The idea that transnational dynamics challenge the regulatory capacity of the state has hardly ever received as much attention as in contemporary debates. Different voices denounce the crisis of the state and advocate the establishment of supranational institutions with legally coercive power. It is tempting to jump to the conclusion that these voices are concerned with the same cluster of problems. We think that one should resist this temptation. Firstly, not all the problems pointed out by the advocates of (...) supranational sovereignty are of the same kind and structure. Some concern the need to limit the power of states, whereas others address the almost opposite necessity to support and strengthen their problem-solving capacity through forms of international regulation. Secondly, the corresponding solutions are different. In particular, although they may all imply the establishment of supranational institutions, not all such institutions need be global. The creation of a full-blown global rule of criminal law, for instance, would raise serious concerns of global despotism and cultural imperialism, and we therefore make a case for regional and context-sensitive solutions in this case. However, problems of supranational socioeconomic justice can only be addressed through global regulatory institutions, for regional institutions would, in this case, only recreate current problems at the interregional level. (shrink)

Elsewhere we have responded to the so-called demandingness objection to consequentialism – that consequentialism is excessively demanding and is therefore unacceptable as a moral theory – by introducing the theoretical position we call institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. In this paper, we first introduce and explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and the main reasons that support it. In the remainder of the paper, we turn (...) to the global dimension where the first and foremost challenge is to explain how institutional consequentialism can deal with unsolved global problems such as poverty, war and climate change. In response, following the general idea of institutional consequentialism, we draw up three alternative routes: relying on existing national, transnational and supranational institutions; promoting gradual institutional reform; and advocating radical changes to the status quo. We evaluate these routes by describing normatively relevant properties of the existing global institutional system, as well as by showing what institutional consequentialism can say about alternatives to it: a world government; and multi-layered sovereignty/neo-medieval system. (shrink)

ExcerptThe field of supranational democracy, which this paper addresses, is usually characterized by grand institutional designs and utopian projects. My aim here is, however, admittedly modest. I would like to examine one specific strategy deployed by a number of political theorists writing in this field. These authors come from very different backgrounds—they range from Pierre Manent and John Pocock to Larry Siedentop and Jean Cohen—yet they all share one important idea: in response to models for global governance that seek (...) to relocate sovereignty to a supranational level or to disperse sovereignty vertically over different levels (e.g., global federalism, deliberative supranationalism,…. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge and Andrew Kuper suggest that we should promote an ‘institutional’ solution to global poverty. They advocate the institutional solution because they think that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can never be the primary agents of justice in the long run. They provide several standard criticisms of NGO aid in support of this claim. However, there is a more serious problem for institutional solutions: how to generate enough goodwill among rich nation-states that they would be willing to commit themselves to (...) class='Hi'>supranational institutional reforms. In the current international political climate, the implementation of such institutional reforms introduces several intractable problems, including difficulties of global coordination and enforcement. I defend the solution of NGO aid from the criticisms presented by Pogge and Kuper, and propose how it might be reformed. My main suggestion is that all practising NGOs should be required to be ‘accountable for reasonableness’ in the sense that Norman Daniels and James Sabin have outlined. (shrink)

Social liberals and liberal nationalists often argue that cosmopolitans neglect the normative importance of state sovereignty and self-determination. This paper counter-argues that, under current global political and socio-economic circumstances, only the establishment of supranational institutions with some (limited, but significant) sovereign powers can allow states to exercise sovereignty, and peoples? self-determination, in a meaningful way. Social liberals have largely neglected this point because they have focused on an unduly narrow, mainly negative, conception of state sovereignty. I contend, instead, that (...) we should more closely consider the positive aspects of sovereignty, understood as the capacity to maintain internal problem-solving capacities and make meaningful discretionary choices on a range of national issues. (shrink)

Most refugees residing in the European Union (EU) do not retain their voting rights in states of origin or lack the means to exercise them effectively. Most member states of the EU do not extend voting rights to refugees. This leaves a large population of refugees residing within the borders of the EU in a unique state of disenfranchisement. In this article, I consider this problem from a democratic perspective. Should refugees in the EU have voting rights? My answer turns (...) on three aspects characterizing the circumstances of refugees: First, refugees reside in member states for an indeterminate, and typically protracted, amount of time without any exit options. Second, the political governance of the EU and its member states significantly shapes the lives of refugees. And third, refugees lack effective voting rights, and consequently, a meaningful political membership, in any political community across the world. In turn, based on an all-subjected principle of democratic inclusion, I argue that refugees should be secured state-level voting rights in member states, albeit with a condition of the period of residency. Moreover, they should have immediate voting rights at the supranational institutions of the EU such as the European Parliament. (shrink)

European quality assurance has a complicated history that must be viewed as taking place on two levels: first, in a national effort to deregulate the public sector and to make universities accountable for their teaching performance; and second, a supranational endeavor to accomplish European integration in the field of higher education. Similarly, the web of institutional constraints and opportunity structures in which accreditation agencies are embedded spans two policy levels, the national and the European. In this paper, we examine (...) how German accreditation agencies achieve some level of autonomy in a highly entrenched institutional environment. The paper is based on a qualitative study comprising archival data and over 70 semi-structured interviews. Drawing on the insights of neo-institutional theory, we argue that quality assurance agencies seek political leverage at the European level in order to strengthen their standing in the higher education systems of their own countries. (shrink)

In 1994, the European Parliament published a resolution on the right of humanitarian intervention. Interestingly, the declaration maintains that such intervention is not in contradiction with international law, although it formulates the concept of right in a way that is translatable into the vocabulary of individual rights. I analyze some implications of the resolution for the mutual duties of states. I thereby focus my attention on two possible applications: by way of Rawls's duty of assistance and by way of the (...) cosmopolitan theory of global distributive justice. I conclude that the latter theory promises better results for protecting individuals' basic rights, but I also show that it is at the cost of a strongly interventionist structure requiring a powerful supranational institution. Finally, I envision the conditions under which such an increase of interventionism in favor of human rights can be acceptable. (shrink)

