Postnational Constellation Research Articles

Some Tasks of Minjung Theology in the Age of Globalization

In the article I ask whether the basic concerns of minjung theology that were articulated within the political boundary of a national state are still significant in the age of globalization. If we can answer this question positively, then we have to ask how to elaborate and materialize those concerns in post-national constellations. With such a question in mind, first, I explain three current trends of minjung theology, those are, 1) critical and creative succession to the achievements of the first-generation minjung theologians, 2) post-modern reconstruction of minjung theology, and 3) theological-missiological discourse on the reality of minjung and their liberation praxis. Second, I characterize the process of globalization as spread of capitalism with insane plunder and oppression and suggest that minjung theology in search for an alternative world should again integrate Marx’s critique of political economy into theological reflection. Third, I highlight the subject status of minjung as one of the most significant themes of minjung theology. I distinguish three paradigms for the subject status of minjung from one another, namely, socio-biographical paradigm, class struggle paradigm, and network movement paradigm. In the age of globalization I accept that social movements must shape networks, but accentuate that it is empty to separate the issues of gender, race, and generation from class issue, while it is blind to reduce such cultural issues to the issue of class. Fourth, I deal with how to conceptualize the question of nation (in Korean ‘minjok’) in the age of globalization. I pay attention to the danger of considering nation as substance and suggest that minjung theology should make an open approach to the question of nation. Only with such a premise minjung theology can contribute to shaping a peace nation on the way to national reunification. Fifth and finally I suggest key agendas that minjung theology should engage in the age of globalization: economic democracy, welfare, global citizenship and property order reform..

Globally Responsible Leadership: Towards a Political Conception

Globally responsible leadership is conceived as the normatively appropriate conduct of business leaders in response to the ethical challenges that multinational corporations have to deal with in the context of their global business operations. The paper argues that existing approaches to responsible leadership research neglect the ethical implications of globalization and the conditions of the current 'post-national constellation' (Habermas) in international relations. We review critically the existing concepts of responsible leadership and point out their normative vacuity, the gaps in their justification, and their problematic implementation. In order to address these issues, we propose a new approach to responsible leadership in global business, based on Habermas's idea of democratic deliberation. This concept provides leadership with a normative orientation when facing complex and heterogeneous business and stakeholder demands. Finally, we discuss how responsible leaders can remain capable of producing morally legitimate decisions within the factual constraints of global business.

Between Governing and Governance. On the Emergence, Function and Form of Europe's Post‐National Constellation. By Poul FKjaer. Oxford: Hart, 2010. xxviii + 212 pp. Hb. £50.

Between Governing and Governance. On the Emergence, Function and Form of Europe's Post‐National Constellation. By Poul FKjaer. Oxford: Hart, 2010. xxviii + 212 pp. Hb. £50.

Book Review: Between Governing and Governance, On the Emergence, Function and Form of Europe’s Post-National Constellation, by Poul F Kjaer. (Oxford, Hart Publishers, 2010)

Book Review: <i>Between Governing and Governance, On the Emergence, Function and Form of Europe’s Post-National Constellation</i>, by Poul F Kjaer. (Oxford, Hart Publishers, 2010)

Responsible Leadership and the Political Role of Global Business

Globally responsible leadership is conceived as the normatively appropriate conduct of business leaders in response to the ethical challenges that multinational corporations have to deal with in the context of their global business operations. The paper argues that existing approaches to responsible leadership research neglect the ethical implications of globalization and the conditions of the current ‘post-national constellation’ (Habermas) in international relations. We review critically the existing concepts of responsible leadership and point to the normative vacuity, justification gaps, and the implementation challenges regarding these concepts. In order to address these issues, we propose a new approach to responsible leadership in global business based on Habermas’s idea of democratic deliberation. This concept provides leadership with a normative orientation when facing complex and heterogeneous business and stakeholder demands. Finally, we discuss how responsible leaders can remain capable of producing morally legitimate decisions within the factual constraints of global business.

Towards a discourse-theoretical account of authority and obligation in the postnational constellation

Normative questions concerning political authority and political obligation are widely seen as central questions of political philosophy. Current global transformations require an innovative response from normative political thinking about these two topics. In light of a concrete example of the supranational forms of authority and obligation that have been and are emerging beyond the national state and beyond the traditional domains of international law, I lay out what has become the standard approach to authority and obligation and indicate why this approach is inadequate in contemporary circumstances. I sketch an alternative approach and suggest how the most promising exemplar of this kind, Habermas’ discourse theory of law and politics, can better deal with the example. Having thus made plausible the advantages of the discourse theory of the alternative approach, I end with an ‘internal’ critique of Habermas’ own recent writings on the global political order.

