Much of political theory today is informed, explicitly or implicitly, by the model of the democratic underlabourer. This model combines a claim to know-how in the normative problems of politics with a commitment to political modesty. Democratic underlabourers seek to empower the public, not impose their own ‘wisdom’ on them. This self-understanding is difficult to maintain at the international level, given the lack of a democratic framework, inequalities among states, and the various forms of contestation the liberal international order is facing. At the same time, the field of international political theory (IPT) is increasingly turning to questions with immediate practical implications and seeks to provide normative guidance for international politics. This special issue examines to what extent the model of the democratic underlabourer can and should be reformulated to provide IPT with a plausible and coherent methodological self-understanding.

In my response to critics in this special issue, I introduce an example from animal politics to clarify what I’ve been after in claiming the label of Demokratiewissenschaft for political theory, and to highlight the motivation for employing a democracy-apt method (I). In a second section, I take up the challenges of internationalizing the basic commitments of that method through the eyes of my esteemed interlocutors (II).

The democratic underlabourer has become a popular model for the role of political theory in practical politics in recent years. Its charm lies in the fact that it recognises the special expertise of political theorists (epistemic authority), but does not grant them a privileged role in the deliberation of political questions (democratic deference). But does the principle of democratic deference also apply when political decisions are not made through democratic procedures, as in international politics? In this paper, I argue for three theses: First, the democratic underlabourer model is only a normatively sound account of the role of political theory under the specific conditions of well-ordered liberal democracies. If basic human rights are not secured or the political process cannot be influenced through democratic deliberation among the citizens, the grounds for democratic deference no longer apply. Second, both of these conditions are usually not met at the international level. International political theory is therefore, third, in need of a new model of its relationship to real politics.

There is a growing tendency to diagnose political crises that democracies are supposedly unable to address, such as the climate emergency or the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. I ask how political theorists who see themselves as democratic underlabourers should deal with claims of emergency. Rejecting the two options of either switching into an activist mode or sticking to the normal mode of theorizing, I defend a specific role of public political theorizing. Emergency underlabouring consists in counteracting the problematic tendencies emergency politics has on public discourse. Upholding the democratic underlabourer’s commitment to improving public deliberation requires specific actions in times of emergency. To illustrate the idea of emergency underlabouring, I turn to the debate about climate litigation.

The international order is increasingly characterised by withdrawals from international treaties. Member states renounce multilateral agreements and declare exit from international institutions. These withdrawals are often seen as a threat to normative achievements. And indeed, exit can create significant costs – for example, deprive individuals of certain rights, or do away with legitimate decision procedures. In this article, I address the methodological question of how political theory can determine whether and to what extent exit amounts to institutional regression. Focusing on the example of the European Union, I argue that the key issue is how to deal with the fact of essentially contested progress. Using elements of political realism to modify Habermas’s method of rational reconstruction, I explain how political theorists who conceive of themselves as democratic underlabourers can draw on the political views of citizens in charting a path to legitimate forms of exit.

This article explores cosmopolitanism as an ‘underlabourer’ of the global. It argues that this is a specific type within the general classification of the democratic underlabourer in political theory. It aims to show that the intervention of intercultural learning processes is essential to the idea and history of cosmopolitanism. This study aims to propose a reading of cosmopolitanism as a programme for educating Europeans to see themselves as global citizens who can learn from their foreign global counterparts. By discussing a dialogical form of cosmopolitanism, I hope to show that cosmopolitan theory is aware of postcolonial critique and that it can still help to develop an understanding of the global that neglects ideas of European domination. The article critically reviews Vitoria’s and Kant’s cosmopolitan regulation of global intervention. Finally, it argues that Enlightenment cosmopolitanism was indeed a dialogical cosmopolitanism, as illustrated by the work of David Graeber and David Wengrow on the indigenous Native American Kondiaronk and his influence on later European thinkers.

International law is quasi-constitutionalized, and there is a case to be made for further constitutionalization. But who should be in charge for making a global constitution? At the domestic level, the answer is the popular sovereign, namely the citizens understood as constitutional subjects who individually and collectively hold constituent power. We do not have an easy answer to the question of who holds constituent power at the global level. This article highlights some challenges for identifying the holders of constituent power in international law. The international community contains numerous authoritarian states. In the absence of reliable processes of representation of their citizens’ voice and interests, the inclusion of those states’ officials or representatives in negotiating the fundamental values and principles of a just global constitutional order raises special problems. We have reliable evidence that authoritarian states’ officials would undermine good faith negotiation of constitutional rules and principles, and even try to hijack the process for their own, narrowly self-interested ends. I will draw on the literature on constituent power to assess the limitations of a process by which the international community could articulate, activate, and exercise constituent power to negotiate and draft a morally defensible constitutional agreement.

How fruitfully can the notions of civil society and the public sphere be applied to non-Western societies that do not share the socio-historical characteristics that generated them in Western Europe? Critical examination of the particular versus the universal in the construction of modernity in the civil society/public sphere framework highlights the antinomies of Western-defined modernity, particularly that between the imperatives of effective centralized political authority and freedom of expression. Despite the virtual absence of any discussion of the Japanese public sphere, claims by some scholars that the concepts of civil society and the public sphere are inapplicable to non-Western societies, and assertions by Japan’s Civil Society School that Japan never developed a vibrant civil society, this study demonstrates that socioeconomic development in the Tokugawa era was accompanied by the emergence of autonomous associations and claims by merchants, other commoners, and samurai to a voice in deliberating on public matters. Such claims were both reflected in and encouraged by significant developments in Japanese political thought, revealing a new political consciousness among these groups. These findings challenge prevailing assumptions regarding pre-Meiji Japan and demonstrate how democratizing forces were forged in a context quite different from that described by Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor in Western Europe.

This paper develops a new perspective on one of the key concepts of liberal global governance – transparency – by reflecting on its earlier role in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rejecting the view that he desires ‘total transparency’, the paper argues that Rousseau provides an early example of a complex modern discourse in which transparency is closely connected to the emerging contours of the international. Transparency is an image used to describe global systems of power, the experience of encountering them, and the ways in which they might be transformed by an empowered citizenry. Twenty-first century liberal transparency is a particular idiom which has emerged from this more extensive language. Distinguished by the relative demise of the figurative and utopic aspects which shape earlier uses of transparency, it has considerable ideological power while also reflecting a sclerosis of political imagination.

The debate on the demise of the Liberal International Order (LIO) lacks engagement with liberal thought, leading to a neglect of liberal alternatives to the main presentation of LIO. To address this knowledge gap, this article presents and analyses the views on international relations of Friedrich Hayek, one of the most influential classical liberal thinkers of the twentieth century. The few scholars in this debate that engage with Hayek’s ideas tend to cherry pick from his writings to support their own position. Consequently, Hayek’s critique of the worldview of liberalism in international relations theory is misrepresented, and the alternative he offers for the debate on LIO is overlooked. In this article his views will be compared to those of the leading LIO theorist G. John Ikenberry, focussing on the main ideas underpinning the idea of LIO as presented in Ikenberry’s main writings. The comparison yields some similarities between Ikenberry and Hayek, in particular regarding the Westphalian foundations of international order. Yet Hayek’s focus on individual liberty, free market economics and a limited state offer a clear classical liberal alternative to Ikenberry’s established ideas on liberal international order, with their focus on state action.