Abstract
It is to be hoped that the foregoing chapters display some coherence. The idea binding them together is composed of two related beliefs, which thread their way through two and a half millenia of intellectual history. These beliefs are that it would be desirable for states to be superseded or overarched by a universal order or global system of government; and, more intermittently in this history, that individuals should conceive of themselves as citizens of such a system. Yet no single word or set of words accurately conveys this persistent idea.
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References and Notes
See, e.g., D. Archibugi and D. Held (eds), Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995);
C. Brown, International Relations Theory (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992);
D. Held, ‘Democracy: From CityStates to a Cosmopolitan Order?’, in D. Held (ed.), Prospects for Democracy: North, South, East, West (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993);
H. Suganami, The Domestic Analogy and World Order Problems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
M. Wight (ed. G. Wight and B. Porter), International Theory: The Three Traditions (London: Leicester University Press, 1991).
See, e.g., C. R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), especially his distinction between a cosmopolitan morality and a cosmopolitan political programme.
H. Küng, Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic (London: SCM Press, 1991) p. 34.
Quoted, J. A. Hobson, Towards International Government (London: Allen & Unwin, 1915) p. 191.
See, e.g., R. J. Glossop, World Federation? A Critical Analysis of Federal World Government (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1993) pp. 97–128, pp. 234–5 n. 1.
Saint Augustine (trans. W. C. Greene), The City of God against the Pagans, vol. VI (London: Heinemann, 1969) XIX. vii.
See O. Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958) p. 128, para. 61.
Text in E. Lewis (trans.) Medieval Political Ideas, vol. 2 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954) pp. 471–2.
A. D. Menut (ed.), Maistre Nicole Oresnie: Le Livre de Politiques d’Aristote (Philadelphia, PA: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, vol. 60, pt 6, 1970) VII. 10. 249d (translations from Oresme are the author’s).
Quoted, A. Linklater, Men and Citizens in International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1982) p. 66.
K. N. Walz, ‘Kant, Liberalism, and War’, American Political Science Review, vol. LVI (1962) p. 337. For Kant’s general hesitations about a world state, see also Chapter 3 above.
The Metaphysics of Morals in H. Reiss (ed.), Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) §§52 & 53, p. 165.
Quoted in A. Schou, Histoire de l’Internationalisme, t. III (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1963) p. 371 (author’s translation).
F. Meinecke (trans. R. B. Kimber), Cosmopolitanism and the National State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970) p. 21.
J. Bumham, The Managerial Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1945) p. 149.
A few years after the publication of this book, the American political scientist Gerard J. Mangone wrote a fine general appraisal of the whole topic, entitled The Idea and Practice of World Government (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951). He discusses a number of objections. However, on the matter of world bureaucracy, he emphasises not so much its impracticability as the offensive totalitarian potential of such a necessary ‘gigantic, sprawling bureaucracy’ (p. 225; see also p. 30). This kind of argument has been fairly common. It should also be noted that, after the detonation of the atomic bombs, Burnham came to accept the advisability of a World Empire under US leadership. See The Struggle for the World (London: Cape, 1947).
R. Niebuhr, ‘The Illusion of World Government’, reprinted in Christian Realism and Political Problems (London: Faber, 1954) p. 26.
Quoted in D. Heater, Peace Through Education: The Contribution of the Council for Education in World Citizenship (Lewes: Falmer Press, 1984) p. 56.
For this four-fold classification of objections, see F. L. Schuman, The Commonwealth of Man (London: Hale, 1954).
F. Dostoyevsky (trans. D. Magarshack), The Brothers Karamazov, bk 5 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958) p. 302.
I. Berlin, Historical Inevitability (London: Oxford University Press, 1954).
E. S. Lent, ‘The Development of United World Federalist Thought and Policy’, International Organisation, vol. 9 (1955) pp. 486–501, esp. p. 500.
The Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
For an outline of this development, see, D. Oliver and D. Heater, Foundations of Citizenship (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), ch. 7. There is the interesting parallel of dual citizenship in the Roman Empire — of Rome and of the citizen’s native city.
J. P. Gardner, ‘What Lawyers mean by Citizenship’, in Commission on Citizenship, Encouraging Citizenship (London: HMSO, 1990) pp. 63–78.
See, e.g., E. Boulding, Building a Global Civic Culture (New York: Teachers’ College Press, 1988).
R. Falk, ‘The Making of Global Citizenship’, in B. van Steenbergen (ed.), The Condition of Citizenship (London: Sage, 1994) pp. 131–2.
F. Steward, ‘Citizens of Planet Earth’, in G. Andrews (ed.), Citizenship (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1991) p. 73.
M. Donelan, ‘A Community of Mankind’, in J. Mayall (ed.), The Community of States (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982) p. 143.
See K. Booth, ‘Human wrongs and international relations’, International Affairs, vol. 71 (1995), esp. pp. 109–12.
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© 1996 Derek Heater
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Heater, D. (1996). Final Considerations. In: World Citizenship and Government. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376359_7
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