Habermas y la constelación posnacional

This article aims to explore the definitions and conceptual schemes made by the German sociologist and political thinker Jürgen Habermas regarding the international sphere in general and the future developments of the «Postnational Constellation» of nations, as he calls it, in particular. Therefore, differences between his project and other diagnoses about the current state of foreign affairs and international relations will be dealt with. The State´s historical development will also be analyzed.

Conflicts‐Law Constitutionalism: Ambitions and Problems

Conflicts-law seeks to defend the rule of law and the idea of law-mediated legitimacy in the postnational constellation. The idea of its dimensional differentiation responds to general developments of legal systems, namely the emergence of legal frameworks for regulatory politics and for governance arrangements. These developments have been observed within constitutional democracies and intensively discussed in the 1970s by legal theorists and sociologists, thereafter in the European Union by lawyers and political scientists and finally redetected in the geology of international law. The second dimension conflicts law reflects the need for transnational regulatory politics and provides frameworks for the cooperation of national and supranational administrative bodies. Conflicts law of the third dimension is concerned with the establishment of transnational co-operative arrangements which build upon the participation of nongovernmental actors and epistemic communities. In all of these three dimensions conflicts-law constitutionalism strives for a compensation of normative and regulatory nation state failures, namely the inability of constitutional democracies to include all those affected by their policies into democratic decision-making be it their eroding capacities for an autonomous problem-solving. In all of these respects the approach preserves closer links with the state law and its potential to organise democratic processes and to protect democratic institutions than the advocates of societal constitutionalism. This position is particularly difficult to defend in the third dimension of the conflicts-law approach in view of the self-regulatory activities and capabilities in functionally differentiated societies. The paper will refer at this point to Karl Polanyi's economic sociology and his analysis of the dynamics of capitalism in the late 19th century a double movement of the politically organised disembedding of market mechanisms on the one hand and spontaneous societal moves towards re-domestications which were supported by social policies. In such perspectives markets can be understood instituted processes, as polities and links between the politicisation of the economy and the political system are preserved.

The same as it never was? Uncertainty and the changing contours of international law

AbstractInternational law has changed significantly since the end of the Cold War. As long as the international was thought to be populated by sovereign states predominantly, international law was conceived of as a means for peaceful dispute settlement. That is: the reference to state sovereignty not only divided public from private international law, but structured most of public international law itself; from the very definition of and associated rights and duties to the attribution of responsibility. With the emergence of the post-national constellation, a reduction of law to questions of states' practices is increasingly problematic. At the same time, the post-national constellation denotes more than just a structural shift in the world polity. It challenges established dogmas rooted in an individualistic philosophy of science and thereby calls for a different understanding of how the world is (made) known. What uncertainty has to offer is the provision of a different vocabulary detached from the state through which we can reconsider some changes in international law.

A New Type of Conflicts Law as Constitutional Form in the Postnational Constellation

The ‘conflicts law approach' reconstructs the potential of primarily, but not exclusively, European law to address—‘to compensate'—the threat to democracy that is posed by the concern that citizens would increasingly be subject to the effects of laws which they themselves had not authored. This structural democratic deficit calls for consideration of ‘foreign' demands. It also calls for cooperation and mutual respect between political constituencies. The normative basis for understanding conflicts law as a constitutional form with democratically grounded validity claims stems from the proposition that states must acknowledge or establish a law that provides a forum for foreign demands and manifests deference through transnational rules. Descriptively, the approach sets out to examine three types of conflict constellations—horizontal, vertical and diagonal legal conflicts—and three types of law-mediated responses, layered as the scheme of a ‘three-dimensional conflicts law'. In this special issue, seven articles, including the present, illustrate the problem constellation to which the evolving conflicts law approach responds and discuss problems with, or limitations of, the approach.

Paradigmi per lo studio dell’identità europea

The paper aims to show the main four paradigms of analysis on Europe and its identity elaborated in the last two centuries by the social sciences. For the scholars who proposed them Europe is an indistinct entità for its cultural, political, economical and/or religious characters, especially if it is compared to other cultures. However, one of thes eparadigms, the one based on ethicity and nation, the common and primordial characters are found only in the distinct European ethicities, so that an unitarian demos misses. The second paradigm, the constructivistic one, stresses the definition of the European nations by the élites through a process that could be applied also for the European nation or for the post-national constellation following Habermas. The paradigm of the cultural identity, then, proposes to analyse the foundation of Europe through its history, literature or arts, and the paradigm of the cosmopolitism focuses on the process of construction of a “cosmopolitical” citizenship in a world level, based on human rights: the attention in on the role of Europe.

