 1-94.
103. Compare Robert Keohane, 'Global Governance and Accountability', in Taming Globalization: Frontiers of Governance, eds. D. Held and M. Koenig-Archibugi (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), 130-59
104. and Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the 21st Century (London: Atlantic Books, 2003).
105. The points below are indebted to the insights of David Held, 'Principles of Cosmopolitan Order'; John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1998);
106. and Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
107. J. Frieden and R. Rogowski, 'The Impact of the International Economy on National Polities', in Internationalization and Domestic Politics, eds. R. Keohane and H. Milner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
108. Morgenthau, Scientific Man and Power Politics (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1967), 202.
109. Held, 'Executive to Multilateral Cosmopolitanism', 174.
110. See Garrett Brown, 'Moving from Cosmopolitan Legal Theory to Legal Practice: Models of Cosmopolitan Law', unpublished paper, 2007.
111. Miles Kahler and David Lake, 'Globalization and Governance', in Governance in a Global Economy: Political Authority in Transition, eds. M. Kahler and D. Lake (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 1-32.
112. J. Caporosa, 'Democracy, Accountability, and Rights in Supranational Governance', in Governance in a Global Economy, 361-85.
113. See particularly Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).
114. Elias, Civilizing Process
115. and Andrew Linklater, 'Towards a Sociology of Global Morals', Review of International Studies 33, Special Issue (2007): 135-50.
116. Compare Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
117. This is a strong theme also in Wendtian constructionism. Repeated cooperation leads to self-restraint. See Wendt, Social Theory, 351-9.
118. Compare John Ikenberry, Liberal Order and Imperial Ambition. Essays on American Power and World Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 2006).
119. Hubert Védrine, Continuer l'Histoire (Paris: Fayard, 2007).
120. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
121. Archibugi and Held, 'Editor's Introduction' in Cosmopolitan Democracy, 1-16.