Cosmopolitanism and the Nation-State

Cosmopolitanism

• An ideology and/or movement for universal community

• Need not be fully conceived - enough that it maintains a spirit of deepening and extension that is universal

• This encompasses both cultural and political cosmopolitanism

• A personal cultural ideal as well as a political project

Contested Definitions

• Chris Brown, IR theorist: cosmopolitanism is the 'refusal to regard existing political structures as the source of ultimate value.' (Political definition)

• Our definition is wider, in that it considers as cosmopolitan:– a) open-ended trans-national and supranational projects;– b) those who seek a universalist, trans-ethnic community

within the boundaries of a particular state;– c) actors who would accord existing political structures

some value, albeit less than their transcendent project.

Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism

• Cosmopolitanism seeks to transcend ties of space (soil) and time (blood/history)

• Nationalism also seeks to transcend ties of clan and village - but stops at the national boundary

• So cosmopolitanism and nationalism work well together at first, but then come to oppose each other

• Nationalism seeks security in space (land) and time (history/ancestry)

The Origins of Cosmopolitanism

• Cosmopolitanism: ‘The World is my City’

• Stoics and Cynics, c. 300 BC - figures like Zeno of Cintium and Cicero in Rome

• Link to Empire of Alexander; Roman Empire

Ancient Cosmopolitanism

• During periods of imperial expansion, universalism becomes more attractive

• Desire to have rational, universalistic, single law

• Accompanied by universal commonwealth (Cicero)

• Emphasis on human reason - what unites us together across differences of particular culture

Religious Cosmopolitanism

• Also the idea of God's kingdom on earth as prior to local cultures and polities

• St. Peter's 'Jew nor Greek' passage

• Papacy struggled to assert this-worldly universal authority against princes and kings of Europe

• Dark Ages and Medieval periods a high point of universalistic claims (300 - 1300 AD)

Cosmopolitan Revival• Renaissance revival of Stoic ideals & Holy Roman

Empire pretensions, 1400s-1600s• In Europe, by 17th c., modern cosmopolitan political

theory• World federalist ideas: Emeric Cruce, French monk,

early 1600s. Called for a permanent assembly of princes (inc Sultan of Turkey) or their delegates to arbitrate international disputes; Sully's 'Grand Design' envisions more permanent federation

• Penn's 'European Plan' and those of other 17th c Quakers• Most plans harked back to universality of Christendom

or the Roman Empire

Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism

• Mid-18th c. ideas of Paine, Voltaire, Kant• Viewed religious enthusiasm as backward• View patriotic attachments as a barrier to

universal reason• Paine: 'my country is the world ' and 'my religion

is to do good' • Kant's Perpetual Peace (1795): unlike Paine or

Rousseau, favoured a world government: a constitution and executive body for the family of nations

The Cosmopolitan Cultural Ideal, c. 1750

• An elitist ideal:– Competence– Experience– Aristocracy of taste– Access to exotic luxuries– Not available to native plebeians or parvenus

• Grand Tour, Parisian fashions, Salons, 'Republic of Letters'

• Already there is a cultural centre (Paris), so cosmopolitanism is inflected and not truly neutral (same claim today with American universalism)

French Revolution• Ideas of the Revolution backed by

many liberal cosmopolitans like Paine, Cloots

• Declaration of the Rights of Man is universal

• But counter-revolutionary forces generate nationalism which turns on cosmopolitanism, 1792-4

• Foreigners expelled, Cloots, a Prussian francophile and atheist, is executed

• Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism: can they be reconciled in a democratic age?

19th Century: the Age of Dualism

• Most writers waxed eloquently about both cosmopolitanism and nationalism

• Logical contradictions were glossed over• Mazzini: Young Italy, Young Europe• Kant: World Government, but importance of the state for

freedom• Novalis (1807): 'Germanity is cosmopolitanism mixed

with the most powerful [national] individuality'• Meinecke (1907): 'The best German national feeling also

includes the cosmopolitan ideal of a humanity beyond nationality'

Dualism in the United States

• Religious figures felt that immigration would bring the peoples of the world together in America in fulfilment of God's plan prior to the Second Coming

• Secular writers looked to the Enlightenment cosmopolitan idea and America's fulfilment of it

• But while most saw the US as a universal nation, they also felt it to be a more Anglo-Saxon and Protestant nation than England

'The asylum of all nations...the energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles and Cossacks, and all the European tribes, of the Africans and Polynesians, will construct a new race...as vigorous as the new Europe which came out of the smelting pot of the Dark Ages' 'It cannot be maintained by any candid person that the African race have ever occupied or do promise ever to occupy any very high place in the human family...The Irish cannot; the American Indian cannot; the Chinese cannot. Before the energy of the Caucasian race all other races have quailed and done obeisance'

Emerson and 'Double-Consciousness' in American Identity, c. 1846

Socialist Dualism

• Dualism pervaded even the Socialist International. Second International up to 1917 favoured colonialism and racist assumptions

• Most American socialists assumed that immigration of 'backward' peoples would retard the onset of socialist revolution

• In WWI, workers sided with their nations against their class, to the disappointment of many socialist intellectuals