National history has once again become a battlefield. In internal political conflicts, which are fought on the terrain of popular culture, museums, schoolbooks, and memorial politics, it has taken on a newly important and contested role. Irrespective of national specifics, the narratives of new nationalism are quite similar everywhere. National history is said to stretch back many centuries, expressesing the historical continuity of a homogeneous people and its timeless character. This people struggles for independence, guided by towering leaders and inspired (...) by the sacrifice of martyrs. Unlike earlier forms of nationalism, the main enemies are no longer neighbouring states, but international and supranational institutions. To use national history as an integrative tool, new nationalists claim that the media and school history curricula should not contest or question the nation and its great historical deeds, as doubts threaten to weaken and dishonour the nation. This book offers a broad international overview of the rhetoric, contents, and contexts of the rise of these renewed national historical narratives, and of how professional historians have reacted to these phenomena. The contributions focus on a wide range of representative nations from around all over the globe. (shrink)

The increasingly widespread expression "global justice" marks an important shift in the structure of moral discourse. Traditionally, international relations were seen as sharply distinct from domestic justice. First, it focused on interactions among states, and later, evaluated the design of a national institutional order in light of its effects on citizens. Such institutional moral analysis is becoming applied to supranational institutional arrangements, nowadays more pervasive and important for the life prospects of individuals. The traditional lens suggested fair agreements among (...) states. The new lens shows that the global institutional order is unfair because it enriches elites in both rich and poor countries and perpetuates the oppression and impoverishment of the majority. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to identify the main factors of the current crisis of the nation-state and to demonstrate how many of the voids left by this crisis are filled by religions. The main characteristic of the nation-state is the principle of sovereignty. The apogee of the nation-state is the political form of industrialization. National identity is possible only when the state proves to its citizens that the fact of being a member of it carries benefits and privileges (...) and will always bring more. Today, the majority of nation-states, in particular the oldest great powers, no longer have this capability. The weakening of the nation-state began at the end of the 19th century. The first wave of globalization multiplied the cases of reciprocal interferences and trespassed on the theoretical impermeability of the sovereign states. The outcome of the First World War, with the creation of the first supranational body, and much more the outcome of the Second World War, were two important steps of this crisis. The birth of the United Nations, and of other supranational bodies, as well as the creation of the first court called to judge an entire political class, were an assault on the principle of sovereignty. The second wave of globalization, characterized by the free circulation of goods, money, people and cultures, did the rest. Moreover, the countries that ‘invented’ the principle of sovereignty are today in relative decline as new powers are emerging. The nation-state is no longer able to keep its promises. The less effective states become at offering their citizens both meaning and social services, the more do religions tend to reoccupy the public stage. The less national and political legitimacy they have, the more powers use the religious tool against one another. (shrink)

Citizens of affluent countries bear a far greater responsibility for world poverty than they typically realise. This is so because poverty is more severe, more widespread and more avoidable than officially acknowledged and also because it is substantially aggravated by supranational institutional arrangements that are designed and imposed by the governments and elites of the more powerful states. It may seem that this analysis of world poverty implies that citizens of affluent countries have forfeited their right not to be (...) killed in the course of a redistributive war and that such a war would be both just and permissible. In fact, however, it has none of these three implications. This finding should be welcomed insofar as violence and macho talk of violence are in our world highly counterproductive responses to the injustice of poverty. (shrink)

Under conditions of high capital mobility, states are pressurised into various forms of tax competition to attract or retain capital and investors. When this occurs, the capacity of domestic institutions autonomously to generate fiscal policies is constrained. What exactly, if anything, is unjust about this phenomenon? This paper argues that tax competition puts particular pressure on internationalists, who must acknowledge that its occurrence makes our obligations of global justice more demanding, and that such obligations require supranational institutions in order (...) to be discharged. However, to the extent that tax competition is unjust from an internationalist point of view, this is due to the specific harm it does to states. Thus, the paper makes three contributions to the literature: it shows that tax competition has an impact on the demandingness of internationalist obligations of justice; discharging such obligations commits internationalists to accept a higher level of supranational institutionalization than is currently acknowledged; yet both the specific content of such obligations, and the kind of supranational regulation that is needed to discharge them, differ from those which cosmopolitans support. In sum, there are some cosmopolitan bullets which internationalists must bite, and others which they should continue to resist. (shrink)

The global city is a contested site of economic innovation and cultural production, as well as profound inequalities of wealth and life chances. These cities, and large cities that aspire to ‘global’ status, are often the point of entry for new immigrants. Yet for political theorists (and indeed many scholars of global institutions), these critical sites of global influence and inequality have not been a significant focus of attention. This is curious. Theorists have wrestled with the nature and demands of (...) global justice, but have for the most part supposed that the debate is between statist and cosmopolitan formulations. Questions of redistribution, immigration, humanitarian obligations, coercion at borders, and territorial rights have correspondingly been cast as either the domain of sovereign territorial states, or of the nascent web of supranational institutions that might bind those states and peoples, morally and legally. Examining some of these issues and arguments through the lens of the global city casts them in a new and informative light, and buttresses an associative turn in thinking about global justice. (shrink)

The debate about justice in immigration seems somehow stagnated given that it seems justice requires both further exclusion and more porous borders. In the face of this, I propose to take a step back and to realize that the general problem of borders—to determine what kind of borders liberal democracies ought to have—gives rise to two particular problems: first, to justify exclusive control over the administration of borders (the problem of legitimacy of borders) and, second, to specify how this control (...) ought to be exercised (the problem of justice of borders). The literature has explored the second but ignored the first. Therefore, I propose a different approach to the ethics of immigration by focusing on concerns of legitimacy in a three-step framework: first, identifying the kind of authority or power that immigration controls exercise; second, redefining borders as international and domestic institutions that issue that kind of power; and finally, considering supranational institutions that redistribute the right to exclude among legitimate borders. (shrink)

