Who’s afraid of a world state? A global sovereign and the statist-cosmopolitan debate

Abstract

Wary of quick statist dismissal of their proposals, cosmopolitans have been careful not to associate themselves with a world state. I argue that this caution is mistaken: cosmopolitans should see the vision of a world state as strategically valuable in exposing weaknesses in statist accounts, particularly of the Rawlsian variety. This strategic value follows if the only cogent arguments against a world state belong to non-ideal theory which assumes non-compliance, rather than to ideal theory with its core assumption of full compliance. If our only convincing reasons to reject a world state are non-ideal, then any liberal theory revolving around separate states must itself be considered a non-ideal theory. As a non-ideal theory, a statist law of peoples cannot be presented as an end-state, but is rather a transitional stage. Yet once seen as a transitional theory, the statist “realistic utopia” can no longer dodge the cosmopolitan charge that it is neither sufficiently realistic nor sufficiently utopian.

Keywords:

• world state
• cosmopolitanism
• statism
• ideal and non-ideal theory
• realistic utopia

Acknowledgements

For helpful comments and discussions, I am grateful to David Ewert, Henning Hann, Burke Hendrix, Lizzie Krontiris, Markus Labude, Tony Laden, and Thomas Pogge. Comments from two anonymous reviewers, as well as from the “Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory” working group at Yale’s Global Justice Program, also helped improve the paper considerably.

Notes

1. Note the contrast with Pogge’s earlier work where he seems to reject a world state for reasons very similar to Rawls’ Kantian ones; Pogge (1992), p. 63).

2. For the prevalent understanding of “ideal” and “non-ideal” in terms of compliance, see, for example, the survey in Valentini (2012).

3. A key reason why the parties to Rawls’ original position, for example, prefer the two principles of justice as fairness over utilitarian principles, is that (according to Rawls) utilitarianism requires of individuals a degree of self-sacrifice to further the aims of others that exceeds human beings’ motivational capacities. This is the heart of Rawls’ famous “strains of commitment” argument against utilitarianism; Rawls (1999a), §§18, 29.

4. This point is emphasized even by those who believe that “anarchy is what states make of it”; Wendt (2003), p. 506, Wendt (1992), Deudney (2006), Craig (2008).

5. On this point, see also Cabrera (2004).

6. After all, separate states too might very well be despotic, but that does not push us to do away with the very idea of separate governments: political theory, as even Thoreau agreed, should design “better government” rather than “no government”; Thoreau (1996), p. 2.

7. Hence Rawls’ hope that the institutions of just a society regulated by his two principles will be self-perpetuating – that his conception of justice will “generate its own support”; Rawls (1999a), p. 119 (see also Simmons 2010, p. 9).

8. Thanks to Tony Laden for pressing this point on me in related discussion.

9. Though he has explicitly attacked certain statist views, Joshua Cohen can be seen as defending some variant of such a division of labor when attacking Pogge’s non-ideal theorizing; Cohen (2010), p. 21 (see also Simmons 2010, p. 19).

10. Cf. the early survey in Caney (2002). For a later discussion of “action-guiding” theories, see Valentini (2009).

11. Wenar’s work on “clean trade” in natural resources is a partial exception here. One way to understand Wenar’s recent writing is as an attempt to make existing liberal societies behave more like Rawlsian peoples by boycotting dictators’ natural resource exports. Yet Wenar’s recent efforts have generally been much less focused on any moral dilemmas involved in such boycotts, and much more focused on showing how these boycotts are compatible with existing legal frameworks. See Wenar’s evolving book manuscript on Clean Trade (unpublished), developing further the ideas set out in Wenar (2008).

12. I share this temporal orientation with Jensen (2009).

13. See my “Ideal Theory and Ignorant Knowledge of Change” (unpublished manuscript)

14. See the contributions by Freeman, David Reidy, and Rex Martin in Reidy and Martin (2006).

15. Here I follow Pogge (1990).