Legitimacy and the State in Cosmopolitan and Republican Politics

Abstract

While there exist significant points of divergence between cosmopolitanism and republicanism in their respective responses to the tensions arising within contemporary legitimacy politics and the role for the state therein, it is significant that there remains agreement that there is an efficient role for the state in the global politics of legitimation, an efficiency that actively responds to the tensions in legitimacy that characterize global politics. In this respect, it is noteworthy that the state—in both cosmopolitan and republican politics—shoulders responsibility not only towards its own formally assigned population, but further functions as an agency culpable in solutions to more globally oriented problems: as bearing the burden of responsibility to peoples whose own states fail. The state—cosmopolitan and republican—is a global agent with glocalized and globalized responsibilities.