Title: A Federation of Democracies: Towards Universal Basic Rights and the End of Tyranny
by John J. Davenport
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy
Abstract:This monograph will synthesize three published articles and several conference presentations on global justice into a new short monograph on the need for a worldwidefederation of democracies to meet the demands of human rights and other global public goods (including solving environmental issues involving international collective action problems).
This project aims to introduce students and general readers to a closely related set of issues bearing on global governance, focusing especially on human rights and glaring problems in the existing UN system. The topic, one of growing interest among policy theorists, has started to gain wider public attention since it was discussed in the 2008 Presidential election. However, my specific proposal and my way of defending it are both new. The central ideas and arguments for it should be accessible to any undergraduate or educated general reader; Fordham students have found them fresh and eye-opening even when they resist the conclusions.In the context of arguing for its main institutional proposal, the book will introduce students and general readers to several challenging problems in democratic theory and ethics, such asthe nature of human rights and whether their universality conflicts with cultural pluralism; the nature of collective action problems and public goods requiring coordination at different levels of government;why pure majoritarian conceptions of democratic governance are inadequate, and how this is reflected in deliberative theories of democracy, Locke's account of the right to revolution, and problems with unlimited rights to secession, etc.;why just war norms can only be specified in the context of general theories of global justice; and the need for a clear agent of first resort when humanitarian intervention is essential to prevent massive crimes against humanity.
Chapter Outline
1.Introduction: the Problems with 'Globalism'
Economic globalism vs global political governance.
Tragedies of the 'global commons': how far are we from a state of nature between nations?
High aspirations and colossal failures: the United Nations and Cold War realpolitik.
2.Federalist Arguments for Replacing the Security Council with a Democratic Federation
Collective Action Problems and the concept of global public goods.
Ten categories of global public goods that cannot be realized through treaties alone.
1787: the American Experience as an analogy for the world today.
The Coordination Principle: the central insight of the Federalist Papers
The Relation to Principles of Enumeration and Subsidiarity
The Consolidation Argument for higher levels of government (general form)
The Consolidation Argument for global government.
3.Hobbesian Global Goods, Economic Development, Future Generations:
Security from State Aggression and Transnational Terrorism
Control of Weapons Proliferation
International crime, tax havens, pandemics.
Global finance and steering of the global economy.
Environmental Sustainability and Economic Development.
4.Kantian Global Goods: Human Rights and International Law
Theories of Human Rights: Pogge, Habermas, Rawls and others
Nuremberg, the Geneva Conventions, and limits to state sovereignty.
The basic inadequacy of free-standing international courts and war crimes tribunals.
5.Human Rights, Just War Theory, and Humanitarian Intervention
Two Levels of Just War Norms and the dependence on theories of justice.
The history of Just War Theory supports humanitarian intervention
The contemporary consensus in favor of restricted humanitarian intervention.
Broadening Intervention: A Critique of Michael Walzer on self-determination
Broadening Intervention: intractable tyrannies, failed states, kleptocracy and poverty.
6.The Right to Democracy and Answers to Pluralist Objections
Habermas on the connection between basic civil rights and the right to democracy.
The Moral Presuppostions of popular sovereignty: Locke, Lincoln, and Habermas
The Lockean Right to Revolution and the Remedial Right to Secession
Objections from Cultural Pluralism, sincere and cynical.
Why the objections are either insincere or self-defeating.
Nonwestern proponents of basic rights standards for legitimate government.
Postmodern skeptics and crimes against humanity: a critical response to vices of theory.
7.Why Strengthening the UN and other Alternatives short of a Federation Won't Work.
The impossibility of amending key provisions in the UN Charter: critique of Peter Singer.
An unmanageable a rapid response force (under the Security Council, or freestanding).
Can a coalition of democracies play second fiddle to the UN?:
A Response to Buchanan and Keohane.
Why Habermas's theory of democracy entails a federation of democracies
Answer to the worry about shared political culture and the EU
Answer to Kant's worry about a 'world state'.
Answer to the worry about 'exclusivism.'
8.How to Design and Create a Stable and Effective Federation of Democracies
The great bargain between the US and the rest of the democratic world.
