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Having argued in Chs 3 and 4 that there are cosmopolitan principles of civil and political justice and cosmopolitan principles of distributive justice, one is logically led to the question, ‘if one affirms cosmopolitan principles of justice, what kind of political framework (political structures) should one accept— a system of states, or of global political institutions, of autonomous nations (including even statehood)? This chapter seeks to answer these questions. It is arranged in 17 sections: Section I provides a conceptual analysis of some possible political frameworks; the following six sections (II–VI) consider cosmopolitan approaches to the question of how political power should be institutionalized (II), present three possible approaches—intrinsic, right-based, and instrumental (III–V), and examine the nature of the political framework offered by these three approaches (VI); Sections VII–XI analyse five challenges to the cosmopolitan political proposals, first, those voiced by statists (including both realists and those who affirm the ‘society of states’) (VIII–X) and, second, those voiced by those sympathetic to the idea of a global civil society (XI); Sections XII–XVI evaluate four nationalist claims that any defensible account of political institutions should grant autonomy to nations (provide national self-determination), and they aim to defend a cosmopolitan political programme—one in which there are democratic supra-state institutions charged with protecting people’s civil, political, and economic rights—and to rebut the challenges of statists and nationalists or to show that they can be accommodated by cosmopolitans. Section XVII summarizes and concludes that, overall, a cosmopolitan political order should grant a very heavily qualified role to national self-determination.

The conclusion ends the book with an explication of the Federalists’ idea of an American national state.

It starts by pointing out that the ratification of the US Constitution did not mean the end of politics, nor the end of the debate about the future course of the American republic, for now the Federalists faced the next step of state building: creating the institutions of government that would realize their ideas about a national state in America. The mainstream interpretation of the Federalist argument presents it as a call for limited government and protection of minority rights, but this study has offered a different interpretation. It sees the Federalist argument as an attempt to convince the American public about the need to build a powerful state and to explain how this state would work – the idea of an American national state that the Federalists developed during the ratification debate was the result of creative thinking in the face of serious challenges. This conclusion is devoted to an explication of both the challenge that the Federalists faced and the concept of the state they developed, but the basic issue may be summed up as follows: what the Federalists had to do, and what they did, in the debate over ratification, was to develop a conceptual framework that made it possible to accommodate the creation of a powerful national government to the strong anti‐statist current in the American political tradition.

Draws a contrast between the American and European experiences of union, the one built upon an indigenous American ideology, which may be properly termed federal democracy, and the other in which federation was too great a step for post‐World War II Europe. The problem is that of integrating the federal vision with the modern conception of state sovereignty, and this has given rise to two systems that are roughly intended to serve the same purpose (the joining together of identifiable polities in a common enterprise within an embracing authoritative framework), although the nature of their respective unions is different: one federal and the other confederal. Addresses the manner in which these two systems became models by looking first at the theoretical history of the competition between statism and federalism in the modern and postmodern epochs (the latter of which is only beginning to take form). In the following sections, it goes on to look at the rejection of federalism in Europe, the EU as a confederation, subsidiarity as federal or hierarchical, the EU's Catholic cultural origins, the spread of confederal arrangements in the new European model, federalism and confederalism as forms of democratic government, and the current challenge for Europe.

Focuses on the European Union, and looks at the promise and possibilities that emerge once the federal vision is liberated from ‘statist’ conceptions of political organization. The author views attempts to transform the European project into one of federal constitutionalism along statist lines as deeply misguided. The first section points out that the constitutional discipline of Europe is in most respects indistinguishable from that of advanced federal states, but with the huge difference that Europe chose not to presuppose the supreme authority and sovereignty of its federal demos. There is then a brief analysis of some of the premises on which the constitutional debate is typically based. The rest of the chapter explains why the unique brand of European federalism represents not only its most original political asset but also its deepest set of values, and offers a normative reading of the European constitutional architecture.