The characterisation of anthropogenic climate change as a violation of basic human rights is gaining wide recognition. Many people believe that tackling this problem is exclusively the job of governments and supranational institutions (especially the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). This argument can be traced back to the delegated authority model, according to which the legitimacy of political institutions depends on their ability to solve problems that are difficult to address at the individual level. Since the institutions (...) created to tackle climate change fail to do so, their legitimacy is under great pressure and can only be saved by considerations of feasibility. We argue that democratically elected representatives are able to claim that a more robust climate policy is unfeasible, but only because the mandate we as citizens grant them is very restrictive. Instead of shifting responsibility for the thoroughly inadequate response to climate change fully to political representatives, we should highlight the failure of the political community as a whole to fulfil its responsibility at the input-side of the delegation of authority. When individual voters fail to fulfil the minimal obligation to at least vote for parties that explicitly advocate robust climate policies, they cannot hide behind the delegated authority argument, but should accept their complicity in the massive violations of basic human rights caused by the failure to successfully tackle climate change. (shrink)

This article focuses on the impact of globalization on international law and the discourse of sovereignty. It challenges the claim that we have entered into a new world order characterized by transnational governance and decentered global law, which have replaced “traditional” international law and rendered the concepts of state sovereignty and international society anachronistic. We are indeed in the presence of something new. But if we drop the concept of sovereignty and buy into the idea that transnational governance has upstaged (...) international treaty organizations, we will misconstrue the nature of contemporary international society and the political choices facing us. In the contemporary context where there is a powerful imperial project afoot (on the part of the United States) that seeks to develop a useful version of global (cosmopolitan) right to justify its self-interested interventions, proposals to abandon the default position of sovereignty and its corollary, the principle of nonintervention in international law, are both premature and dangerous. Instead, we should rethink the normative dimensions of the concept of sovereignty in light of the new principle of sovereign equality articulated in the UN Charter, and show how it can complement cosmopolitan principles such as human rights and collective security. The task is to strengthen, not abandon, international law and supranational institutions, and to foster a global rule of law that protects both the sovereign equality of states, based on a revised conception of sovereignty, and human rights. (shrink)

Traditionally, political legitimacy has been associated exclusively with states. But are states actually legitimate? And why should discussions of legitimacy focus only on the nation-state? This volume explores how legitimacy is intertwined with notions of statehood and how it reaches beyond the state into supranational institutions.

In an important article published in this journal, Dryzek, Bächtiger and Milewicz (2011) champion the convocation of a Deliberative Global Citizens’ Assembly (DGCA). In this article, I aim to further strengthen the case for a DGCA by addressing: (i) why a DGCA is likely to take a long-term perspective in the global interest and (ii) why it is so vital that a global institution should do so. I start by analyzing the nature of the issues requiring global policy. These (...) issues, I will argue, are typically global cooperation problems. Cooperation problems pose two major challenges. The first is to prevent freeriding – i.e. serving one’s short-term interests at the expense of the long-term global interest. The second is to align on an efficient global policy. In both respects, I will argue, a DGCA is a good candidate to yield desirable results (and is likely to do better than current supranational institutions). (shrink)

Using the Rule of Law as the theoretical framework in his paper, the author proceeds to discuss ASEAN integration. His ultimate objective is to examine the applicability of Brunnée and Toope’s Interactional International Law to ASEAN integration. To provide the background to the process of ASEAN integration, the author cites selected works of scholars and experts in the fields of international law and international relations. The most important factor to be considered is the ASEAN Charter’s inclusion of the principle of (...) the Rule of Law to guide its integration efforts. This is viewed by Western democracies as a commitment by the ASEAN Member States to the Rule of Law. Interestingly, Democracy and Human Rights stand side-by-side with the Rule of Law in the Charter. Quite expectedly, scholars and practitioners of International Law and International Relations see the inclusion of these principles as an indication of ASEAN embracing the rules, norms, and values that the West hold dearly. These are the same rules, norms and values that underpin the liberal democracies of North America and Europe, and which provide the European Union its theoretical foundation. In the EU, the Rule of Law is an important guiding principle. For the same reason, the emergence of supranational institutions became a matter of course in the process of their integration. In conclusion, the author suggests that IIL should provide the proper theoretical legal framework for ASEAN integration to move forward after taking into account the current heterogeneity in the political, economic, social and cultural profiles of the ASEAN Member States. Keywords- Legal Philosophy, international law, ASEAN regional integration, interactional international law, international relations, Philippines. (shrink)

Defining a minister's power is not an easy exercise. It bas to be put in a broader framework: a pluralistic democracy, that has respect for human rights and basic freedoms and a market economy that is developping towards a national border crossing competition and cooperation. But there are also some basic rules coming from national but also regional and supranational institutions. There nowadays exists a so called 'Gulliver-effect': the state represented by the governement is like a giant that is (...) threatened by a lot of surrenders whoforce him towards a powerless existence. Although citizens often have the impression politics is capable of doing anything it wants to, policy makers more often have to cope with restrictions that obstruct them in their policy aims.At the beginning of the twenty-first century ministers are heavily counterbalanced by other institions. Trade unions, big lobby groups, administration, the cabinets, the party executive and party president, parliament and the media: they all threaten a minster's power. Also the rising power of regional and supranational decision levels makes the power of a politician decline. In the future, rising information and communication skills will not only change the character of politics but also that of modern society. The internet, the globalisation ofeconomy and other changes will transform politics in a fundamental way. Leadership, power and authority will change strongly and the relationship between the citizens and their authority will never be the same again. (shrink)