Founding members: continental pluralism and the need for Russia
Criteria for two levels of membership; Islamic nations and China
Direct election of lower house and national representation in the upper house.
Direct election of the executive and the structure of the Democratic Council.
Enforcement powers: the standing armed forces of the Federation.
Current stage of the research:
a.Most of chapters 1, 2, and part of 3 can be developed from a 2008 essay I've published in the Journal of Value Inquiry. The rest of chapter 3 exists in a draft of about 6,000 words.
b.Almost all of chapters 4 and 5 will be drawn from a 2010 essay I published on "Just War, Humanitarian Intervention, and the need for a Federation of Democracies" in the Journal of Value Inquiry.I will draw the first half of chapter 6 from a conference paper; the second half of chapter 6 on pluralist objections will require another 15 pages or roughly 4500 words.
c.The Habermas sections of chapter 7 exist in a conference paper of 20 pages or about 6500 words. The rest of this chapter exists in notes and will be about 12 more pages / 3000 words.
d.Chapter 8 is sketched in a conference paper of about 10 pages. The full version will be about 10,000 words. I would also present this chapter at a fall conference to which I've been invited.
Thus a first draft of this book manuscript can be completed in a summer. It will take no more than a month to edit and combine these existing articles and conference papers, and another month to complete chapters 6 and 7 with additional work on Habermas's thought. The last month would be spent completing the draft of chapter 8, which involves looking at a few more recent publications in political science, though I have already done most of the reading necessary for it (see biblio.).
Background and Contribution to the fields: While only about a fifth of my scholarly work has focused on political philosophy to date, I am teaching and writing more in this area all the time; this monograph would position me as a significant contributor to this field, especially in growing and dynamic genres of new work on human rights and global justice, with their obvious relevance to a fast-changing world and to NYC. The book would be controversial but likely to get attention and be used in courses increasingly attending to these questions at colleges across the world.
To my knowledge, there are almost no works in political philosophy (even in critical theory or the expanding genre of work on deliberative accounts of legitimate democracy) that argue for a federation of democracies to work alongside, or even to replace, the UN Security Council. There are works on global distributive justice and poverty relief with some institutional suggestions, Didier Jacobs' book on Global Justice which proposes to expand NATO, Habermas's arguments against the possibility of a global government, and similar arguments from Michael Walzer in just war theory. There is also a lot of recent scholarship on humanitarian intervention and the duty to protect, but without sufficiently robust institutional proposals included. There is also some fundamental philosophical work on political legitimacy and secession (e.g. a book by Allan Buchanan) but little on the basic structure of justification for higher levels of government.
Thus the central arguments I have drafted in the works to be combined and developed in this new book make several novel contributions, especially in (1) developing the argument for consolidation of authority from the Federalist Papers and applying it directly to the current interstate system under the UN, (2) in using the justifications for humanitarian intervention in existing international law as a basis for my new institutional proposal, and (3) in using Habermas's democratic theory to argue for a federation despite his own preference for the weak UN model. There are four recent books and several articles in political science (from different sides of the political spectrum) that make a case for something like a loose "concert" or a stronger "league" of democracies, but they focus on pragmatic questions of how to establish, design, and run it as an institution, more than on the ethical justification for it, or its deduction from basic principles of justice. While these details are important (and I will consider them along in the planned chapter 8), the structure and enumerated powers of such an organization need to be guidedby adeeper systemic philosophical foundation that my book will provide. So this project also promises to span an interdisciplinary gap between discussion of such a league in political science and analysis of just war, human rights, and global justice across sub-disciplines in political philosophy.
Brief Bibliography of Select Relevant Work:
ASEAN Organization
1997Vision 2020: AA Community of Caring Societies@ (Adopted in Kuala Lumpur): see
Association to Unite the Democracies:
Aung San Suu Kyi, Daw
1995"Freedom, Development, and Human Worth," Journal of Democracy 6 no. 2 (April, 1995): 11-19.
Bellamy, Alex
2009The Responsibility to Protect. Philadelphia: Wiley & Sons.
Beitz, Charles
2005"Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice." The Journal of Ethics 9: 11-27.
