From:

The Enablers of Transnational Progressivism

Is the Nation-State Threatened?

By John Fonte

... Expanded Taxonomy

"In my expanded taxonomy transnational progressivism is one part of an overall global governance project that consists of four forces. Besides the transnational progressives, there are transnational pragmatists, regime super-sessionists, and extreme libertarians (who sometimes unwittingly advance political transnationalism). . . .

Regime Supersessionists (Harnessing and Transforming Gulliver)

Applying the controversial supersessionist concept from religion to political systems, global governance replaces (supersedes) the democratic nation-state as a higher form of political regime, a higher stage in the evolution of human politics. Regime supersessionists would say, the nation state (including the American political order, Britain’s parliamentary democracy) were progressive during their heyday, but are no longer adequate to address global problems; therefore, a new global political architecture (including new forms of sovereignty) is required.

For the regime supersessionists the nation-state continues to exist and (under the principle of subsidiarity) performs many useful functions, however, it is relegated to a subordinate status in a normative and instrumental hierarchy, inferior to “global governance.” In this view, like the superseded religion, the nation-state would continue to exist as something that is incomplete and inferior, just as state or provincial governments continue to exist in federal systems.

Among major supersessionist thinkers we should list Anne Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. In an attempt to answer critics who object to global governance by what the UN leadership describes as “global civil society” (or unelected NGOs, officials of international organizations, global corporate elites, private actors, etc.), in her A New Global Order, Slaughter proposed a world political system based on trans-governmental networks. She insists that "Global governance is not world government." Slaughter argues the world of “unitary states” as described by James Madison in Federalist 42 has been replaced by the new world of "disaggregated states". She writes:

“In US Constitutional law, for instance the Supreme Court and the President have often had recourse to James Madison’s famous pronouncement in the Federalist papers: ‘If we are to be one nation in any respect, it clearly ought to be in respect to other nations.’ ”

Nevertheless, Slaughter declares we should no longer be “handicapped by the conceptual lens of the unitary state,” as Madison and most international relations scholarship have traditional described it. Instead, Slaughter advocates the concept of the “disaggregated” state both horizontally (e.g., American judges, regulators, and legislators coordinating joint policies with their foreign counterparts) and vertically (nations ceding sovereignty to supra-national institutions in cases requiring global solutions to global problems). An example given of the latter is the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Slaughter argues that global government networks “can perform many of the functions of a world government--legislation, administration, and adjudication--without the form.” Therefore, a “world order out of horizontal and vertical networks could create a genuine global rule of law, without centralized global institutions, that could encourage, support, and constrain government officials of every type in every nation.”

The anticipated supersession of the democratic nation-state by transnationalism that Anne Marie Slaughter conveys indirectly with her verbal somersaults about "disaggregated states" and "horizontal-vertical networks," is put more bluntly by leading international law professor Peter Spiro, who writes as follows: “features of globalization may result in at least a partial subordination of the Constitution to international norms;" further, “federal constitutional law may come in the future to resemble the role of state constitutional law today—of significance, yes, but clearly of secondary importance in the broader norms system.” . . .

John Fonte is a senior fellow and director of Hudson's Center for American Common Culture.

October 4, 2006

Paper delivered for US-UK New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit sponsored conference in Winchester, England September 28-29, 2006

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=4232

The Hudson Institute

May 14, 2008

Global Governance vs. the Liberal Democratic Nation-State: What Is the Best Regime?

By John Fonte

"Who Governs?" . . .

"In the coming years of the twenty-first century the ideology, institutions, and forces of "global governance" will directly challenge the legitimacy and authority of the liberal democratic nation-state and American constitutional sovereignty. What is this ideology, what are these institutions and forces, and how do they challenge liberal democracy and American sovereignty? To begin to examine these issues let us start with the primary questions of politics.

Who governs? To whom is political authority responsible? How are rulers chosen? How are rulers replaced? How is the power of rulers limited? How are laws made? How can bad laws be changed? These are the perennial questions of politics. As Plato and Aristotle inquired: what is the "best regime"? . . .

"The concept of "pooled" or "shared national sovereignty" is central to the thinking of the transnational elites who are promoting global governance. This is an idea we will be hearing about over and again in the decades to come. Talbott's endorsement of the principle of "shared sovereignty" suggests that his interpretation of "multilateralism" is, in effect, a means of fostering transnational authority.

Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs at Princeton University Anne-Marie Slaughter could be described as the "John Bolton of the left." She would in all likelihood be appointed to a top foreign policy post in a future left-of-center administration. Slaughter has envisioned a system of global governance based on "trans-governmental networks."

Slaughter argues that nation-states should cede a degree of sovereignty to transnational networks "horizontally" and supranational institutions "vertically." Horizontally, means, for example, that American judges would interact with foreign judges, quote each other's opinions, and develop joint legal doctrine (what she calls "trans-judicialism"). Vertically, she argues that nations should cede sovereign authority to supranational institutions in cases requiring global solutions to global problems, such as the International Criminal Court.[25] In this way, Slaughter maintains that global government networks "can perform many of the functions of a world government—legislation, administration, and adjudication—without the form," thereby, creating a genuine global rule of law.[26] . . . "

NOTES

[25] Anne Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 12-35.

[26] Slaughter, A New World Order, p 4.

This essay was prepared for the 2008 Bradley Symposium, "Encounter at 10: The Power of Ideas," to be held on June 4, 2008 at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC. The symposium is co-sponsored by Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal and Encounter Books.

Encounter at 10: The Power of Ideas

The 2008 Bradley Symposium

June 4, 2008

Visit http://pcr.hudson.org for more information.

John Fonte is a senior fellow and director of Hudson's Center for American Common Culture.

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