Resumen Una violación de los derechos humanos implica un no cumplimiento de los derechos humanos y una relación causal activa entre agentes humanos y tal incumplimiento. Esta relación causal puede ser de interacción, pero también puede ser institucional, como cuando los agentes colaboran en el diseño y la imposición de arreglos institucionales que de manera previsible y evitable causan el no cumplimiento de los derechos humanos. Cierta evidencia de fácil acceso sugiere que (a) derechos humanos sociales y económicos básicos siguen (...) siendo incumplidos en casi la mitad de la población del mundo y (b) que el diseño de arreglos institucionales supranacionales juega un papel decisivo en la explicación de por qué la mitad más pobre de la humanidad está sufriendo un rápido descenso en su participación (ahora por debajo de tres por ciento) en el ingreso doméstico global. Se puede, entonces, argumentar con plausibilidad que ciudadanos como yo -ciudadanos pudientes de estados influyentes- violan colaborativamente los derechos humanos de los pobres del mundo a una escala masiva.A human rights violation involves unfulfilled human rights and a specific active causal relation of human agents to such non-fulfillment. This causal relation may be interactional; but it may also be institutional, as when agents collaborate in designing and imposing institutional arrangements that foreseeably and avoidably cause human rights to be unfulfilled. Readily available evidence suggests that (a) basic social and economic human rights remain unfulfilled for around half the world's population and (b) the design of supranational institutional arrangement plays a major role in explaining why the poorer half of humanity is suffering a rapid decline in its share (now below three percent) of global household income. A strong case can be made, then, that people like myself - well-to-do citizens of influential states - collaboratively violate the human rights of the global poor on a massive scale. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to a problem of power of European nation state during the process of shaping the postindustrial civilization. The author points that the nation state is a relic of an industrial era. Globalization is a real fear for relatively small European states. So, integration is a necessity. But the integration does not mean the centralization of rules. Today we can see a comeback to preindustrial political paradigmatics: decentralization and deconcentration of authorities. The future of Europe is in (...) three-level system that has been built by supranational institutions, e.g. EU, decentralized states (federations and regionalized states) and regional (quasi-states) and local community. But the European Union will not become a federation. It would be a conservation of industrial models. The Europeans must rather think of a new formula of integration. Neo-medieval empire is an adequate to changes’ direction proposal. The author also notices that we are the observers of essential change of identity. The national identity has been relativized by globalization and uniformitarian character of American cultureas well as by aspiration of regional and ethnic groups. European national identity and consensuses could be rather a supplement than an alternative for today’s national identification. (shrink)

Just War Thinking reconsiders the intersection between morality and pragmatics in foreign policy and modern warfare. The book argues that a political ethic of responsibility should motivate the contemporary application of military force by states in order to protect international security and human life, considering the challenges posed by today's new wars: targeted killing, humanitarian intervention, terrorism, jus post bellum, and the influences of public opinion and supranational institutions.

In examining how reform-leading supranational institutions respond to public criticism, this article advances current theory on their institutional accountability mechanisms and extends research on this topic by focusing on their responses to public criticism of alleged reform failures. We consider the case of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) involvement in the Greek economic crisis, as the structural adjustment reforms it imposed to stabilize the economy. We show how these controversial and, by many accounts, failed policies have profoundly impacted the (...) well-being of the recipient country by reducing social cohesion and impoverishing the most vulnerable groups. In explaining the IMF’s institutional response mechanism for fending off such criticism, we offer moral regulatory appropriation (MRA) as a processual framework and present the IMF’s organizing logic of institutional legitimation processes in four domains of action: agentic mission, reform policies, institutional policy negotiations, and moral appropriation. We argue that this enables institutions to maintain moral legitimacy despite evidence of their reforms’ policy failure and various negative consequences for their populations. The proposed framework has theoretical implications for conceptualizing the rhetorical deployment of moral legitimation to secure and defend institutional accountability. We also highlight the limitations and boundaries of such an approach by the IMF and similar reform-leading institutions. (shrink)

The institutional network of law and state power peculiar to sovereign national states is in danger of disintegrating in the face of economic globalisation - such is the conclusion of numerous diagnoses of the present condition. At the same time, recent publications articulate the hope that supranational institutions will form which will be able to guarantee the rule of law across national boundaries. What is certain is that globalisation brings about new insecurities, which place new demands on national and (...) international legal systems. Working from a philosophical or legal perspective, the individual papers examine the transformation of sovereignty, tendencies towards international systems of law, the criteria for global social justice, and the development of supranational forms of constitution. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify the relationship between human rights and the environment, as it results from the jurisprudence of the two supranational institutions at the level of the European Union. It can be said that, to date, the jurisprudence covered by this article reflects the most important principles that the Court has applied in environmental case law. The article sets out the three most important principles regarding the individual rights that could be affected by environmental damage. On the (...) one hand, the human rights that are protected by the Convention may be directly affected by harmful environmental factors, which may lead to a substantial violation of those rights. On the other hand, harmful environmental factors can lead to procedural violations of these rights. It is important to note here that the procedural aspects of these rights relate to the information and communication duties that national authorities have in the event of any damage brought to the environment. Finally, national authorities may also use environmental protection as a legitimate aim to justify possible interference with certain individual human rights. (shrink)

