Political Pluralism and the State: Beyond Sovereignty

236 Pages·2008·1.562 MB·English

by  Marcel Wissenburg

Political Pluralism and the State
The concept of a sovereign nation-state is a central part of many debates
discussing the salient issues in political science today. Yet the debate on the
stateisfragmentedand,whilethesub-disciplineswithinpoliticalscienceaddress
the various possible consequences of different processes, the one thing they
all share is uncertainty about the future shape and role of the state.
Political Pluralism and the State is the first work in political theory to
bring together approaches from international relations, comparative politics
and political theory to analyze the post-sovereign state and develop a new
interpretative scheme for social and political scientists. This scheme takes
account not only of the fragmentation of the polity but also of the often
ignored concurrent fragmentation of society. The book seeks to understand
and interpret political pluralization as an expression of the continuous pro-
cesses of cooperation and secession that define politics and legitimize insti-
tutions. It develops an alternative, sovereignty-free conception of the ‘polis’
that is sensitive to these unavoidable processes, and assesses the viability of
liberal-democratic ideals in a radically pluralizedworld.
Thisbookwillbeofinteresttostudentsandscholarsinphilosophy,politics,
politicaleconomy,internationalrelations,sociologyandothersocialsciences.
MarcelWissenburgisProfessorofPoliticalTheoryattheRadboudUniversity
Nijmegen and Socrates Professor of Humanist Philosophy at Wageningen
University, the Netherlands.
Routledge Innovations in Political Theory
1 A Radical Green Political 9 Civil Society and Democratic
Theory Theory
Alan Carter Alternative voices
Gideon Baker
2 Rational Woman
A feminist critique of dualism 10 Ethics and Politics in
Raia Prokhovnik Contemporary Theory
Between critical theory and
3 Rethinking State Theory post-marxism
Mark J. Smith Mark Devenney
4 Gramsci and Contemporary 11 Citizenship and Identity
Politics Towards a new republic
Beyond pessimism of the John Schwarzmantel
intellect
Anne Showstack Sassoon 12 Multiculturalism, Identity and
Rights
5 Post-Ecologist Politics Edited by Bruce Haddock
Social theory and the and Peter Sutch
abdication of the ecologist
paradigm 13 Political Theory of Global
Ingolfur Blühdorn Justice
A cosmopolitan case for the
6 Ecological Relations world state
Susan Board Luis Cabrera
7 The Political Theory of Global 14 Democracy, Nationalism and
Citizenship Multiculturalism
April Carter Edited by Ramón Maiz
and Ferrán Requejo
8 Democracy and National
Pluralism 15 Political Reconciliation
Edited by Ferran Requejo Andrew Schaap
16 National Cultural Autonomy and 24 The International Political
Its Contemporary Critics Thought of Carl Schmitt
Edited by Ephraim Nimni Terror, liberal war and the crisis
of global order
17 Power and Politics in Edited by Louiza Odysseos and
Poststructuralist Fabio Petito
Thought
New theories of the political 25 In Defense of Human Rights
Saul Newman A non-religious grounding in a
pluralistic world
18 Capabilities Equality Ari Kohen
Basic issues and problems
Edited by Alexander Kaufman 26 Logics of Critical Explanation in
Social and Political Theory
19 Morality and Nationalism Jason Glynos and David
Catherine Frost Howarth
20 Principles and Political Order 27 Political Constructivism
The challenge of diversity Peri Roberts
Edited by Bruce Haddock,
Peri Roberts and Peter Sutch 28 The New Politics of Masculinity
Men, power and resistance
21 European Integration and the Fidelma Ashe
Nationalities Question
Edited by John McGarry 29 Citizens and the State
and Michael Keating Attitudes in Western Europe
and East and Southeast Asia
22 Deliberation, Social Takashi Inoguchi and
Choice and Absolutist Jean Blondel
Democracy
David van Mill 30 Political Language and
Metaphor
23 Sexual Justice / Cultural Interpreting and changing the
Justice world
Critical perspectives in political Edited by Terrell Carver
theory and practice and Jernej Pikalo
Edited by Barbara Arneil,
Monique Deveaux, 31 Political Pluralism and the State
Rita Dhamoon and Beyond sovereignty
Avigail Eisenberg Marcel Wissenburg