Globalizing of Administrative Law

What if the same international trade dispute is adjudicated both in a domestic court and in an international tribunal? The conventional view – dualism – may tolerate two conflicting legal conclusions in this situation. However, in the Habermasian postnational constellation, such legal dissonance appears not only normatively troublesome but also practically taxing to global business. Against the backdrop of the recent “double remedies” dispute between the United States and China, this Article seeks to offer a modest solution to this dilemma via a discursive engagement between a domestic court and an international tribunal. The Article argues that the WTO Appellate Body qua trade law adjudicator could have employed the same hermeneutical tool, such as “reasonableness,” adopted by the United States Court of International Trade (USCIT) when the latter reduced the Commerce Department’s discretion over the double remedies issue to null. The Article further views that as such an engagement between a domestic court and an international tribunal, as well as the resultant discursive connection between them, matures and deepens, both courts may form a broader interpretive community, in which they can establish an identifiable pattern of common administrative law principles. This visible, and thus accessible, trans-judicial practice in overlapping issue-areas, such as trade remedy, this Article submits, is a propitious step toward the reconciliation of domestic and international administrative law, and eventually the globalizing of administrative law. The Article concludes that this diffusive and osmotic global administrative law-making process offers a novel dimension of understanding transnational-international law.

Barth and Habermas on the Changing Role of Religion in a Postnational Constellation

Barth and Habermas on the Changing Role of Religion in a Postnational Constellation

A educação na 'Constelação pós-nacional': o enfraquecimento da legitimação e do controle democrático, "expertocrático" e ético-profissional

O presente artigo discute as atuais transformações nos sistemas educacionais em todo o mundo. Tendo como foco a União Europeia (UE) e a Organização para a Cooperação e o Desenvolvimento Econômico (OCDE) como atores de políticas, seu argumento é que tais transformações implicam uma tripla "economização" da política educacional, que pode ser constatada em todos os níveis da área educacional. A importância cada vez maior dessas organizações nas questões educacionais configura uma transição para uma "constelação pós-nacional" também na área educacional, na medida em que a soberania educacional nacional está, no mínimo, passando por reajustes. No entanto, a "economização" das políticas educacionais não se limita a aproximar a educação das necessidades da economia e a transformar seus serviços em mercadorias comercializáveis. Ela também afeta o nível operacional da educação. Uma lógica de produção está sendo implementada na descrição realizada pelas próprias instituições do sistema educacional, que deixaram de ser estabelecimentos burocraticamente administrados para ser concebidos como uma atividade comercial gerencialmente controlada, uma atividade na qual uma ação empresarial se faz necessária. Esse novo tipo de administração faz surgir o problema da legitimação democrática das decisões políticas que, em termos ideais, combina três elementos: o democrático, o "expertocrático" e o ético-profissional. O artigo discute as consequências de uma mudança no equilíbrio desses três elementos no caso da Alemanha.

Sozialstaatlichkeitin Europe? A Conflict-of-Laws Approach to the Law of the EU and the Proceduralisation of Constitutionalisation

“Sozialstaatlichkeit”is a collection of essays dedicated to the author ofNegative Freiheitsrechte und gesellschaftliche Selbstorganisation? Reflections on the survival of welfarism in the postnational constellations after his analyses of globalisation and Europeanisation? Affirmative references to the Discourse Theory of Law and Habermasian notions of Proceduralisation at all levels of governance against “Proceduralisation and its use in a post-modern legal policy?” “Are you trying to deliver something like an Anti-Ladeur.” No, neither Sisyphus nor Hercules, let alone Friedrich Engels, has inspired this essay. Its argument should rather be observed in the spirit of conflict-of-laws,i.e.of a discipline which accepts as a normative fact that different academic projects may be worthwhile despite of, or even because of, the differences of their premises and of the logics of their development, which may be inspired by complementary perceptions of a commonproblématque.

