Supranationalism

Even as nationalism completed its task of constructing a world of independent nation-states, supranational bodies emerged in growing number to challenge their authority. A supranational body is one which exercises jurisdiction not over any single state but within an international area comprising several states. While the twentieth century had seen national sovereignty treated as an almost sacred principle, as well as the virtually universal acceptance that political life should be organized around the nation, the twenty-first century may see government operating on an increasingly supranational level. There is, however, nothing new about supranational political systems, indeed these long predate the modern nation-state and could be regarded historically as the most traditional form of political organization.

The most common supranational bodies have been empires, ranging from the ancient empires of Eygpt, China, Persia and Rome to the modern European empires of Britain, France, Portugal and Holland. Empires are structures of political domination, comprising a diverse collection of cultures, ethnic groups and nationalities, held together by force or the threat of force. Although colonies continue to exist – for example, Tibet’s subordination to China – the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought to an end the last of the major empires, the Russian empire. Modern supranational bodies, by contrast, have a very different character. They have developed by voluntary agreement amongst states, either out of a recognition of the advantages which international cooperation will bring or in the hope of gaining security in the face of a common threat or danger. In that sense, the advance of supranationalism reflects the growing impact of globalization. The supranational bodies that this process has generated have, however, varied considerably. In most cases, they merely serve to facilitate intergovernmental cooperation, allowing states to work together and perhaps undertake concerted action but without sacrificing national independence. In a growing number of cases, however, they have devel-oped collective institutions and bureaucratic apparatuses, and acquired the ability to impose their will upon member states. Such bodies are best thought of as international federations. The emergence of more powerful international institutions and the progressive globalization of modern life have led some to suggest that we are now on the verge of realizing the highest form of supranationalism: a global state or some kind of world government.

Intergovernmentalism

Intergovernmentalism is the weakest form of supranational cooperation; it encompasses any form of state interaction which preserves the indepen-dence and sovereignty of each nation. The most common form of intergovernmentalism is treaties or alliances, the simplest of which involve bilateral agreements between states. In some cases, these have resulted from a desire to achieve economic development, as in the series of treaties in mid-nineteenth-century Europe through which free trade was spread by mutual reductions in tariff levels. Since 1948, GATT and, since 1995, the WTO have provided a forum within which tariffs and other forms of protectionism can be reduced or removed by negotiation amongst signatory states. The goal of establishing a tariff-free trading zone was the inspiration behind the founding of the European Economic Commu-nity and the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), encompassing the USA, Canada and Mexico. However, alliances have more commonly been formed in a search for mutual security against a perceived aggressor. The years leading up to 1914, for example, saw Europe divided into two rival alliances: the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy, confronting the Triple Entente, composed of Britain, France and Russia. During the inter-war period, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy entered into the Rome–Berlin Axis (1936) which expanded to incorporate Japan in the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1937. In the aftermath of the Second World War rival alliance systems developed in the form of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact, formed in 1949 and 1955 respectively, and in other regional defence alliances such as the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The terms of such alliances have, of course, varied considerably. They have ranged from little more than an expression of common principles, as in the case of the Axis between Germany and Italy, to an agreement in specified circumstances to undertake concerted and coordinated military action, which is provided for by the joint NATO command organization.

Such treaties and alliances are highly specific: they involve agreement on a particular area of policy-making, whether economic or military, and rarely address general or broader issues. Moreover, in signing such treaties states do not formally surrender national sovereignty. Treaties are signed and alliances are made in pursuit of national interests; states are therefore only likely to fulfil their obligations if they perceive that the treaty continues to reflect these interests, there being no institutional means of treaty enforcement. This was evident in the case of Italy in 1914, which, despite being a member of the Triple Alliance, did not go to war alongside Germany and Austria, but instead entered the war in 1915 on the side of the Entente powers. Similarly, in 1958 France withdrew its troops from NATO, not wanting them to be subject to the joint command structure. The central weakness of this form of supranationalism is that progress towards international cooperation is restricted to those areas where mutual trust exists and where national interests clearly coincide. This can be seen in the faltering progress made by arms control in the four decades following the Second World War. Ideological distrust between the USA and the Soviet Union and the rivalry inherent in a bipolar world order, and reflected in the cold war, rendered such intergovernmental solutions ineffective and allowed the arms race to reach new heights.

