Boundaries in political philosophy

Boundaries creep into political philosophy without us noticing. For example, within the liberal tradition of political discourse a theory of justice is typically deployed to give some account of universal rights and of the limits of legitimate state powers, yet before we know it we are talking about the powers not of the state but of the states. As soon as we have states, we also, of course, have boundaries or borders between states, yet these new arrivals are hardly noticeable until somebody raises a question about the just location of boundaries. At that point familiar discussions about notions of self-determination and about the status of a right to secession get going – without prior consideration of the nature or justice of boundaries. Yet it seems to me that it might be worth reflecting on the justice of boundaries before we start asking which boundaries there may or should justly be. My reflections on the matter are quite incomplete, but are guided by a couple of ideas, which it may be as well to state explicitly before I start out on what will otherwise certainly seem a meandering and wilful path – and may still seem wayward even with these signposts. The first idea is that traditional arguments about state and nation ought to be relevant, but that we must be very careful not to accept the terms of those traditional debates uncritically. The second idea is that there ought to be at least some link between discussions of the scope of ethical principles and the justification of boundaries.

If we look at the current debates in political philosophy it may seem that the problem of justifying boundaries could arise only for those who advocate universal principles – many of them liberals of one sort or another – and would not even arise for communitarians, relativists and other historicists, who will always look at matters from some determinate location, hence from within and as legitimately limited by some set of boundaries. I think the supposed myopia of communitarian and kindred positions provides little insight. It is true that for communitarians boundaries are, so to speak, only visible from the inside.