chapter 19

Global and International Political Community

Nigel Dower

Abstract

In this chapter I outline the idea of global political community whose ­members are
politically engaged global citizens and the idea of international political community
whose members are nation-states. I defend the claim that they exist against various
sceptical challenges. This defence brings out conflicting accounts of i­nternational
politics between realism, internationalism and cosmopolitanism. The idea of global
political community reflects cosmopolitan perspectives, and ­either complements in-
ternationalist accounts of international political community or clashes with realist ac-
counts of international relations that deny the real existence of ­international political
community.1

1 Introduction

In this chapter I want to explore the plausibility of talking about global politi-
cal community and international political community.
My strategy is to take certain features that are commonly taken to charac-
terise a political community and examine to what extent these features—or
at least sufficient of these features—exist in the relations between nation-
states in international affairs and in the relations of individuals world-wide to
justify using the terms international political community and global political
­community respectively.
Political communities are generally seen to be or to be embodied in
­nation-states2 with certain kinds of institutions (and by extension, groups of

1 This chapter is based on a paper I gave to the cisrul conference on Political Community
in June 2013 in Aberdeen and, in a modified version, to the Bednarowski Trust/University
of Warsaw conference in September 2013. I took the theme of the conference, centred on
a working definition of political community (“political community is one whose members
have a real stake in political institutions, and, for that reason, subject themselves to the deci-
sions of those institutions”) and applied my more general thinking (especially in Dower 2003
and Dower 2007) about global ethics and international relations to it.
2 In this chapter I say “state” and “nation-state” interchangeably and treat “national” and
“­inter-national” as adjectives relating to the same entity; there is of course a debate about the
relationship between “state” and “nation,” but it does not bear on the focus of this chapter.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004312654_020

294 Dower

nations-states with similar features such as the eu; and also certain sub-groups
within nation-states such as politically devolved communities or local authori-
ties). Not all nation-states are or embody political community, if for instance
they are held together generally by fear and repression rather than shared
norms and having a kind of citizenship that enables citizens to ­participate
in “res publica” or public affairs. That is, there is citizenship exercised at least
through democratic decisions-procedures from time to time or, more actively,
through active engagement in political deliberation. Generally political com-
munity involves a political order through which laws are enacted and enforced
in a defined geographical area, and full members are citizens with certain
rights and duties (with other categories of membership as well such as resident
aliens) including participation in democratic decision-making and public life:
what makes it a community is also the existence of a shared set of some core
values, though in modern political societies, this can go alongside a variety
of other values—something that Rawls, for instance, tried to capture in his
theory of political liberalism and overlapping consensus (Rawls 1993).
I do not attempt a precise definition of political community. However, if the
above features are seen as central to the paradigm case, we can ask to what
­extent relations between states and between individuals globally are like this
and whether this is to an extent that makes it appropriate to talk of interna-
tional political community and global political community. If a conception of
political community is preferred that is not captured by these features, then
what follows may not be so applicable, though my surmise is that any defini-
tion of political community will pick out a range of features some of which
do and some which do not apply to inter-state and global relations, so similar
issues of interpretation will be raised.
Briefly if the presence of coercive law in a defined geographical area along
with citizenship defined in terms of rights and duties defined in such laws is
seen as essential to political community, rather than as merely characteris-
tic of the dominant form we know of political community in nation-states,
then indeed the existence of international political community is doubtful
and global political community a non-starter. If however a political commu-
nity is marked by a shared normative framework within which citizens of
a ­community have rights and duties and an engagement with “res publica,”
then a case can be made for international political community and global
political ­community. Briefly they can be characterised, as I suggested in my
abstract, as: first, the idea of global political community as one whose members
are p ­ olitically engaged global citizens; and, second, the idea of international
­political ­community as one whose members are nation-states. Put more fully,