The Transformation of Political Community Towards "A Cosmopolitan System of General Political Security"

Abstract

Problematizing traditional conceptions of political community and national citizenship is a central theme in recent social and political theory. Envisaging new political arrangements in which sovereignty, territoriality, citizenship and shared nationality are no longer fused together is an important parallel task. Advances in human security are a central aspiration of such efforts to imagine alternatives to the nation-state system. Following the spirit of this inquiry, the argument of this paper defends the Kantian ideal of a cosmopolitan system of general political security which affords protection not just to states but to individuals and their various associations. It also endorses Habermas’s observation that national citizenship and world citizenship form a continuum whose contours are steadily becoming more visible.