Jens Bartelson

The Critique of the State

1. Forbidden impossibilities 2. Unpacking the living museum: the state and the emergence of political science 3. A plurality of monisms: throwing the state out 4. An indivisible remainder: the state brought back in 5. The limits of criticism: dissolving the state 6. Possibilities permitted.

Making Sense of Global Civil Society

This article purports to explain why the concept of global civil society recently has attracted so much interest within academic and political discourse. Given the ambiguity and apparent incoherence of this concept, its centrality within contemporary International Relations and political theory is puzzling. The article argues that once we pay attention to the function of the concept of domestic civil society within different historical contexts, we are better able to understand the logic governing the usage of global civil society as well. Much like its domestic antecedents, theories of global civil society provide answers to the question of how to govern effectively, in this case by constituting the global realm as a sphere of governmental activity, as well as by justifying the exercise of authority within this emergent sphere. The article concludes by discussing the ethical implications of the concept of global civil society, disputing its emancipatory potential.

Symposium 'The politics of international recognition'

Recognition plays a multifaceted role in international theory. In rarely communicating literatures, the term is invoked to explain creation of new states and international structures; policy choices by state and non-state actors; and normative justifiability, or lack thereof, of foreign and international politics. The purpose of this symposium is to open new possibilities for imagining and studying recognition in international politics by drawing together different strands of research in this area. More specifically, the forum brings new attention to controversies on the creation of states, which has traditionally been a preserve for discussion in International Law, by invoking social theories of recognition that have developed as part of International Relations more recently. It is suggested that broadening imagination across legal and social approaches to recognition provides the resources needed for theories with this object to be of maximal relevance to political practice.

Globalizing the democratic community

This article discusses the problem of global democracy, and why democratic legitimacy seems so difficult to attain at the global level. I start by arguing that the difficulties we experience when we try to widen the scope of democratic governance beyond the boundaries of individual states have nothing to do with the characteristics of global society, but result from the underlying assumption that a political community has to be bounded and based on consent in order for democratic legitimacy to be possible. I then explore how this view came into being, arguing that the perennial paradoxes of democratic legitimacy are little but results of earlier and successful attempts to make the concept of political community coextensive with that of the nation. Finally, I argue that once we let go of the idea that political communities have to be bounded and based on consent in order to qualify as democratic ones, the paradox of democratic legitimacy will look like a category mistake rather than an inescapable obstacle to global democracy.

Short circuits: society and tradition in international relations theory

In a period when international relations theory has painfully awakened from its dreams of a decontextualized account of international reality, some theorists of international relations are likely to do what some political scientists already have done: turn to disciplinary history in search of remedies against what they take to be a threatening disciplinary anarchy:

Towards a genealogy of 'society' in International Relations

The concept of society and its cognates have long been widely invoked in order to understand International Relations. Theories of international society distinguish between a society of states and a mere system of states, and theories of world society assume that the world constitutes a single social space. In order to come to terms with the social character of International Relations, constructivists of different stripes have invoked a societal context within which the construction of identities and norms takes place. As I shall argue in this article, these usages draw on conceptions of society that emerged during the early phases of modern sociology, and have then been projected onto alien historical and cultural contexts. In order to avoid the anachronism and Eurocentrism that invariably have resulted from these uncritical usages, I argue that academic International Relations should seek to accommodate those forms of human association that cannot be subsumed under a recognisably modern concept of society by incorporating insights from postcolonial sociology into its theoretical core.

Philosophy and History in the Study of Political Thought

This article analyzes how the relationship between philosophy and history has been conceived within the study of political thought, and how different ways of conceiving this relationship in turn have affected the definition of the subject matter as well as the choice of methods within this field. My main argument is that the ways in which we conceive this relationship is dependent on the assumptions we make about the ontological status of concepts and their meaning. I start by discussing the widespread view that philosophy and history ought to be viewed as distinct if not incompatible ways of studying political thought, and then go on to describe the view that philosophical and historical approaches should be conceived of as identical or inseparable. I end this article by suggesting that these approaches rather should be viewed as mutually constitutive for the benefit of a more coherent study of political thought.

Beyond Democratic Legitimacy: Global Governance and the Promotion of Liberty

Under which conditions can global governance institutions and transnational actors be considered legitimate? According to what has become the standard answer to this question, global governance institutions and transnational actors can only be considered legitimate to the extent that they conform to standards of democratic legitimacy. But, since many of the preconditions of democratic legitimacy are lacking in the global realm, attempts to assess their democratic legitimacy usually end on a gloomy note. Global political authority is relatively weak and decentralized, and the pluralistic makeup of global society has conspired against the formation of a global demos that could provide global institutions with the kind of legitimacy that derives from popular consent. Although some scholars have tried to replace the requirement of popular consent with other standards of democratic legitimacy — such as transparency and accountability — these are believed to require the creation of a global civil society in order to make any difference in terms of democratic participation. Yet these surrogate sources of legitimacy merely beg the question of whether most human beings actually could be said to enjoy the political liberty necessary to respond effectively to a perceived lack of accountability and transparency on behalf of global governance institutions and transnational actors. Such rights of democratic participation are meaningful only in the context of a political community within which they can be exercised, and that exercise in turn presupposes that agents are free and safe to express and act upon their beliefs and desires in ways conducive to such participation.

Recognition: A Short History

During the past decade there has been a resurgence of interest in the concept of recognition in international theory. Once the narrow concern of social theorists, the concept of recognition is nowadays invoked in at least three different senses in order to explain three different things. First, it is commonly used to explain how states and their identities are shaped by interaction, and how the modern international system has emerged as a cumulated consequence of such patterns of interaction. In this context, the concept of recognition is used to explain how states are individuated and differentiated from each other, how the international system thereby becomes stratified along status lines, as well as why conflicts over status are possible or even inevitable. Second, although the concept of recognition has long enjoyed wide currency within international legal theory, where it is used to account for what makes states legal persons and equal members of international society, recent scholarship has done much to complicate this view by pointing out how practices of inclusion often have gone hand in hand with practices of exclusion, and how this has led to an informal stratification of international society. Third, the concept has most recently been invoked to suggest how the undesirable consequences of international anarchy can be mitigated or even avoided through mutual recognition between political communities.

From Empire to Sovereignty-and Back?

Review Essay Foundations of Modern International Thought, David Armitage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 300 pp.,