This chapter sets out the aim and structure of the book, and the motivation behind it. It discusses the challenges faced by liberal political theory in an era of globalization, particularly focusing on ‘the question of extension’, namely whether egalitarian principles of justice can be coherently extended from the domestic to the global arena. The chapter outlines the two most prominent answers to it – cosmopolitanism and statism – and argues that both entail fatal theoretical as well as practical difficulties. After discussing these difficulties, the chapter offers an overview of the normative framework developed in the book to address them. It outlines the book’s central claim, namely that the function of the principles of justice (as opposed to humanitarian assistance) is to evaluate the legitimacy of coercion, and anticipates its contents in detail.

This chapter discusses the complaint that the statist ideal is excessively biased in favour of the status quo and argues that this critique is only partly successful. While the statists’ (especially Rawls’s) refusal to extend egalitarian justice to the global realm does not in itself indicate subservience to the status quo, statist principles have unduly conservative implications because they are insufficiently sensitive to morally relevant phenomena characterizing the global realm. Although statists rightly identify peoples (states) as important subjects of international justice in virtue of the particular forms of coercive power they exercise by directly interfering in one another’s affairs, they fail to appreciate that these are not the only forms of international coercion in need of justification. Because the normative outlook underpinning Rawlsian statism is blind to these other potential sources of injustice, its principles may very well turn out to be status-quo biased and, therefore, rightly criticized on guidance grounds.

This chapter identifies and discusses the methodological flaws that make statism excessively subservient to the status quo. It focuses on three methodological commitments on the basis of which statist conclusions have been advocated. These are (a) the view that principles of justice are constructed by interpreting the values informing the specific practices they aim to regulate; (b) the view that principles of justice can only guide the conduct of authoritative agents, such as the state; and (c) the view that principles of justice apply only in the presence of specific cooperative or coercive relations. The chapter shows that all of these methodological commitments contain a bias in favour of the status quo, preventing the principles developed on their basis from being genuinely critical and action-guiding.

This chapter applies the framework developed in the book to the issue of justice beyond borders. It argues that, thanks to its double focus – on systemic and interactional coercion – this framework steers a coherent middle course between cosmopolitanism and statism, and explains why each seems to get only part of the ‘global justice picture’ right. While statists typically concentrate on the moral evaluation of interactional coercion between states – marking out conditions for domestic sovereignty and international intervention – cosmopolitans are concerned with the justification of global systemic coercion. A closer look at our world reveals that both types of coercion exist at the international level. This means that a good theory of global justice should set the principles for the moral assessment of both. Statist principles of internal legitimacy and just interstate conduct need to be supplemented by cosmopolitan principles of global justice, assessing the justifiability of global systemic coercion. The chapter concludes with the sketch of a theory of this kind.

This concluding chapter shows how the framework developed in the book (a) successfully overcomes the theoretical and practical difficulties affecting cosmopolitanism and statism, and (b) offers a principled answer to the question of extension. While the concept of justice, which indicates a broad category of principles placing limits on the legitimate exercise of coercion, can be extended from the domestic context to the world at large, different conceptions (i.e. different substantive principles) will apply to these two domains, in light of the different forms of coercion existing within them. From a substantive viewpoint, this leads to the conclusion that global justice calls for more than statist assistance while requiring less than full-blown cosmopolitan equality.

Although recent ICC's actions have highlighted the strength of cosmopolitan justice, the ICC's statist character has, in the case of Sudan, exposed the disjuncture between state and global responsibilities, and in so doing, revealed the institutionalized limits of its own statism. This does not mean, however, that state politics has and will continue to offset the Prosecutor's cosmopolitan intent. On the contrary, it suggests the weak institutional context of its intent and the consequent need to develop its institutional ties and organs in order to materialize the very strength of this intent. This chapter argues that while the ICC has shown great resolve in investigating and prosecuting the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide, the Darfur situation has exposed many of the underdeveloped institutional ties and/or concerns that have limited the impact of its cosmopolitan intent.

