The Idea of International Citizenship

Abstract

The argument of this chapter has two aspects to it. On the one hand I want to make a case for using a conception of ‘international citizenship’ as one way of articulating issues of ethico-political identity and agency in relation to rights and responsibilities within the international arena. On the other hand, in parallel with this argument, I want to address the broader question of what are the most useful philosophical frameworks for making judgments about ethical issues in a global context. The former part of my argument overlaps considerably with the concerns of Holden’s chapter in this volume on the possibilities of global democracy. Like Holden I would argue that it is possible to think of ‘rule of the people’ beyond the constraints of the nation state and without the attainment of world government. Thinking about the idea of international citizenship is another way of raising the question of who ‘the people’ are or might be in different kinds of trans-state political, and potentially democratic, processes. There are, however, peculiar difficulties with defining ‘the people’ in this context, most notably the fact that the international arena is full of actors who are not individual persons, even though they may be bearers of rights (as well as responsibilities) in a way analogous to the individual citizens of a domestic state. Through a discussion of recent work on the idea of citizenship in the domestic context and of an article by Linklater, ‘What is a Good International Citizen?’,1KeywordsPolitical IdentityMoral ConsciousnessMoral ProgressEthical LifeEthical UniversalismThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.