Cosmopolitanism E-Book

David Held

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 362

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

This book sets out the case for a cosmopolitan approach to contemporary global politics. It presents a systematic theory of cosmopolitanism, explicating its core principles and justifications, and examines the role many of these principles have played in the development of global politics, such as framing the human rights regime. The framework is then used to address some of the most pressing issues of our time: the crisis of financial markets, climate change and the fallout from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In each case, Held argues that realistic politics is exhausted, and that cosmopolitanism is the new realism.

See also Garrett Wallace Brown and David Held's The Cosmopolitanism Reader.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Preface

Introduction: Changing Forms of Global Order

Towards a multipolar world

The paradox of our times

Economic liberalism and international market integration

Security

The impact of the global fi nancial crisis

Shared problems and collective threats

A cosmopolitan approach

Democratic public law and sovereignty

Summary of the book ahead

1 Cosmopolitanism: Ideas, Realities and Deficits

Globalization

The global governance complex

Globalization and democracy: Five disjunctures

Cosmopolitanism: Ideas and trajectories

Cosmopolitan realities

Addressing the institutional deficit: Reframing the market

2 Principles of Cosmopolitan Order

Cosmopolitan principles

Thick or thin cosmopolitanism?

Cosmopolitan justifications

From cosmopolitan principles to cosmopolitan law

3 Cosmopolitan Law and Institutional Requirements

The idea of cosmopolitan law

Institutional requirements

In sum

Political openings

4 Violence, Law and Justice in a Global Age

Reframing human activity: International law, rights and responsibilities

9/11, war and justice

Islam, the Kantian heritage and double standards

Concluding reflections

5 Reframing Global Governance: Apocalypse Soon or Reform!

The paradox of our times

Why be concerned with global challenges?

Deep drivers and governance challenges

Global governance: Contemporary surface trends

Problems and dilemmas of global problem-solving

Strengthening global governance

Global governance and the democratic question

Multilevel citizenship, multilayered democracy

6 Parallel Worlds: The Governance of Global Risks in Finance, Security and the Environment

Global governance and the paradox of our times

The global governance of finance

The global governance of security

The global governance of the environment

Conclusion: Crisis, politicization and reform

7 Democracy, Climate Change and Global Governance

Democracy I: The democratic nation-state and climate change

Democracy II: Global governance and climate change

The policy debate: Squaring the circle?

The political elements of a democratic global deal

Democracy and the policy menu ahead

Afterword

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

References

Index

Copyright © David Held 2010

The right of David Held to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2010 by Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4835-4

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4836-1 (pb)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5936-7 (Single-user ebook)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5935-0 (Multi-user ebook)

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Preface

The arguments in this volume have evolved over the past decade. Throughout this period three key terms have defined my intellectual preoccupations: democracy, globalization and cosmopolitanism. Each of these refers to a set of ideas as well as social processes which have shaped, and continue to shape, our lives.

Democracy, from ancient cities to contemporary political systems, has been the most powerful of all political ideas, expressing, as it does, the yearning for self-determination and all the achievements and limitations of the actual processes involved. From cities to nation-states, democracy has become associated with the aspiration of people to rule themselves in their own community, and with the gains and frustrations associated with this. Democracy has set itself against arbitrary rule in all its forms and yet has only incompletely achieved its core objective.

Globalization defines a set of processes which are reshaping the organization of human activity, stretching political, economic, social and communicative networks across regions and continents. Power is no longer simply articulated in particular geographic sites and locations, but is spread and diffused across the world in such a way that what occurs in one place can have ramifications across many others. If democracy expresses the idea of self-government within a delimited space, the local and national territory, globalization refers to activities and systems of interaction which create what I call overlapping communities of fate − the interlinking of the fortunes of cities and countries.

Democracy and globalization pull in different directions, or so it seems. Democracy pulls towards the self-organization of activity in delimited territories, and globalization pulls towards the creation of new dense forms of transborder interaction, raising the question of how these can be brought under democratic control and rendered accountable. If all our key political ideas and mechanisms have been developed with reference to particular communities and spaces, how can they be reinvented to embrace a global age?