Since the declaration of financial crisis in 2008, and the imposition of austerity measures in 2011, Greece has become an epicentre—or a “laboratory”—of multiple, successively declared crises, including the humanitarian crisis induced by the devastating effects of neoliberal structural adjustment policies. In this paper, I approach the explosion of crisis discourse as a medium for ideological negotiations of nation-state borders in relation to a continental project of securitisation. I suggest that ‘crisis’ functions as a lexicon through which sovereignty can be (...) reasserted in relation to supranational institutional interference in ostensibly democratic governance. Specifically, I examine how the refugee crisis and the debt crisis converge in nationalised space in Greece; that is, how in state discourse, ‘crises’ serve as a conduit through which the borders of an embattled nation are redrawn and hardened against threats from a political space conceptualised as ‘outside’ the nation. My point of entry is the declaration of the Greek government by the end of the summer of 2015, that it was “experiencing a crisis within a crisis,” dually victimised by migration ‘flows’ and failed European solidarity in a context of ongoing austerity measures required by its institutional lenders. The figure of ‘a crisis within a crisis’ functioned to delineate the boundaries of national space and time and to distinguish the normative victims of what are seen as distinct, if overlapping political phenomena (debt and migration), from those who parasitically share in, or indeed by their very illicit presence cause or contribute to the suffering of the national subject. If the global economic crisis had already been made ‘ours’ by being constructed as a problem inherent in the national economy, the global war on migration became reinvented as 'Europe’s crisis,’ and then ‘Greece’s.’ The nationalisation of ‘crisis’ then, has a triple function: first, to conceal the systemic and structural underpinnings of violent processes of dispossession and displacement; second, to authorise the imposition of regimes of management and securitisation; and third, to reify borders that simultaneously fortify the agencies of state sovereignties while containing those of embodied human beings. The figure of ‘nesting crises’—‘a crisis within a crisis’—emerges through gestures of ownership or territorialisation of crisis: that is, in the conditions under which, affectively and politically a ‘crisis’ becomes ‘ours’ rather than ‘theirs’ and, indeed, constitutes the ‘we’ and the ‘they.’ ‘Nesting crises’ discourse can be read as a vocabulary through which national sovereignty is reasserted and national unity reconstituted. (shrink)

This paper examines the extent to which gender mainstreaming is constitutionally embedded in the legal framework of the European Union. Within the framework of that broad question it examines three sub-questions concerning the robustness and constitutionalised nature of the E.U.'s `equality regime', the extent of adaptation to mainstreaming methodologies by supranational institutions such as the Court of Justice, and the extent of the gender dimension in the debates which are shaping the future of the European Union, especially the 2002–3Convention (...) on the Future of the Union and the Commission's Governance White Paper of 2001.The E.U. is analysed in this article as an emergent, non-state, postnational constitutionalised polity. The first section presents this perspective, and the succeeding three sections engage with the three` sub-questions' outlined above. The conclusion suggests that as yet, while gender concerns maybe constitutionally embedded in the Treatyframe work, they are less prominent in the constitutional politics of the Convention and the Governance White Paper. (shrink)

I present three versions –Grimm, Offe and Streeck—of a general argument that is often used to establish that the EU-institutions meets a legitimacy-disabling condition, the so called “no demos” argument (II), embedding them in the context of the notorious “democratic deficit” suspicions against the legal system and practice of the EU (I). After examining the logical structure behind the no-demos intuition considered as an argument (III), I present principled reasons by Möllers and Habermas that show why the “no demos” argument (...) fails to have bite in discussions of the legitimacy and status of the supranational level in the multi-level EU-architecture. These are complemented by another principled reason arising from John Dewey’s conception of the “public” as a clearer alternative for the “popular” requirement of democratic legitimation (IV). I conclude that all three conceptions together suggest that the hunt after pre-politically existing peoples as foundations of democratic legitimacy expresses no more than methodological nationalism without any footing in the material and conceptual requirements of democratic legitimation. Given the absence of a principled problem with the legitimacy of the priority and interference of supranational EU-law in the national legal and political orders, there are thus also no principled reasons to abandon or discredit the European project in the absence of a European nation or society. (shrink)

Regulation is nothing without enforcement. This particularly holds for the dynamic field of emerging technologies. Hence, this article has two ambitions. First, it explains how the EU´s new Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) will be implemented and enforced by various institutional bodies, thus clarifying the governance framework of the AIA. Second, it proposes a normative model of governance, providing recommendations to ensure uniform and coordinated execution of the AIA and the fulfilment of the legislation. Taken together, the article explores how the (...) AIA may be implemented by national and EU institutional bodies, encompassing longstanding bodies, such as the European Commission, and those newly established under the AIA, such as the AI Office. It investigates their roles across supranational and national levels, emphasizing how EU regulations influence institutional structures and operations. These regulations may not only directly dictate the structural design of institutions but also indirectly request administrative capacities needed to enforce the AIA. (shrink)

Supranational governance is being challenged by politicians and citizens around the EU as over-centralized and undemocratic. This book is premised on the idea that polycentric governance, developed by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, is a fruitful place to start for addressing this challenge. Assessing the presence of, and potential for, polycentric governance within the EU means approaching established principles and practices from a new perspective. While the debate on these issues is rich, longstanding and interdisciplinary, it has proven difficult to (...) sidestep the 'renationalisation/federalisation' dichotomy. The aim of this volume is not to reject the EU's institutional structure but provide a different benchmark for the assessment of its functioning. Polycentric theory highlights the importance of multilevel horizontal relationships within the EU - between states, but also between many sub-state actors, all the way down to individuals. This helps us answer the question: how do we achieve self-governance in an interdependent world? (shrink)

Economic globalization has resulted in the transfer of national power to supranational actors and their supranational procedures and institutions. Concomitant with this trend is the ascendancy of the discourses of democracy and human rights that have given rise to the idea of cosmopolitan justice. These trends, in turn, have weakened statehood [ Entstaatlichung ], requiring theoretical envisioning and practical institutionalization of a supranational model of political association. Among the competing theories, in this article I will defend the (...) Kantian project of constitutionalization of international law. In doing so, I take the doctrine of constitutional patriotism as an appropriate model of supranational political association in the European Union and defend it against the republican critique that rejects the idea as deficient. I argue that the European project of constitution-making can overcome the charges of democratic deficit and the lack of European demos by establishing the terms and conditions for democratic negotiation and institutionalizing shared practices of law-making. Key Words: constitutional patriotism • democratic deficit • the European Union • nation-state • supranational political community. (shrink)

