Transforming (but not transcending) the state system? On statist cosmopolitanism

Abstract

Can states become committed and competent agents of cosmopolitan justice? The theory of ‘statist cosmopolitanism’ argues that they can: their citizens can be turned towards a commitment to cosmopolitan principles and actions by moral entrepreneurs constituting a ‘cosmopolitan avant-garde’, and can be sustained in their commitment to those principles by their pre-existing attachment to the state as a political community. Taking cosmopolitan principles as axiomatic, this paper subjects statist cosmopolitanism to critique. First, I question the scale of the transformation that a cosmopolitan avant-garde can engender given the complexity of the causal chains the avant-garde seek to elucidate, as well as the countervailing potency of the state itself which reinforces particularistic attitudes in its citizens. Second, I argue that even if, contra my preceding argument, the cosmopolitan avant-garde were to be successful, states would find it desirable to federally integrate in order to be better able to realise their cosmopolitan commitments. Such integration is compatible with statist cosmopolitanism’s motivational theory, even if not its institutional vision. Finally, I re-characterise the cosmopolitan avant-garde as agitators for the transcendence, rather than just transformation, of the state system.

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