Clues to an answer to this question can be found in the third term: cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism elaborates a concern with the equal moral status of each and every human being and creates a bedrock of interest in what it is that human beings have in common, independently of their particular familial, ethical, national and religious affiliations. It does not deny the historical, sociological and political significance of these kinds of identity, but argues that they can obscure what it is that all people share − the bundle of needs, desires, anxieties and passions that define us all as members of the same species. Human life can come to an end for diverse reasons, but these have common roots: hunger, illness, loneliness and so on. Human life cannot be sustained without satisfying basic needs whether these be physical, psychological or social.

We need to understand the latter if we are to grasp the proper limits to human diversity, limits which specify necessary conditions for human activity, whether it is found in families, groups or nation-states. These limits articulate necessary boundaries which no human activity should cross – boundaries concerning violence, arbitrary decision-making, the nature and scope of power, among other pressing concerns.

If democracy is about self-determination, globalization about transborder processes and cosmopolitanism about universal principles which must shape and limit all human activity, together they help us understand that the fate of humankind can no longer be disclosed merely by examining self-enclosed political and moral communities, and that the principles of democracy and cosmopolitanism need to be protected and nurtured across all human spheres – local, national, regional and global. If some of the most powerful processes and forces in the world are to be brought under the sphere of influence of public deliberation and democratic accountability, then we need to articulate the changing basis of communities and the interconnection among them. This is both an empirical challenge and a political one.

These concerns do not generate a simple aspiration for one global community, democratically organized on cosmopolitan principles. Rather, it suggests the necessity to recognize the multilevel and multilayered nature of human associations in which we already live, and to find new procedures and mechanisms to ensure that they are bound together by common principles and democratic processes which allow for democracy to flourish, from cities to global networks, in the context of a shared commitment to boundaries which define necessary limits on human action, whether these are political, economic, social or environmental. This volume addresses this overriding concern.

The chapters that follow were all written initially as essays. The dates of their original publication can be found in the acknowledgements. They all have been substantially rewritten for this book in order to develop arguments where relevant, to minimize overlap, to avoid repetition and to change examples if the originals now seem out of date or anachronistic. Chapter 4, ‘Violence, Law and Justice in a Global Age’ (written in November 2001), has been least altered because it is my attempt to make sense of 9/11 and the military response that followed, and because I think the arguments and examples are still valid despite the passage of some years. Reworked, the chapters constitute an account of my thinking about democracy, globalization and cosmopolitanism – their changing rationale and relevance to life in a global age.

Of the many people who have influenced this book, I would particularly like to acknowledge my co-authors of chapter 6, Kevin Young, and of chapter 7, Angus Fane Hervey. Neither chapter would have the shape or detail they have without their contribution. Pietro Maffettone has been indispensable in helping to compile and edit the book, as has Charlie Roger, whose eye for detail has been immensely valuable.

David Held

January 2010

Introduction: Changing Forms of Global Order

Until recently, the West has, by and large, determined the rules of the game on the global stage. During the last century, Western countries presided over a shift in world power – from control via territory to control via the creation of governance structures created in the post-1945 era. From the United Nations Charter and the formation of the Bretton-Woods institutions to the Rio Declaration on the environment and the creation of the World Trade Organisation, international agreements have invariably served to entrench a well-established international power structure. The division of the globe into powerful nation-states, with distinctive sets of geopolitical interests, and reflecting the international power structure of 1945, is still embedded in the articles and statutes of leading intergovernmental organizations, such as the IMF and the World Bank. Voting rights are distributed largely in relation to individual financial contributions, and geo-economic strength is integrated into decision-making procedures.

The result has been susceptibility of the major international governmental organizations (IGOs) to the agendas of the most powerful states, partiality in enforcement operations (or lack of them altogether), their continued dependency on financial support from a few major states, and weaknesses in the policing of global collective action problems. This has been dominance based on a ‘club’ model of global governance and legitimacy. Policy at the international level has been decided by a core set of powerful countries, above all the ‘G1’, G5 and G7, with the rest largely excluded from the decision-making process.

Towards a multipolar world

Today, however, that picture is changing. The trajectory of Western dominance has come to a clear halt with the failure of dominant elements of Western global policy over the past few decades. The West can no longer rule through power or example alone. At the same time, Asia is on the ascent. Over the last half-century, East and Southeast Asia has more than doubled its share of world GDP and increased per capita income at an average growth rate almost two and a half times that in the rest of the world (Quah, 2008). In the last two decades alone, emerging Asian economies have experienced an average growth rate of almost 8 per cent – 3 times the rate in the rich world (, 2009).