The cosmopolitan paradox

The cosmopolitan paradox
Response to Robbins
David Chandler

Bruce Robbins’s excellent article in RP 116 points up the paradox of cosmopolitanism - that it seems ‘perpetually torn between an empirical dimension and a normative dimension’.1 For Robbins, the paradox of cosmopolitanism is rooted in the limited empirical sense of political community. For genuine democracy people need to belong to the same ‘community of fate’, and there is at present little evidence of such a sense of cosmopolitan consciousness. Although leading (Western) governments make claims in support of cosmopolitan human rights established by virtue of membership of a common humanity, their practice is often limited by the ‘communitarian’ reality. The lack of ‘shared fate’ leads to inequalities in practice as governments are often reluctant to sacrifice either treasury resources or military lives in the cause of others, and citizens appear unwilling to shoulder the tax burdens involved in any potential cosmopolitan redistribution of wealth and opportunities.

Robbins suggests that it would be wrong to use the empirical limits to cosmopolitan practices as an argument against normative cosmopolitan claims. He asserts that there is ‘no possibility of simply choosing the actual over the normative’ and instead suggests that we should accept that the ‘contradiction’ exists. A solution to the problem lies in political change which seeks ‘to bring abstraction and actuality together’. A ‘Left cosmopolitanism’ is one that denies ‘the past authority over the present’ - the empirical reality that ‘there is as yet little evidence of transnational solidarity’ should be the justification for engagement and struggle on the side of the progressive cosmopolitan cause.2 This campaigning perspective is advocated by several cosmopolitan theorists who, in different ways, seek to develop ideas and mechanisms whereby global civil society can encourage and further cosmopolitan practices against the communitarian inclinations of national governments and their electorates.3

This article suggests that the ‘cosmopolitan paradox’ - the gap between universal aspiration and hierarchical practice - is not merely one of cosmopolitan ‘consciousness’ lagging behind an immanent cosmopolitan ‘reality’. Rather, the paradox is rooted in the essence of the cosmopolitan thesis itself. The limitations of abstract normative cosmopolitan conceptions of ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’, in a world structured by economic and social inequalities, raise major questions over the progressive claims made by cosmopolitan theorists. In fact, rather than challenging existing international structures of power, there is a real danger that the cosmopolitan impulse will legitimize a much more hierarchical set of international relationships.

Cosmopolitan democracy?
Whether the cosmopolitan aspiration takes the form of Robbins’s call for a transnational welfare safety net or claims for the protection and promotion of a more extensive range of human rights, all cosmopolitan perspectives reflect the increasing prominence of individual rights claims in the international sphere. Leading cosmopolitan theorists seek to challenge the restrictions of the UN Charter framework, imposed by the major powers in the aftermath of the Second World War, which formally prioritized the ‘state-based’ principles of sovereignty and non-intervention. They argue that these principles need to be replaced by a new set of cosmopolitan principles, which make the universal individual rights of members of ‘global society’ the primary focus.

Cosmopolitans argue that democracy and rights can no longer be equated with territorially restricted ‘state-based’ politics: ‘democracy must transcend the borders of single states and assert itself on a global level’.4 They thereby propose replacing the territorially bounded political community of the state as the subject of international decision-making by new flexible frameworks based on the rights of the global citizen, freed from territorial restrictions:

If some global questions are to be handled according to democratic criteria, there must be political representation for citizens in global affairs, independently and autonomously of their political representation in domestic affairs. The unit should be the individual, although the mechanisms for participation and representation may vary according to the nature and scope of the issues discussed.5

Cosmopolitan theorists accept that there is no global government and suggest that, if there were, it would be a bad thing. They are clear that the establishment of democratic institutions on a global level would meet the opposition of nation-states and that, even if this could be brought into existence, it would involve such a high level of homogenization, through social, economic and cultural regulation, that it could only be imposed through war and repression.6 In which case, there can be no cosmopolitan framework of formal political rights, which enable individual citizens to be represented as political equals. The global citizen cannot have the same sorts of rights as the citizen of a nation-state. For cosmopolitan theorists, the new institutions, through which the cosmopolitan citizen can exercise their rights, must exist independently of states and their governments. For this reason the global citizen can only be represented through global or transnational civil society, which, it is argued, can forward non-statist concerns and hold governments to account through transnational campaigning and media pressure.

There are several difficulties with this perspective. First, there is the question of whether a global civil society exists in a meaningful sense. Without a global state or a global political framework, it is debatable whether it is possible to analyse a sphere beyond nation-states where ‘global’ civil society operates.7 It would appear that ‘global’ civil society is no less orientated around national governments than state-based political structures such as national political parties or other representative institutions. Second, there is little agreement on the extent to which civil society groups can influence government policymaking and thereby create a new mechanism of political ‘accountability’. Third, and most importantly, even if groups in civil society did wield influence over policymakers, this may not necessarily enhance the level of democratic accountability.