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On cosmopolitan self-determination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2012

ALEXANDER SOMEK
ALEXANDER SOMEK*
Affiliation:
College of Law, University of Iowa, Melrose and Byington, Iowa City, IA, 52242, USA
*
*Email: alexander-somek@uiowa.edu
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Abstract

In order to arrive at an adequate understanding of the changing Westphalian world, it is necessary to distinguish political self-determination from its cosmopolitan counterpart. While political self-determination has its place in a familiar and common space, cosmopolitan self-determination stands for unbounded collective self-determination among strangers. Two forms can be distinguished. In its mixed form, it is tied in with political self-determination, adopting the latter as a medium for realizing common autonomy among those who are foreign to one another. Virtual representation is essential to understanding how cosmopolitans are connected to bounded political spaces. In its pure form, by contrast, cosmopolitan self-determination detaches itself from political judgement and finds its major role in authorizing risk management and crisis intervention. It lends expression to the impoverishment suffered by collective freedom in an administered world. Any calibration of the relationship between political and cosmopolitan self-determination must examine the general social conditions enabling an autonomous life.

Type
Articles
Information
Global Constitutionalism , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 405 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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