Thick Cosmopolitanism
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| Author | Andrew Dobson |
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00571.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Thick Cosmopolitanism
Andrew Dobson
Open University
This paper analyses the account of political obligation given by cosmopolitans and concludes that this
account, which depends on a weak or thin connection between members of common humanity,leaves
a motivational vacuum at the heart of cosmopolitanism. An alternative view, according to which
material ties that bind prompt obligations of justice in a globalising world, is offered. This is ‘thick
cosmopolitanism’.
An apparently exasperated Thomas Pogge opens his influential book World
Poverty and Human Rights with this question: ‘How can severe poverty of half of
humankind continue despite enormous economic and technological progress
and despite the enlightened moral norms and values of our heavily dominant
Western civilization?’ (Pogge, 2002, p. 3). One clue to an answer, of course, lies
in the ‘despites’. Pogge implies that enormous economic and technological
progress and enlightened Western moral norms and values provide the founda-
tions for a just social and moral order,but any self-respecting Marxist, structuralist
or political ecologist will hastily object that it is precisely that concept of progress
and this set of moral norms and values that cause all the trouble in the first
place. Indeed, Pogge himself hints at this kind of analysis when he implicates the
global economic institutions designed in the West in the production of global
poverty.
I could go down that road, but I am not going to – although I do not believe
that there is anything in what follows with which Marxists,structuralists or politi-
cal ecologists would fundamentally disagree. Instead, I am going to ask whether
it is something about the principles of cosmopolitanism as they are usually
expressed that fails to turn an intellectual commitment to them into a determi-
nation to act on them. I shall suggest that there is indeed a motivational problem
with these principles, and I shall try to fill the motivational space that I identify
at cosmopolitanism’s heart. I do not want to be taken to imply that this space is
completely empty; cosmopolitanism does offer an account of motivation, but this
is malgré lui,rather than as a key component of the cosmopolitan package. Nor
do I want to say that there has been no progress at all on turning cosmopolitan
norms into cosmopolitan practice. My suggestion is rather that there are limits
to cosmopolitanism’s persuasiveness as long as its motivational heart remains
unexamined.
Others have of course been here before.Toni Erskine speaks for many when
she writes: ‘An important question for both moral philosophers and normative
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2006 VOL 54, 165–184
© 2006 The Author
Journal compilation © 2006 Political Studies Association
166 ANDREW DOBSON
© 2006 The Author
Journal compilation © 2006 Political Studies Association
theorists of international relations is how we get from where we are currently
standing, steeped in our own immediate circumstances, with our own particular
ties and commitments, to concern for those with whom we share neither kinship
nor country, neighbourhood nor nation’(Er skine, 2002, p. 459). Erskine offers a
very interesting answer herself to this question in the guise of ‘embedded cos-
mopolitanism’ (Erskine,2000; 2002). I believe that Erskine points us in the right
kind of direction, although I think that the notion of community that she deploys
in the service of ‘embeddedness’is not sufficiently robust to cope with the weight
of commitment that she wishes to derive from it. I shall explain this in what
follows.
The Architecture of Obligation
What is the best way into an examination of the motivational heart of cos-
mopolitanism? It is my belief that some of the time-honoured concepts and
modes of enquiry in political theory have much to offer the cosmopolitan debate,
and in this particular context an examination of the notion of political obliga-
tion turns out to be especially fruitful.
Political obligation is a key concept in political theory, and John Horton has
written a classic account of it. In his book he writes of a
cluster of questions which are ... central to an understanding of political obliga-
tion: What political community does one belong to? How is membership of a
polity determined? What duties or obligations does one have by virtue of one’s
membership? How are those duties or obligations to be judged relative to other
commitments and obligations? The answers to these, and other similar, questions
are central to any understanding of political obligation.Moreover,political philoso-
phers have tended to see one question as fundamental: on what basis,in ter ms of
what reasons, should we legitimately ascribe political obligations to people? It is
this question of justification or explanation – and it is not always possible to
separate them – which is the focus of most philosophical discussions of political
obligation (Horton, 1992, p. 4).
All of these questions are relevant to the principles and practices of cosmopoli-
tanism, and systematic engagement with them will enable us to make some
progress on the issue of doing cosmopolitanism as well as believing in it.As I
see it, Horton’s list of questions boils down to four:
•the scope of political obligation (who is obliged, and to whom?)
•the nature of political obligation (what are we obliged to do?)
•the source of political obligation (what triggers it?)
•the limits to political obligation (how do political obligations ‘trade’ against
other obligations and against rights that might ‘trump’ some obligations?)
For reasons of space, I shall focus here on the first three of these although the
last point is indeed important in the context of a full treatment of why the
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