Over the past 25 years, Jürgen Habermas has presented what is arguably the most coherent and wide-ranging defence of the project of European unification and of parallel developments towards a politically integrated world society. In developing his key concepts of the transnationalisation of democracy and the constitutionalisation of international law, Habermas offers the main players in the struggles over the fate of the European Union a way out of the current economic and political crisis, should they choose to follow it. (...) In the title essay Habermas addresses the challenges and threats posed by the current banking and public debt crisis in the Eurozone for European unification. He is harshly critical of the incrementalist, technocratic policies advocated by the German government in particular, which are being imposed at the expense of the populations of the economically weaker, crisis-stricken countries and are undermining solidarity between the member states. He argues that only if the technocratic approach is replaced by a deeper democratization of the European institutions can the European Union fulfil its promise as a model for how rampant market capitalism can once again be brought under political control at the supranational level. This volume reflects the impressive scope of Habermas?s recent writings on European themes, including theoretical treatments of the complex legal and political issues at stake, interventions on current affairs, and reflections on the lives and works of major European philosophers and intellectuals. Together the essays provide eloquent testimony to the enduring relevance of the work of one of the most influential and far-sighted public intellectuals in the world today, and are essential reading for all philosophers, legal scholars and social scientists interested in European and global issues. (shrink)

Since its appearance in English translation in 1996, Jurgen Habermas's Between Facts and Norms has become the focus of a productive dialogue between German and Anglo-American legal and political theorists. The present volume contains ten essays that provide an overview of Habermas's political thought since the original appearance of Between Facts and Norms in 1992 and extend his model of deliberative democracy in novel ways to issues untreated in the earlier work. Habermas's theory of democracy has at least three features (...) that set it apart from competing positions. First, it combines a concern with questions of normative justification with an empirical analysis of the social conditions necessary for the realization of democratic institutions. Second, at the heart of his model is the assertion of an internal relationship between liberalism and democracy. Finally, Habermas defends a conception of universal human rights that is not only sensitive to cultural differences but also calls for legal and political institutions that facilitate the cultivation of cultural and religious identities within pluralistic societies. These essays demonstrate the extraordinary power of Habermas's theory of democracy through a further engagement with Rawls's political liberalism and through original contributions to current debates over nationalism, multiculturalism, and the viability of supranational political institutions. (shrink)

Could global government be the answer to global poverty and starvation? Cosmopolitan thinkers challenge the widely held belief that we owe more to our co-citizens than to those in other countries. This book offers a moral argument for world government, claiming that not only do we have strong obligations to people elsewhere, but that accountable integration among nation-states will help ensure that all persons can lead a decent life. Cabrera considers both the views of those political philosophers who say we (...) have much stronger obligations to help our co-citizens than foreigners and those cosmopolitans who say our duties are equally strong to each but resist restructuring. He then outlines his own position, using the European Union as a partial model for the integrated alternative and advocating instituting EU-style supranational government, development aid, and free movement of persons in the Americas and other regions. Over time, Cabrera argues that the transformation of the global system into a cohesive network of democratic institutions would help ensure that anyone born anywhere could lead a decent life. This book will appeal to all those interested in political philosophy and the processes and potential of globalization. (shrink)

The article substantiates that science, thanks to the latest media in the dissemination of scientific communication (especially computer word processing, big data accumulation, mega-science installations, the latest international networking platforms and collaborations), has gone beyond all institutional, organizational, regional, national and partly disciplinary borders. Science as a supranational communication system has reached a complexity that is incompatible with the standards for evaluating scientific work and scientific achievements, which are traditionally carried out in the form of scientific committees, individual examinations (...) and other collegial forms of scientific communication. The collegiality of making the most important decisions regarding the examination of the scientific product itself, the thematic agenda, professional competencies and the resulting distribution of remuneration, reputation, ranks, degrees, grants has exhausted its capabilities to a certain extent. As a result, science turns out to be opaque both for the regulator, who is trying to exercise control over scientific institutions, and for science itself, which in the form of scientific self-government and philosophical reflection of science carries out the function of self-observation and self-description. A working hypothesis is proposed, which states that in response to this crisis of collegiality, reflection and control, new media of communicative success and new organizational forms of scientific communication crystallize in science, which can restore the ability of a scientific system to process its internal and external complexity. These media are represented by a new, social-networked form of scientific expertise and partly scientific work, which will be able to compensate for the lack of self-reflection, both at the organizational level of research institutes and at the level of global control over science as a whole. (shrink)

The author analyses normative acts regulating the protection of animals, both at the national level (especially in the Republic of Serbia) and at the level of supranational organisations and state unions (the Council of Europe and the European Union), but also attempts to conceptualise the terms used in the documents observing the protection of animals. From the practical and philosophical perspective, this paper considers the terms (I) “animal” (“any vertebrate animal capable of experiencing pain, suffering, fear and stress”), (II) (...) “welfare” (“the provision of conditions in which animals can exercise their physiological and other species-specific needs”), (III) “abuse” (“any treatment or disregard of animals, that causes pain, suffering, fear, stress, injury, damages the genetic integrity of the animal and causes death intentionally or through negligence”), and other terms relevant to understanding the prevailing anthropocentric approach to animals. The paper also examines the difficulties in implementing the adopted legislation on the protection and welfare of animals caused by an insufficiently internalised sensitivity of official institutions as well as citizens towards so-called non-human living beings. In the author’s view, it is important that they do not fall below the achieved civilisational standards of ethical and moral culture in their cognitions and insights, and that they consider various topics related to animals with due caution and awareness of the dilemmas they may encounter in their professional work and lives. An appropriate pluriperspective approach and a consciousness of responsibility should eventually lead to a more sensitive attitude of said subjects towards the non-human part of the animal creation. (shrink)

