Global Citizenship, Global Civil Disobedience, and Political Vices

Abstract

: Theorists have increasingly argued that some principled law breaking which crosses territorial or citizenship boundaries should be understood as trans-state or global civil disobedience. This chapter focuses on violations of law by international activists, and also asylum seekers and economic migrants who enter a state without authorization. It analyzes their actions as potentially corrective and institutionally constructive practices within a framework of global citizenship. It also argues, however, that most such acts which cross state boundaries cannot be strictly characterized as civil disobedience. That is because civil disobedience is standardly framed as a response to a vice of political recalcitrance, where majorities or dominant power holders recognize the formally equal political standing of all persons in a polity but ignore some groups’ input and interests in decision making. By contrast, most trans-state acts are more aptly understood as responses to political arrogance. It involves a more wholesale and inappropriate rejection of persons’ standing to give input or lodge formal challenges. An implication is that forms of cross-border law breaking such as conscientious evasion which do not meet the strict requirements of civil disobedience could be justifiable. Reasons are offered to think that most unauthorized entry can be understood as justifiable global conscientious evasion.