Global Government and the Sources of Globoscepticism
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829814541833 |
| Published date | 01 January 2015 |
| Date | 01 January 2015 |
| Author | Luis Cabrera |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2015, Vol. 43(2) 471 –491
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829814541833
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MILLENNIUM
Journal of International Studies
1. For reviews, see Campbell Craig. ‘The Resurgent Idea of World Government’, Ethics &
International Affairs 22, no. 2 (2008): 133–42; Luis Cabrera, ‘World Government: Renewed
Debate, Persistent Challenges’, European Journal of International Relations 16, no. 3 (2010):
Global Government and the
Sources of Globoscepticism
Luis Cabrera
Griffith University
Abstract
While a number of prominent researchers have recently turned their attention to the likelihood
or desirability of full world government, such an ideal has little current support in civic and popular
discourse. This article seeks to identify some factors possibly reinforcing such ‘globoscepticism’.
After first discussing why it should not be seen as prima facie absurd to support global political
integration, and noting widespread popular support in the immediate aftermath of the Second
World War, it turns to some findings on the sources of Euroscepticism. This phenomenon
involves negative attitudes expressed by political elites and ordinary citizens towards European
Union integration. Also considered are the determinants of attitudes towards international
trade liberalisation. Insights from both areas can be applied to a preliminary exploration of
globoscepticism. Specifically, they can enrich an analysis of domestic biases which naturally arise
and are reinforced within a sovereign states system, and which tend to diminish support for
comprehensive projects beyond the state. These pose challenges that must be addressed by
academic advocates of full global integration, as well as advocates of still-ambitious but far less
comprehensive projects of suprastate institution building.
Keywords
cosmopolitan democracy, economic globalisation, Euroscepticism, global justice, world
government
Introduction
After some 50 years on the academic fringes, the concept of world government has been
taken up again by some prominent researchers across a range of disciplines.1 Accounts
Corresponding author:
Luis Cabrera, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland,
4111, Australia.
Email: l.cabrera@griffith.edu.au
541833MIL0010.1177/0305829814541833Millennium: Journal of International StudiesCabrera
research-article2014
Article
472 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(2)
511–30; Catherine Lu, ‘World Government’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2012),
available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/world-government (accessed
13 Oct. 2014).
2. Campbell Craig, Glimmer of a New Leviathan: Total War in the Realism of Niebuhr,
Morgenthau, and Waltz (New York: Columbia University Press); Alexander Wendt, ‘Why
a World State Is Inevitable’, European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 4 (2003):
491–542; Daniel H. Deudney, Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis
to the Global Village (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); William Scheuerman,
The Realist Case for Global Reform (Cambridge: Polity, 2011).
3. Yael Tamir, ‘Who’s Afraid of a Global State?’, in Nationalism and Internationalism in
the Post-Cold War Era, eds Kjell Goldmann, Ulf Hannerz and Charles Westin (New York:
Routledge, 2000), 244–67; Simon Caney, Justice beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), ch. 5; Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human
Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2008), ch. 7; Ronald Tinnevelt, ‘Federal World Government: The Road to Peace and Justice?’,
Cooperation and Conflict 47, no. 2 (2012): 220–38; Robert Goodin, ‘World Government Is
Here!’, in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship, eds Sigal R. Ben-Porath and Rogers M.
Smith (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
4. Dani Rodrik, ‘How Far Will Economic Integration Go?’, Journal of Economic Perspectives
14, no. 1 (2000): 177–86; James Yunker, The Grand Convergence: Economic and Political
Aspects of Human Progress (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
5. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 36;
Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2004), 8; Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard, 2006), 312–13; Ian Shapiro, The Real World of Democratic
Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Mathias Risse, On Global Justice
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012); Chris Brown, ‘Liberty, Civil Society and the
Undesirability of World Government’, unpublished manuscript, presented at the 2013 Annual
Meeting of the International Studies Association. Risse is an exception in devoting a full chap-
ter to critique; Brown also is an exception in offering an article-length critique. See also Danilo
Zolo, Cosmopolis: Prospects for World Government (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997).
6. The term, though not used in precisely the same manner, may have been coined by Ralf
Dahrendorf. In a 1998 review of John Gray’s False Dawn, he described Gray’s growing
distaste for neoliberal economic globalisation as a conversion ‘to what might be called glo-
boskepticism’: Ralf Dahrendorf, ‘Review of John Gray, 1998, False Dawn: The Delusions of
Global Capitalism’, International Affairs 74, no. 4 (1998): 918.
prescribing or predicting the emergence of full global political integration have been
offered by leading international relations theorists,2 normative political theorists,3 econo-
mists4 and others. At the same time, many researchers in those fields have continued to
treat world government as an aim or possible outcome worthy only of summary dis-
missal.5 And, of central interest here, world government now has little support in current
popular and civic discourses.
This lack of support especially should be an important consideration for those arguing
for some form of full integration, or predicting its emergence over time. Resistance to
world government as an institutional aim, as well as its plain absence from various dis-
courses, will be explored here under the banner term ‘globoscepticism’.6 The objective,
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