In some contemporary metaphysics theories, there is an explicit preference or desire, or in some cases demand, for‘Humean’ theories. Humean, or ‘empiricist’ theories of law and of chance are sought; theories that posit irreducible nomic, modal, dispositional, or causal facts are dismissed as un-Humean. David Lewis has characterized a central motivation for some of his theories as a desire to ‘uphold not so much the truth of Humean supervenience but the tenability of it’, a somewhat modest but still mysterious ambition. Why, to put it bluntly, should one want to be Humean? What is the appeal of ‘Humean Supervenience’ such that metaphysical accounts should aspire to it? Although Lewis and others issue calls to rally to Hume's banner, no strategic justification for this campaign is offered. The reason for this reticence is that the motivations will not withstand close scrutiny in the light of day. The aim of this essay is to unshutter the windows.

Exploring contradictions inherent in liberal orders, this chapter questions the treatment of liberalism in the International Relations academy as a relatively straightforward set of beliefs about the individual, the state, the market, and political justice. It asserts that the contradictions and tensions within liberal internationalism are in fact deep and troubling. Highlighting some of liberalism's obscured and sometimes denied contradictions — between liberal ‘statism’ and liberal ‘cosmopolitanism’; between liberal ‘proceduralism’ and liberal ‘consequentialism’; and between liberal ‘absolutism’ and liberal ‘toleration’ — the chapter explores their implications for liberal ordering practices internationally. It concludes that liberal political engagement necessitates a more reflective standpoint and more historical sensibility if we are to be aware of how contradictions have shaped liberal orders in the past and are likely to continue to do so in the future.

Jan‐Werner Müller argues that although for historical reasons Germany has no systematic tradition of Euroscepticism, German politicians and intellectuals have not always been uniformly pro‐European for the same reasons. The plans of the federalist movement were conclusively sidelined after 1945, and politicians, while using idealistic pro‐European rhetoric, often advanced German interests “in Europe's name”. Müller charts the birth of a harsher tone on Europe among politicians as of the mid 1990s; he also shows that constitutional lawyers, and particularly the Constitutional Court as an institution, have been increasingly influential in asserting the need to reign in the ECJ and affirm the nation‐states as ultimate Herren der Verträge (masters of the treaties). Intellectual opinion, meanwhile – on the EU constitutional debate in particular – has increasingly split between those hoping for continuous supranational constitutionalisation and those who celebrate legal pluralism and fragmentation of international law. Müller argues that these correspond broadly to the theoretical legacies of Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann respectively.

The idea of a ‘postnational constellation’ conjures up a world in which globalisation, privatisation, and individualisation have changed the basic configuration of the legal and political world. The state has become disaggregated as regulatory authority has shifted towards transnational governance structures and devolved to subnational public authorities or private actors. There are a number of questions one might ask about these changes. Have they strengthened human rights and have they furthered peace, justice, and prosperity within and across societies? Or have they created new inequities and new dangers? The literature on these questions, either generally, or addressing specific policy issues, is endless. This chapter focuses on the more limited question of how these changes can best be described and assessed in constitutional terms. Specifically the question is: How are these changes affecting the tradition of modern constitutionalism? It provides a deeper understanding of the nature of the dispute between triumphalists and nostalgists.

This chapter builds on the findings of Chapter 2 and examines the New Deal's domestic initiatives in a global context during the second half of the 1930s. The years 1933 and 1935 did not stand for different philosophies or economic models. More than new policies or programs, it was the domestic and international context that was different two years into the New Deal, and the term “security” in particular took on a new meaning. In the United States, the political debates were much more entrenched in 1935 than in 1933, when the advocates of laissez-faire capitalism had been shell-shocked by the Great Slump. Internationally, things were just as bad, given the triumphs of fascism and communism in various regions of the world. The threat emanating from political and military developments in other parts of the world impacted the domestic agenda much more than before, thus redefining the meaning of the global for American politics.

The role of the state, since it is the sovereign power that sets the legal framework in society, is not limited to wage regulation. Economic, organizational, and technological changes — particularly that of internationalization — caused economic performance to become vulnerable. The state's shift from pluralism to outcome-oriented regulation to make industrial relations more receptive to performance requirements can be viewed in two reliant aspects. The first dimension concerns how state regulation relates to organized industrial relations while the second refers to the state being substantive or procedural. This chapter examines how substantive state regulation and procedural state regulation are interrelated through using three regulatory approaches to make industrial relations compatible with what is needed for economic performance: neoliberalism, statism, and corporatism.