2009The Idea of Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press.
Beitz, Charles, and Marshal Cohen, Thomas Scanlon and John Simmons, eds.
1980International Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Benhabib, Seyla
2006Another Cosmopolitanism: Tanner Lectures with responses by Waldron, Honig, and Kymlicka. Oxford University Press.
2008"Another Universalism: On the Unity and Diversity of Human Rights," Presidential Address to the Eastern APA (Dec. 2007). Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 81.2 (April): 7-32.
Buchanan, Allan
2007Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law. New York: Oxford University Press. First published in hardcover, 2004.
Buchanan, Allan and Robert Keohane,
2004AThe Preventative Use of Force: A Cosmopolitan Institutional Proposal.@ Ethics and International Affairs 18.1: 405-38.
2006AThe Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions.@Ethics and International Affairs 20.4: 405-38.
Carothers, Thomas
2009"Is a League of Democracies a Good Idea?" Carnegie Endowment Policy Brief no.59 (May).
Daalder, Ivo and James Lindsay
2007Democracies of the World Unite. The American Interest (Jan-Feb): 1-17.
Davenport, John J.
2005"Just War Theory Requires a New Federation of Democratic Nations." Fordham International Law Journal 28.3 (Feb): 763-85.
2008AA Global Federalist Paper: Consolidation Arguments and Global Governance.@The Journal of Value Inquiry 42: 353-75.
2009"For a Federation of Democracies: A Response to Stephen Schlesinger." Ethics and International Affairs 23.1 (Spring 2009), Online Roundtable supplement:
2010AJust Wars, Humanitarian Intervention, and the Need for a Federation of Democracies,@The Journal of Religious Ethics 39 no.3 (2011): 493B555.
Ellis, Anthony
2003AWar, Revolution, and Humanitarian Intervention,@ in Humanitarian Intervention, ed Jokic: 17-44.
Elshtain, Jean Bethke
2003Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World. New York: Basic Books.
de Grieff, Pablo, and Ciaran Cronin, eds.
2002Global Justice and Transnational Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Flynn, Jeffrey
2003"Habermas on Human Rights: Law, Morality, and Intercultural Dialogue." Social Theory and Practice 29 3 (July): 43157.
Frye, Alton, ed.
2000Humanitarian Intervention: Crafting a Workable Doctrine. Washington DC: Council on Foreign Relations.
Gauthier, David
1987 Morals by Agreement. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen
1990ACitizenship and National Identity.@Praxis International 12.1 (April): 1-19. Reprinted in Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: 491-515.
1995"Kants Idee des Ewigen Freidens B aus dem historichen Abstand von 200 Jahren." Kristische Justiz 28: 293-319.
1996Between Facts and Norms, translated by William Rehg. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
1998"Kant's Idea of Perpetual Peace: At Two-Hundred Years Historical Remove." In The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, edited by Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greif, 165-202. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
1998The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, ed. Ciaron Cronin and Pablo de Greiff. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
1999 "Bestiality and Humanity: A War on the Border between Legality and Morality," translated by Stephen Meyer and William Scheuerman. Constellations 6.3: 263-72. Originally appeared as "Bestalität und Humanität." Der Zeit 29 (April 1999): 1, 6-7.
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2006The Divided West, ed. and trans. Ciaron Cronin. New York: Polity Press.
Held, David.
2002Democracy and the Global Order: from the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Palo Alto CA: Stanford University Press.
Holzinger, Katherina
2008Transnational Common Goods: Strategic Constellations, Collective Action Problems, and Multi-level Provision. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
ICISS
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Ikenberry, John G. and Anne-Marie Slaughter
2007Forging a World of Liberty Under Law: US National Security in the 21st Century. Princeton, NJ: The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Jacobs, Didier
2007Global Democracy: The Struggle for Political and Civil Rights in the 21st Century. Nashville TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
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Kaul, Inge, Isabelle Grunberg, and Marc Stern, eds.
1999Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century. New York: United Nations Development Program & Oxford University Press.
Kurasawa, Fuyuki
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Lango, John
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Rawls, John
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2005Universal Human Rights: Moral Order in a Divided World. Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield.
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