Our political moment: political responsibility and leadership in a globalized, fragmented age

Abstract

National interest and national security need to be reconfigured so as to accommodate a state’s response to global threats and challenges. This requires in turn addressing the following paradox: the pooling and ceding of sovereignty must be made in the very name of national sovereignty. The article maintains that it is one of the foremost challenges of political responsibility and political leadership today to assume this paradox and thereby align national and global interests and practices. The alignment can, it is suggested, effectively oppose sovereigntism and nationalism, on one hand, and abstract global governance, on the other. To promote this alignment, the article advances a renewed understanding of state responsibility to citizenship under conditions of globalization.

Recognition, multiplicity and the elusive international

“…Given the continued empirical relevance of the state in international politics, the critique of sovereignty offers considerable potential in understanding the recalcitrance of the statist international order as a historical limit on cosmopolitan recognition; one which persists regardless of its ability to offer ‘alternative normative resources’ (Brincat, 2017: 27). While this does not entail an outright rejection of the reality of those cosmopolitan practices which reach beyond the restrictive analytical frame of inter-state relations, it does suggest the need for a more sanguine assessment of their potential limits in what Beardsworth (2018) has termed a ‘globalised and fragmented world’.…”

“…Schick’s nuanced critique provides valuable insights into what it means for recognition to be ‘at stake’, both vital and uncertain and by emphasising its agonistic and contingent elements opens considerable space for recognition to be reconsidered in the context of a ‘globalised and fragmented’ world (Beardsworth, 2018). However, while the international clearly constitutes an important site of the ‘difficulty’ that Schick describes, I argue that the full consequences of this insight can only be fully understood by working through the specific difficulties IR raises, particularly in light of the different ontologies deployed by theorists of recognition in IR and the simultaneity of forms of recognition in contemporary world politics.…”

“…Both approaches identify significant and real, but theoretically incompatible tendencies in international politics. Given the universal normative claims arising from recognition theory in IR post-Honneth, those hoping to build on the promise of transnational recognition struggles as potential sites of transformation must consider what such an ambitious programme can offer in what Beardsworth (2018) terms a 'globalised and fragmented world'. This points towards a need to systematically interrogate the significance of IR for recognition theory; not merely as an extension of Honneth's approach, but as an analytically distinct contribution centred on the international as a constitutive force in struggles for recognition.…”

Conceptualizing good global statehood: progressive foreign policy after the populist moment

“…10 The English School is thus a 'middle ground' ethical position, seeking to reconcile concerns 4 Beck 2006, 10. 5 Eckersley 2007Nussbaum 2008;Ypi 2008;Bray 2013;Beardsworth 2018. 6 Eckersley 2007, 682. 7 See Smith and Light 2001;Held and Mepham 2007;Walzer 2018.…”