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Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism is a school of thought in which the essence of international society is defined in terms of social bonds that link people, communities, and societies. Derived from the term cosmopolis, it sees a natural order in the universe (the cosmos) carried through to human society, exemplified by the polis. More broadly, it presents a political-moral philosophy that posits people as citizens of the world, rather than of a particular nation-state.

In this regard, cosmopolitanism represents a spirited challenge to more traditional views that focus on age-old attachments of people to a place, customs, and culture. Cosmopolitan emphasis on social bonds rather than nation-states lays the foundation for its view of society ultimately evolving toward harmony and away from conflict. This relatively benign outlook stands in stark contrast to the analytic framework used by the dominant schools of thought in world politics: realism and liberalism.

The Dominant Schools of Thought

For both realists and liberals, Westphalian nation-states are the dominant actors in world politics. Both see states as internally sovereign over their own territory, possessing a legal monopoly on violence. To exercise internal sovereignty, states need to be free from externally imposed constraints. For liberals and realists alike, this implies that the international system—a society of states—is structurally anarchic. Domestic and world politics are clearly differentiated. This framework clearly delineates domestic and international politics. Domestic politics is law and administration; world politics is defined by power, struggle, and accommodation. States are Janus-faced, looking inward toward domestic society and outward at the anarchy of world politics.

For both realists and liberals, the state is the organizing unit of the international system. They agree that state behavior is rational and comprehensible. Realists go on further to argue that states are unitary actors that seek power both as a means and as an end. For realists, the “high” politics of security dominates the “low” politics of social welfare. Peace is the time between wars. States are autonomous and self-reliant. Cooperation among states is rare because there is little reason for it. International institutions, lacking independent authority, are powerless to shape state behavior.

Liberals share the realist assumption that the international system is state centric and structurally anarchic, but liberals find room for cooperation. For them, world politics is not a zero-sum game. It is partly distributive and partly productive. It is a Smithian world of trade and commerce in which mutual benefit creates an incentive for cooperation and coexistence. Realists, pointing to states' constant preparation for war, see conflict as the norm. Liberals view conflict as atypical, a result of misunderstanding or miscalculation. They stress the need for institution building.

How Cosmopolitanism Differs

Cosmopolitanism differs from realism and liberalism in its resistance to the idea of the semiautonomous sovereign state, with an exclusive right of self-government. In the realist view, states (in pursuit of their own interests) are locked in a struggle for survival. Conflict is inevitable because states have differing interests and there is no external sovereign to constrain behavior or mediate disputes.

Not only do they reject the conception of world politics as necessarily rooted in interstate conflict, cosmopolitan theorists do not draw a distinct line between domestic and international politics. They argue that states are bound by rules, norms, and the imperatives of law. Relations between people are not always and everywhere subsumed by interstate conflict.

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