The Constitutionalization of the International Legal Order

A continuing debate within international law research is whether there is an emerging international constitutional order. This journal devoted an issue to this discussion and there have been a number of books and articles written on the subject. Indeed, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas has recently joined the debate by writing an essay entitled (in the English translation) ‘Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance?’ The essay reminds the reader of constitutionalism's original philosophical roots in Kantian cosmopolitanism. Habermas argues that the world dominated by nation-states ‘is indeed in transition towards the postnational constellation of a global society’. He contrasts this vision with the realist opinion that the taming of political power through law is only possible within a sovereign state and with a more recent view postulating a vision of a liberal world order under the banner of Pax Americana. In support of the Habermas position, it can be argued that as a result of the UN 60th Anniversary Summit's adoption of the international norm of ‘the responsibility to protect’, there is a trend towards constitutional values in our international system. As Anne Peters states, ‘[t]he most fundamental norms might represent global constitutional law.’

Moral Education and Cosmopolitanism

The central problem of citizenship and political culture in the `postnational constellation' is the cultivation and institutionalization of cosmopolitanism as a political identity. The cultivation of citizenship in the postnational constellation echoes the problem Durkheim confronted at the turn of the twentieth century, when he faced the task of developing a systematic programme of moral education as a basis for social solidarity in a secular national French republic; a programme that would perform the same functions of social integration previously organized in terms of a religious discourse. While nationalism provided a discourse of political identification throughout the twentieth century, critical theory and psychoanalysis (for example, the Frankfurt School's studies in prejudice and the authoritarian personality) have shown how nationalism has now become a problematic basis for political identification and citizenship. This article explores Habermas's and Beck's present problem through an examination of Kant and Durkheim. It suggests that an appropriate pedagogical model of cosmopolitanism, one that combines elements of transcendental and situated reason, may be found in Joyce's representation of Leopold Bloom; a pedagogical representation wherein transcendental ideals grounded in universal reason are combined with various discursive and communicative encounters with the Other, in cosmopolitanizing experiences of the workplace and organizational life, international travel and migration, and urban neighbourhoods and milieus.

Adapting to Transnational Terrorism: The UN Security Council's Evolving Approach to Terrorism

During the 1990s, and particularly since 9/11, state-sponsored terrorism gradually declined, while transnational terrorism, which largely operates without direct state support and features cross-border network structures and a greater propensity to mass-casualty attacks, has gained in importance. Setting out from this observation, the purpose of this article is to examine whether the UN Security Council (SC) has adapted to transnational terrorism and, if so, how. Providing a systematic and theory-guided comparison of the SC's approach to these different types of terrorism, the article shows that, contrary to common considerations, the SC did adapt to transnational terrorism. The SC applied sanctions against terrorists and committed every state to instituting far-reaching generic counter-terrorism measures. Moreover, in an unprecedented way, it made use of managerial compliance strategies to foster implementation. In this way, the SC adapted to transnational terrorism by demanding more from states and intervening deeper into their domestic realm, while at the same time offering more support with respect to implementation. While such an approach is unlikely to become common SC practice in the short term, it is nevertheless symptomatic of a broader trend in the evolution of governance patterns in the post-national constellation today.

Citizenship and consumption

List of Illustrations List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: K.Soper & F.Trentmann PART 1: RETRIEVAL Civic Choices: Retrieving Perspectives on Rationality, Consumption, and Citizenship M.Bevir & F.Trentmann Consumption and Politics in Twentieth-Century China K.Gerth Sartorial Manoeuvres in the Dusk: Blue Jeans in Socialist Hungary F.Hammer PART 2: TALK AND ACTION Consuming without Paying: Stealing or Campaigning? The Civic Implications of Civil Disobedience around Access to Water B.Morgan The Banality of Consumption M.Hilton 'Public Connection' and the Uncertain Norms of Media Consumption N.Couldry, S.Livingstone & T.Markham The Moral Force of Consumption and Capitalism: Anti-Slavery and Anti-Sweatshop M.Micheletti PART 3: PROSPECTS Exit Homo Politicus , Enter Homo Consumens Z.Bauman Consumer Citizenship in Post-national Constellations? M.Everson & C.Joerges Sustainability, Well-being and Consumption: The Limits of Hedonic Approaches J.O'Neill 'Alternative Hedonism' and the Citizen-Consumer K.Soper Index

Consumer Citizenship in Postnational Constellations?

Book synopsis: This book provides a timely forum for current thinking on consumption and citizenship, exploring overlaps and tensions between them. Experts from history, theory, media studies, law, and civil society, retrieve alternative traditions of consumption and citizenship in West and East, and evaluate the civic prospects of consumption for the future.