For the last few years, the European Union has been experiencing a deep and prolonged institutional crisis. This has manifested itself, for instance, in the sovereign debt and Euro crises, the tension between national and transnational sovereignty, and tensions about the rule of law. This manifold crisis has dwarfed the enormous successes of integration and convergence that have been achieved over the past six decades in Europe. Crucially, this crisis has blinded many observers from being able to see how and (...) in what form European integration has managed in a successful way to connect the different parts of Europe with the whole over the last few decades. Our contribution is firstly aimed at showing how the European mechanism of integration of diversity in unity functions and why it has been so successful in many policy areas. We propose that, in order to get out of the present deadlock, the mechanism that has worked so well in some policy areas should be widened to all decision-making processes. Equally importantly, we argue that at its core the current crisis is a cognitive problem. We therefore argue that in order to recognize the institutional achievements as a positive common European experience, widening the general perception of "Unity in diversity" among Europeans, a new conceptual figure or interpretative scheme is needed for two reasons: first, in order to see how unity and diversity has already been dynamically harmonized in a directly recognizable way, and second, in order to provide a tool that creates further harmonization and enhances popular legitimacy for further European integration and convergence. In doing that, our proposal brings Nicholas of Cusa's (1401–1464) concept of spiritus conexionis into the fold. His concept, in our view, represents the dynamically integrative figure needed presently in Europe. As Cusanus lived in a historic period, in which the medieval interpretative schema to integrate diversity and unity was no longer tenable and the modern idea of nation state was not born yet, he conceived a new pattern of integration according to which any national identity – but even any culture or religion – in order to be aware of itself as a specific entity, has to be dynamically connected with a supranational identity that composes the different pieces in an harmonic whole; only in light of this identity that transcends individual identities, identity specificity for individual entities can be achieved. (shrink)

Horizontal relationships unite the society and level off the differences from other sources. A solidary political community is based not only on common property but also on private property, and at the same time levels off the economic disproportions so that economic conflicts would not become political, which could in turn cause the emergence of antagonized social groups. In this sense, solidarity can stabilize the political community. A case in point being the Western European democracies, which after the Second World (...) War became welfare states. Solidarity could play this role now, even though there are organizations such as Occupy Wall Street or Indignants Movement, which rebel against the inequalities. The current idea of solidarity may be achieved on different levels. The first is the local level, where the most is known of the citizens’ situation; the state level, where there are institutions which aim at a unified political community according to economy and culture; and finally, the supranational level, to level off the dangers which a growing economic stratification entails. (shrink)

A proposed global theory of corporate political activity (CPA) analyzes the complex resource allocation choices involved in integrating politically relevant cross-border and multilevel strategies for multinational enterprises (MNEs). Cross-border CPA is “horizontal” allocation of scarce corporate resources by MNEs to politically relevant strategies across multiple countries. Globalization reshapes CPA among multiple levels functioning below, at, and above national governments. Subnational communities and international policy regimes, supranational quasigovernmental institutions, and supranational nongovernmental organizations all affect businesses. Multilevel CPA is “vertical” (...) allocation of scarce corporate resources to politically relevant strategies among subnational, national, regional, and global levels. Furthermore, in each country and at each level, business-relevant policies are determined in multiple policy arenas, shaped by widely differing nonmarket institutions, corruption conditions, and stakeholder demands for corporate social responsibility. Multiple policy “arena” allocation adds to the analytical complexity of the CPA strategizing problem. Implications for scholarship and practice are presented. (shrink)

edited by Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff Since its appearance in English translation in 1996, Jürgen Habermas's Between Facts and Norms has become the focus of a productive dialogue between German and Anglo-American legal and political theorists. The present volume contains ten essays that provide an overview of Habermas's political thought since the original appearance of Between Facts and Norms in 1992 and extend his model of deliberative democracy in novel ways to issues untreated in the earlier work.Habermas's theory (...) of democracy has at least three features that set it apart from competing positions. First, it combines a concern with questions of normative justification with an empirical analysis of the social conditions necessary for the realization of democratic institutions. Second, at the heart of his model is the assertion of an internal relationship between liberalism and democracy. On this account, the rights of the individual that are central to liberalism can be guaranteed only within a constitutional framework that at the same time fosters democratic rights of political participation through the public sphere. Finally, Habermas defends a conception of universal human rights that is not only sensitive to cultural differences but also calls for legal and political institutions that facilitate the cultivation of cultural and religious identities within pluralistic societies.These essays demonstrate the extraordinary power of Habermas's theory of democracy through a further engagement with Rawls's political liberalism and through original contributions to current debates over nationalism, multiculturalism, and the viability of supranational political institutions. (shrink)

Reference to the state is ubiquitous in debates about global justice. Some authors see the state as central to the justification of principles of justice, and thereby reject their extension to the international realm. Others emphasize its role in the implementation of those principles. This chapter scrutinizes the variety of ways in which the state figures in the global-justice debate. Our discussion suggests that, although the state should have a prominent role in theorizing about global justice, contrary to what is (...) commonly thought, acknowledging this role does not lead to anti-cosmopolitan conclusions, but to the defense of an “intermediate” position about global justice. From a justificatory perspective, we argue, the state remains a key locus for the application of egalitarian principles of justice, but is not the only one. From the perspective of implementation, we suggest that state institutions are increasingly fragile in a heavily interdependent world, and need to be supplemented—though not supplanted—with supranational authorities. (shrink)

The Court of Justice of the European Union and the way in which it works can be seen as a microcosm of how a multilingual, multicultural supranationalisation process and legal order can be constructed—the Court is a microcosm of the EU as a whole and in particular of EU law. The multilingual jurisprudence produced by the CJEU is necessarily shaped by the dynamics within that institution and by the ‘cultural compromises’ at play in the production process. The resultant texts, (...) which make up that jurisprudence, are hybrid in nature and inherently approximate. On the one hand, that approximation can lead to discrepancies between language versions of the Court’s case law and thus jeopardise the uniform application of EU law. On the other hand, that approximation and hybridity define EU law as a distinct, supranational legal order. This paper analyses the operation of the CJEU and considers whether a linguistic cultural compromise exists within that institution which exercises a formative influence on the character of its ‘output’—i.e. its jurisprudence—and what that may mean for our understanding of the development of EU law. (shrink)

