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‘Globalization, Constitutionalism, and Sovereignty’1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2014

WILLIAM E SCHEUERMAN
WILLIAM E SCHEUERMAN*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Woodburn Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, In 47405, USA
*
*Email: wscheuer@indiana.edu
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Abstract

Jean L Cohen’s impressive new volume argues that the existing global order’s own internal attributes point the way to the possibility of attractive as well as realistic institutional reforms. Global dualism, she argues, suggests the advantages of constructing non-statist global federations, in which sovereign states would cooperate in far-reaching ways to tackle common problems, in conjunction with a ‘low-intensity’ – yet potentially path-breaking – constitutionalization of global governance. If properly achieved, such reforms could produce a global order better able to preserve legality, protect rights, and allow for far-reaching political autonomy. This review chiefly focuses on the author’s attempt to link her normative and political ideas, and especially her ideas about constitutional pluralism and global federations, to her analysis of the existing global order. Despite the many virtues of her reform ideas, they sometimes embody unfairly hostile views of cosmopolitan political and legal aims. Unfortunately, Cohen has not sufficiently responded to political and institutional cosmopolitans who seek potentially more far-reaching alterations to our global order than she deems desirable.

Keywords

cosmopolitanismglobal constitutionalismpluralismstate sovereigntyworld state
Type
Research Article
Information
Global Constitutionalism , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 102 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 Review of Cohen, Jean L, Globalization and Sovereignty: Rethinking Legality, Legitimacy, and Constitutionalism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar References appear parenthetically in the text of the review.

2 Jürgen Habermas has helped popularize the term (The Divided West, edited by Ciaran Cronin [Polity Press, Cambridge, 2006]). On its broader usage, see Wet, Erika de, ‘The Constitutionalization of Public International Law’ in Rosenfeld, Michel and Sajó, András (eds), Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012) 1209–30.Google Scholar

3 There is, however, one oversight: Cohen seems unfamiliar with some important research in international relations theory, even when it speaks directly to her central concerns. For example, her diagnosis of ours as a dualistic global order overlaps with basic insights from the ‘English School’, as pioneered by Martin Wight and others (M Wight et al, International Theory: The Three Traditions [Holmes and Meier, New York, 1992]). This lacuna points to the large gap in US political science still separating ‘political theory’ from ‘IR’.

4 Her target here is the views of scholars like Bruno Fassbender (‘The United Nations Charter as Constitution of the International Community’ [1998] 36 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 529–619). Although unmentioned, her argument is also intended as a critical response to Habermas’ own – and more unambiguously cosmopolitan – ideas about the ‘constitutionalization of international law’. The debate on global constitutionalism is massive. For important contributions, see Dobner, Petra and Loughlin, Martin (eds), The Twilight of Constitutionalism? (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dunoff, Jeffrey L and Trachtman, Joel P (eds), Ruling the World? Constitutionalism, International Law, and Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tsagourias, Nicholas (ed), Transnational Constitutionalism: International and European Models (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also the useful survey by Wiener, Antje, Lang, Anthony F Jr., Tully, James, Poiares Maduro, Miguel and Kumm, Matthias, ‘Global Constitutionalism: Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law’ (2012) 1(1) Global Constitutionalism 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 A key inspiration here for Cohen, as for many others in the debate, is Neil Walker’s work (e.g., ‘The Idea of Constitutional Pluralism’ [2002] 65 Modern Law Review 317–59).

6 For example, Weiler, JHH and Wind, M (eds), European Constitutionalism Beyond the State (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003).Google Scholar

7 Grimm, Dieter, ‘The Constitution in the Process of Denationalization’ (2005) 12(4) Constellations 447–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Loughlin, Martin, ‘In Defence of Staatslehre’ (2009) 49(1) Der Staat 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Falk, Richard, On Humane Governance: Towards a New Global Politics (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar; Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2002).Google Scholar

9 Scheuerman, William E, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the World State’ Review of International Studies (forthcoming).Google Scholar

10 A similar view of the antebellum US is found in Deudney’s, DanielBounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007).Google Scholar

11 The ‘Realist’ Morgenthau still makes worthwhile reading: as he points out, the Swiss experience was highly idiosyncratic (Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 2nd edn [Alfred Knopf, New York, 1954], 482–4). Unfortunately, Cohen interprets international realism as little more than a footnote to Schmitt’s existentialist concept of the political. This view – which Habermas has helped popularize – requires substantial revision (see Scheuerman, William E, The Realist Case for Global Reform [Polity Press, Cambridge, 2011]).Google Scholar

12 Miller, David, On Nationality (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar; Walzer, Michael, Arguing about War (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2004).Google Scholar

13 Rainer Schmalz-Bruns thus speaks aptly of the (democratic) ‘normative grammar of statehood’ (‘An den Grenzen der Entstaatlichung. Bemerkungen zu Jürgen Habermas’ einer, Modell‘Weltinnenpolitik ohne Weltregierung’’ in Niesen, Peter and Herborth, Benjamin [eds], Anarchie der kommunikativen Freiheit. Jürgen Habermas und die Theorie der internationalen Politik [Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 2007] 269–93).Google Scholar

14 One would obviously need to think hard about how any postnational and nascent cosmopolitan order should properly interact with profoundly non-liberal and non-democratic states, i.e., those which arguably do not rest on self-determination in some meaningful sense of the term.

15 Like Ulrich K Preuss (‘Disconnecting Constitutions from Statehood: Is Global Constitutionalism a Viable Concept?’ in Dobner and Loughlin [eds], The Twilight of Constitutionalism? 23–46), Cohen ultimately sees the modern state’s territoriality as an essential attribute of modern sovereignty. But do we need to link concrete, limited territoriality to political autonomy as strongly as she seems to imply?

16 Cavaller, George, Kant and the Theory and Practice of International Right (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1999)Google Scholar; Kleingeld, Pauline, Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Idea of World Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012).Google Scholar

17 For example, see Höffe, Otfried, Demokratie im Zeitalter der Globalisierung (Beck, Munich, 1999).Google Scholar

18 Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity (Blackwell, Oxford, 1989).Google Scholar

19 On Arendt’s contributions to international theory, see especially Owens, Patricia, Between War and Peace: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007).Google Scholar

20 For recent attempts to respond to the usual stock arguments against world government, see Marchetti, Raffaele, Global Democracy: For and Against (Routledge, London, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scheuerman, William E, The Realist Case for Global Reform) 149–68Google Scholar; Tinnevelt, Ronald, ‘Federal World Government: The Road to Peace and Justice?’ (2012) 47(2) Cooperation and Conflict 220–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Cohen, Jean L (with Andrew Arato), ‘Banishing Sovereignty? Internal and External Sovereignty in Arendt’ in Benhabib, Seyla (ed), Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010) 166.Google Scholar

22 Robinson, William I, ‘Social Theory and Globalization: The Rise of a Transnational State’ (2001) Theory and Society 20(2) 157–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarShaw, Martin, Theory of the Global State: Globality as an Unfinished Revolution (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am grateful to Marek Hrubec for bringing this literature to my attention.

23 I am grateful here to Seyla Benhabib for some helpful comments on Arendt’s international theory.