Political Pluralism and the State
Beyond sovereignty
Marcel Wissenburg
Firstpublished2009
byRoutledge
2ParkSquareMiltonParkAbingdonOxonOX144RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
byRoutledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
©2009MarcelWissenburg
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproduced
orutilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,
nowknownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,
or in any infor mation storage or retrieval system, without per mission in
writingfromthepublishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Wissenburg,M.L.J.(MarcelL.J.)
Politicalpluralismandthestate:beyondsovereignty/Marcel
Wissenburg.
p.cm.–(Routledgeinnovationsinpoliticstheory;31)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Sovereignty.2.Pluralism(Socialsciences)I.Title.
JC327.W572008
320.1'5–dc22
2008002202
ISBN 0-203-89411-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-46739-x (hbk)
ISBN10:0-203-89411-1(ebk)
ISBN13:978-0-415-46739-1(hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-89411-8 (ebk)
Contents
List of Illustrations viii
Preface ix
1 Introduction 1
2 Political pluralization 13
3 The need to interfere 41
4 Principles, discord and concord 61
5 Sustainability as a policy telos 80
6 Beyond political principles 96
7 Alexandrism 111
8 The new polis 130
9 Citizenship in the metropolis 147
10 The princes of industry 168
11 Harmony and political pluralization 183
Notes 194
Bibliography 202
Index 212
Illustrations
Tables
3.1 Rough identity of client-producer preferences 46
3.2 A perverse innovation game 47
3.3 Aggressive conservatism 48
3.4 Constrained innovation 48
5.1 Four types of political concern for the environment 86
5.2 Scales representing types of sustainability 87
5.3 Decision tree from liberal democratic perspective 89
5.4 Decision tree including conceptions of sustainable development 90
Figures
8.1 Classic sovereign nation-state 143
8.2 Metropolis 144
Preface
Professionalandpersonalinterestshaveaweirdwayofinteracting.Bothasa
genealogist and as a political theorist, I enjoyed discovering at night how
some of my ancestors’ lives and actions illustrated the ideas I was working
on in daylight. As chief representative of the city of Delft in the States of
Holland in 1535, Hugo van den Eynde (1488–1566) got away with calling
the imperial inquisitor ‘a murderer, a bigamist and a traitor to his country’
fortryingtoimplementapapalbullagainstLutherans.Hugo’spointwasnot
that he lovedLutherans but thatthe inquisitor mixedobligations to emperor
and pope. His son, Jacob II van den Eynde (1515–69), advocate (roughly,
president) of the States (roughly, parliament) of Holland, died in Spanish
custody for defying the authority of king and emperor (whose interests his
father still saw as congruent with those of the country) by calling the States
to meet without imperial order whenever Jacob felt the country needed it.
Hugo and Jacob were supporting actors in the early stages of processes they
could not possibly oversee: the shattering of the unity of the Universal
Mother Church; the secession of an ever-changing coalition of counties and
citiesfromtheequallyuniversalHolyRomanEmpire;thecontinuouscreation
and disintegration of those coalitions and behind that, the coalition-building
of and feuds among aristocratic, commercial and religious associations; and
finally–aconsequencenooneforesaw–thereplacementofthesovereignby
the States of the United Provinces, by provincial States and by local autho-
rities alike, an initially temporary arrangement that was to last for centuries
since no-one actually needed a sovereign. And that is exactly the message of
this book: no one needs a sovereign – not then and not now. We can live
with the apparent disorder of fragmenting state authority, disintegrating
states, globalization, sub-national and public–private cooperation; we should
acknowledge it not as the end of things but as the beginning of apotentially
glorious future in which autonomy and emancipation slowly gnaw away at
human submission.
The book before you has evolved over a period of almost seven years, in
between other research projects, out of a collection of questions initially
united only by the idea that politics may change shape and context, but
never its substance. The questions to which that idea gave rise found their