Migrants invariably and unavoidably experience domination under the nation-state centered concepts, categories, and institutions that structure our political thinking. In response, we need to build new forms of citizenship, including local, regional, transnational, and supranational forms of belonging, accompanied by meaningful, democratic, political power. In this paper, I examine historical and present-day alternative models of political organization as possible viable alternatives to state-centric liberal democracy. It begins the task of assessing these models using radical republican theory that grounds non-domination (...) in the active and equal participation of people subject to power.I have three broad aims. First, we need to break down the native-migrant dichotomy to highlight commonalities and search for solidarities among migrants and other marginalized and oppressed groups, including indigenous groups. Second, I seek to awaken the political imagination. Many people do not believe there are viable alternatives to liberal democracy centered around the nation-state. In response, we should draw attention to the ways in which the nation-state’s hegemony is fragile and fragmented and the ways in which sovereignty is complex and contested. Most importantly, we need to consider alternative models for inspiration. Third, we need tools for assessing the desirability of alternatives and for building new forms of citizenship.In what follows, first I explain why the dominant, nation-state centered model of political organization is unable to deliver justice in today’s world, or, indeed, address the collective dangers that humanity faces. I next provide a sketch of a radical republican vision that provides normative guidance our thinking about alternative institutions. I end by using this radical republic vision to reflect on possibilities to guide efforts to remake the world. (shrink)

The democratic criteria for representation in the European Union are complex since its representation involves several delegation mechanisms and institutions. This paper develops institutional design principles for the representation of peoples and individuals and suggests reform options of the European Union on the basis of the theory of multilateral democracy. In particular, it addresses how the equality of individuals can be realised in EU representation while guaranteeing the mutual recognition of peoples. Unlike strict intergovernmental institutions, the EU requires an additional (...) and independent legislative chamber in which individuals are directly represented. However, strict equality of individuals cannot be the guiding principle for this chamber. In order to avoid the overruling of peoples through supranational majorities, it is necessary to bind the chamber's composition by a principle of degressive proportionality. The representation of peoples, on the other hand, needs to be connected to their domestic democratic institutions. (shrink)

Responsible conduct of research and research integrity has become a key concern in both research policy and public media resulting in a number of soft law documents, such as codes of conduct at national and supranational levels. This article zooms in on the institutions that are supposed to translate these overall policies and guidelines into workable and recognizable structures for researchers, that is, the mediating layer between the policy articulations and the individual researchers and research groups; a perspective which (...) has been notably lacking in the literature on research integrity. Document analysis demonstrated how research organizations translated and integrated demands for research integrity measures differently, and interviews explored how department heads made sense of these organizational efforts. Results show that department heads did not seem to use organizational policies in their sensemaking around research integrity. To a much larger degree, they used disciplinary norms, systemic pressures and other cues to construct the meaning of integrity. The heads of department articulated integrity as a “non-problem” in their own local context, rather, it was other departments and other countries that experienced lack of research integrity. This meant that the origin of the problem of integrity is located in the system, but to a large extent the department heads describe the solution of the problem to be in the culture of research. The implications of this dis-location and externalizing of integrity are discussed. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two legal languages such as the legal English developed by the European Union institutions and the legal Chinese of Mainland China, to study whether the mental representations and the embodied simulation created by the conceptual metaphors for the same Western concept, right, differ in any significant ways. By analysing the data contained in two large corpora, this study has found that, despite the common origin of the concept right in the two legal languages, they conceptualise it (...) in a significantly different fashion. Finally, the findings of this study are read through the theoretical framework proposed for this special issue—hybridity and the Third Space. While it is somewhat straightforward to conceive of Euro English as a hybrid language, owing to the multilingual and supranational setting where it is used, this study has found that the Chinese legal language, too, is a hybrid language exhibiting linguistic features that intersect different belief systems. (shrink)

Why was the road to EMBL 'more difficult than anticipated', as Francois Jacob put it? The standard account, advanced by scientists, is that it was because molecular biology did not require big, complex and expensive equipment like high-energy physics. European governments therefore lacked the incentive to pool their efforts and to build together a supranational laboratory 'modeled on CERN'. This account is one-sided. It overlooks the fact that many scientists themselves were less than enthusiastic about building a European molecular (...) biology laboratory in the early 1960s. Taking John Kendrew and Conrad Waddington as representative of two different and opposing views on how best to promote molecular biology in Europe at this time, I argue that a supranational laboratory project could only come to fruition once the field had been entrenched in national institutional niches (or after determined efforts to do so had failed). Until that time, the usual fear that a European laboratory would drain essential human and financial resources away from incipient or planned programmes in universities and national research centres dominated the horizons of most molecular biologists in Europe. Hence their preference to first establish EMBO to coordinate existing activities and only later to set up a supranational laboratory. (shrink)

The political pursuit of global justice is not a worthy goal, and our aims in establishing international legal and political institutions should be more modest. The pursuit of justice in the international order is dangerous to the extent that it requires the establishment of powerful supranational agencies, or legitimizes greater and more frequent exercise of political, economic, and military power by strong states or coalitions. The primary concern in the establishment and design of all legal and political institutions should (...) be not to secure justice but to limit power. It is a mistake to think that a distinction can be drawn between power created to do good and power created to do evil, or that we are capable of devising institutions that can honor the distinction. a Footnotesa For helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay, I would like to thank Jerry Gaus, David Miller, Dan Greenwood, Peggy Battin, Leslie Francis, Erika George, Cindy Stark, and Deen Chatterjee, as well as my fellow contributors to this volume. For especially detailed and helpful editorial comments and advice, I would like to thank Ellen Paul. (shrink)