The Eclipse of Dualism

• By the first decade of 1900s in USA: Liberal Progressives

• Ecumenical Movement in Protestantism - especially in USA

• WWI pacifists. War affects intellectuals• Union of Democratic Control: liberal

historians attack nationalistic history writing

The Rise of Cosmopolitan Anti-Nationalism

• Surrealism in modern art supersedes Futurism, 1920s

• Most modernist intellectuals move left and the Left become cosmopolitan during inter-war period

• Marks the beginning of cosmopolitan anti-nationalism

• Two reasons: reflexivity and war

Interwar Politics, US

• US: intellectuals and religious elite struggles against Anglo-Protestant nationalism – Immigration restriction– Klan– Prohibition

Interwar Cosmopolitan Politics, Europe

• Growing peace movements advocate European unity in 1910s

• French pro-European associations have 100,000s of members in 1920s

• Paneuropa formed in Austria, led by Coudenhove-Kalergi, early 1920s. HQ provided by Chancellor Seipel of Austria

• Draws on older European Idea• Peace, cosmopolitanism and European Idea linked

Interwar Cosmopolitan Politics, Europe

• Kalergi has links with French officials like Aristide Briand

• French foreign minister and pan-European Briand, mid 1920s

• French premier Herriot: 'United States of Europe', 1925• Pushed initiatives on both world peace (Geneva

Protocols) and European federalism• Briand's Memorandum on a United Europe, 1929.

Presented to League of Nations and sent to European leaders for discussion

Postwar Developments

• US: emphasises 'nation of immigrants' idea and statue of liberty. Bar on nonwhite immigrants relaxed

• Europe: moves toward European unity spearheaded by Paneuropean groups with pre-war links

• Leaders often have background in these organisations (i.e. Spinelli, de Gasperi- EEC commissioner)

• EEC forms from 1950s. Idealism of European Commission partly driven by cosmopolitan-pacifist motivations ('avoiding war')

• US cosmopolitanism is cultural, that of Europe is political

Postwar Internationalism

• World Federalists and Ecumenical Protestants in US strongly back UN as they did the League of Nations. Opposed by many at home

• New UN human rights legislation. International law begins to come of age

Cosmopolitanism as a Successful 20th c. Movement

• Many nationalist movements have been successful at taking power. What about cosmopolitan movements?

• The idea of a permanent assembly of states and of a European Union were dreams that lay unrealised for centuries, why the change?

• The dream of a universal nation in the US remained a fiction for centuries. Why the change in the 20th c.?

Main Reasons for Intellectual-Political Success

1. Intellectual evolution of liberal-cosmopolitan logic during 1900-14 which began to regard nationalism as reactionary

2. Impact of mass warfare during 1914-45 which accelerated the antinationalist tendency within cosmopolitan thought

3. Increased societal reflexivity: expanding and intensifying networks of conceptual exchange sharpen contradictions between nationalism and cosmopolitanism

Recent Period• Expansion of Higher Education and national electronic

media• Peace and prosperity of 1945-73• Major attitude changes in US among 'baby boom'

generation on issues of race, national identity, 1965-73• Rise of a 'postmaterialist' culturally-liberal cohort of

university-educated cosmopolitans that are pro-immigration and pro-Europe

• New 'Cosmopolitan Democracy' advocates in IR and Theory: Held, Giddens, Beck, Nussbaum

• Beck's 'Cosmopolitan Manifesto', LSE c. 2000

Growing Cosmopolitanism in Europe?

'Very Proud' of Country, Eurobarometer (1983)

0%

20%

40%

60%

15-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+

Growing Cosmopolitanism in Europe…

'Very Proud' of Country, 1970 and mid-80s

0%20%40%60%80%

100%

Luxe

mbo

urg

Italy

Franc

e

Nethe

rland

s

Belgium

Germ

any

1970

1981-85

Cultural Cosmopolitanism in US

White Opinion of Inter-Racial Marriage

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

1958 1968 1972 1978 1983

Approve

Disapprove

Education and Cosmopolitanism

Support For Republikaner Party, by Age & Education, Bavaria 1989

0%

5%

10%

15%

18-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60+

Low

Med

High

Education and Cosmopolitanism: USA

White Approval of Inter-Racial Marriage, by Education, 1972 and 1976

20%

40%60%

80%

100%

College Some Col High Grade

1972

1976

Cosmopolitanism vs Universalism

• Some (ie David Hollinger) assert that cosmopolitanism emphasises cultural diversity as opposed to universalist uniformity

• Cultural richness and hybridity as opposed to sterile universalism

• Nationalists/ethnics argue that hybridity leads to universalism, and that both reflect the same culturally-neutral tendency

• Nationalists/ethnics also contend that all cosmopolitan projects have certain biases at their core and are cultural imperialisms: (ie Greek, Roman, Russian-Soviet, French-Napoleonic, Turkish-Ottoman, American-'globalisation')

Modernisation can be Cosmopolitan or Nationalist

Conclusion

• Cosmopolitanism a long history, much longer than globalisation

• Can be political or cultural• Cosmopolitan ideas gained ground in the 20th c• Became anti-nationalist due to ideological evolution

and war• Political success is linked to both world war and

intensifying/extending intellectual exchanges• Carried by higher-educated, 'postmaterialist' elites

and middle class