Editorial: Political Globalization
Jürgen Habermas: Folkeretten i overgangen til den postnationale konstellation (in Danish)
In this article Jürgen Habermas argues for a constitutionalisation of international law as an alternative to the unilateralism of present American foreign policy. He takes his point of departure in Kant's classical essay on perpetual peace and then continues with an investigation of the historical development of international law until the present. Especially the strengths and weaknesses of the UN are examined. He defends a Kantian perspective on international relations against Carl Schmitt's critique, but argues for a reconstruction of the Kantian perspective on the grounds of his own theory of practical discourse.
Keywords: new world order, unilateralism, international law, UN, Kant, Schmitt, globalization, human rights, practical discourse
Thomas Olesen: The Struggle inside Democracy: Modernity, Social Movements and Global Solidarity
The essay develops two interrelated arguments. The first argument brings into play the concepts of globalization, democracy and social movements, and underlines their mutually constitutive character in the development of Western societies since the 18th century. The second argument points to an uncertain future by looking at a confusing present. Extrapolating from the analysis of the historical relationship between globalization, democracy and social movements, it identifies the incipient development of a global solidarity position. This position is anchored in radical democratic ideas and expressed by contemporary social movement networks whose activities involve the crossing of physical, social and cultural distances. The emphasis on radical democracy and the decidedly global nature of the position implies a challenge to the traditional national and state anchored conception of democracy and its liberal and representative foundations. Theoretically, the article draws from a number of currents in the social movements and globalization literatures.
Keywords: social movements, globalization, solidarity, modernity, democracy
David M. Rasmussen: Justice, Interpretation and the Cosmopolitan Idea
This essay attempts to navigate what I take to be the central paradox in discussions of global justice: how does one acknowledge the distinctness of other political cultures while at the same time making a claim that guarantees universal human rights? Using Paul Ricoeur's asymmetric model of self and other I develop an interpretative conception of justice on the basis of the later work of John Rawls. My argument shows that Rawls's move to reasonability and public reason requires an interpretive as opposed to a purely constructivist framework. This subordination of reason to reasonability, which takes place between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, makes it possible to take account of 'the other' in terms of a judgement about what is reasonable. Ricour's development of a theory of identity that preserves the asymmetry between self and other, coupled with Rawls's notion of reasonability, provide us with the resources for understanding politics in a global framework. I conclude by relating this position to Kant's reflections on the cosmopolitan order.
Keywords: interpretation, reasonability, public reason, Rawls, Ricoeur, global justice
Jens Bartelson: Facing Europe: Is Globalization a Threat to Democracy?
This article examines the widespread belief that globalization constitutes a threat to democracy, and analyses some of the standard responses to this perceived threat. According to this belief, globalization is a threat to democracy because it undermines the necessary requirements of state autonomy and national identity. From this it follows that democracy can be safeguarded either by fortifying the nation-state or by extending the scope of democracy beyond its borders. Yet both solutions force us to redefine the concept of political community in ways that are hard to justify in terms themselves democratic. Contrary to popular belief, this article argues that this predicament has less to do with globalization and all the more to do with the historical and philosophical foundations of modern democracy. The article proceeds to unpack these foundations in order to explain how this perceived threat was constituted in the first place.
Keywords: globalization, democracy, legitimacy, cosmopolitanism, state, nation, revolution, Rousseau
Dietrich Jung: Globalization, State Formation and Religion in the Middle East: 'Is Islam Incompatible with Democracy?' In conceptualising globalization as the ongoing spread of modernity, this article investigates the relationship between religion and state formation in the Middle East. It combines theoretical reflections on globalization, state formation and religion with some empirical observations on religious politics in the Middle East. In posing the stereotypical and prejudiced question about the compatibility of Islam and democracy, the essay puts into question the mutually accepted 'truth' of the public discourse on Islam that claims an inherent and particular relationship between Islam and politics. From the perspective of a critically revised 'modernisation theory', the essay rejects this idea of Middle Eastern exceptionalism and explains the relationship between Islam and politics as subject to historical contingencies. After discussing the interrelated concepts of globalization, modernisation, secularisation and modern state formation, this argument is empirically presented through two case studies on Turkey and Iran, showing the two extreme poles between which state-society relations in the Middle East have been constructed and negotiated. Thereby, it becomes apparent in which way globalization works against the repressive cultural containment policies of Middle Eastern regimes and undermines the ideological essentialism of Islamist movements at the same time.
Keywords: globalization, modernisation, secularisation, Middle Eastern state formation, Islam and state, postsecular society and Islamist movements
Charlotte Fridolfsson Politics: Protest and the Threatening Outside: A Discourse Analysis of Events at an EU Summit
Social movement protests at an EU summit in Gothenburg in 2001 are here analysed using discourse theory. This perspective envisages the constructed character of subjects, identities and discourses structuring the social. A hegemonic project, attempting to explain the antagonisms at the summit, was emphasised through signifying chains and the use of metaphor. The hegemonic effort of rescuing a unified and fully sutured social, instituted a constitutive outside - the deviant activist - explaining the interruptions in the idea of liberal democratic politics, here substantiated by the summit. Power seems crucial for what forms of protests are considered acceptable, and ultimately for what is viewed as valid political subjects or legitimate political demands.
Keywords: discourse theory, social movements, political protest, post-structuralism, ideology, hegemony, social construction
Willy Guneriussen: Globalisering: Trenger vi nye begrep om samfunn, fellesskap og demokrati? (in Norwegian)
This article will show how the complex processes of globalization force the social sciences to reconsider their traditional concepts of community and society. It is not obvious that we can describe new and emerging social realities by using these old concepts. In the first part the article traces some historical 'roots' of the concept of community in sociology and discusses its relevance for contemporary debates. The idea of post-local communities is analysed and some arguments are developed against the conceptions of global communities. In the second part the article focuses on the concept of 'society'. A model is developed on the basis of Talcott Parsons' theory of modern society. It shows how problematic it is to talk about a 'global society'. In the last part the article discusses various ideas of a global political order - including visions of a 'cosmopolitan democracy'. It concludes by raising some doubt as to the realism of a democratic, cosmopolitan project.
Keywords: community, society, globalization, transformation, identity, democracy, nation state, cosmopolitanism
Mikkel Thorup: 'Hvorledes globaliseringen af Europa overvinder barbariet: den liberale brug af globaliseringsbegrebet til afpolitisering af nation og stat (in Danish)
This article critically examines the way some liberals understand and use the concept of globalization as a way beyond the nation state. Liberalism is seen as defined by the principle of depoliticization, which is another way of saying that liberalism seeks to construct the political order in a way that is violence-free. The problematic element of this otherwise praiseworthy goal is the inherent neglect of the continued role of power and violence within and between states - including liberal states - and in this context the continued role of the nation state. The article begins by discussing the concepts of liberalism and the political, and then proceeds to examine the liberal understanding of the good government as the proper state form and the bourgeois as the archetypical liberal figure in the work of Montesquieu, Adam Smith and Tocqueville. Liberalism is then defined as the freedom to be mediocre as an oppositional move against the aristocratic or heroic age and understanding of man and society. These liberal understandings of the political, the economic, the state and man which originates in the Enlightenment is reproduced in the current discussion of globalization and in the European discussion of the American otherness, which is exemplified in the political interventions of among others Beck, Held and Habermas.
Keywords: globalization, depoliticization, the political, violence, liberalism, the nation state, EU, USA