Other forms of intergovernmentalism have involved not just bilateral treaties and alliances but broader agreements among a number of states to construct leagues or confederations. Leagues existed in ancient times, for example, the Achaean and Aetolian Leagues in Greece; in modern times the most famous has been the League of Nations, formed in 1919. In 1991, upon the disintegration of the Soviet Union, twelve of its former republics moved to found the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Leagues or confederations encompass a collection of states which agree to abide by a founding treaty or charter, usually in the hope of gaining strategic or economic advantages. The League of Nations was the first great experi-ment in supranational government in the twentieth century. In the hope of its leading proponent, US President Woodrow Wilson, the League would replace the ‘power politics’ of international rivalry, aggression and expansion, by a process of negotiation and arbitration which would make possible the peaceful settlement of international disputes. The League of Nations, nevertheless, proved to be quite incapable of checking the rampant and aggressive nationalism of the period.

In the first place, the League was weakened by the fact that it was never genuinely a ‘league of nations’. Despite Wilson’s efforts, the USA did not become a member; Germany, defeated in the First World War, was admitted to the League only in 1926 and resigned from it once Hitler took power in 1933; Japan walked out of the League in 1932 after criticism of its invasion of Manchuria. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, did not join until 1934, after Germany and Japan had departed. Furthermore, the League found it difficult to take decisive action: decisions taken in its Council had to receive unanimous support and, without a military force of its own to enforce its will, the League was forced to rely upon economic sanctions, which were widely flouted. The successes of the League of Nations were therefore confined to resolving minor disputes between small states; the League was little more than a powerless spectator as Japan, Italy and Germany embarked upon the programmes of rearmament and military expansionism that eventually led to war in 1939.

International confederations have proved to be more common. These have often been regional organizations designed to promote common political, social and economic ends, for instance, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Organization of American States and OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). In other cases, such organizations have had no distinct geographical character at all, as in the case of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Devel-opment), which represents the world’s industrially most advanced states. The Commonwealth of Nations, an organization of former British colonies and successor to the British Empire, is also geographically diffuse, covering the Caribbean, Asia, Australasia, Europe and Africa. Confed-erations are voluntary associations whose members continue to enjoy sovereign power. Although confederations may develop permanent head-quarters and bureaucratic staffs, they rarely possess an effective executive authority. In effect, confederations offer nothing more than a forum for consultation, deliberation and negotiation. Their value is that they enable states to undertake coordinated action, very clearly exemplified by OPEC’s ability since the 1970s to regulate the price of oil.

However, as member states retain their independence, continue to retain control over defence and diplomacy, and are very reluctant to be bound by majority decisions, confederations have rarely been able to undertake united and effective action. This was evident in the inability of the OAU and the Commonwealth of Nations to exert concerted pressure upon South Africa in the period before 1994 for the removal of apartheid, which therefore amounted to little more than diplomatic condemnation and faltering attempts to establish economic sanctions. Such weaknesses have encouraged some confederations to transform themselves into federal states, possessed of a stronger central authority. Precisely this happened in the case of the 13 former British colonies in North America, which declared independence in 1776 and joined together in a loose common-wealth under the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1777. The newly independent states, however, soon became aware of the need for joint diplomatic recognition and the advantages of closer economic ties. Consequently, they founded a federal republic, the United States of America, through the framing of the US Constitution in 1787. Similarly, the federal states which developed in Germany and Switzerland both started life as confederations of independent states. In the case of the CIS, conflicts between the newly independent states, and a common desire to avoid creating a successor to the Soviet Union, soon meant that it fell into abeyance.

Federalism and federations

Federalism involves the division of law-making power between a central body and a number of territorial units. Each level of government is allocated a range of duties, powers and functions, specified by some kind of constitutional document. Sovereignty is therefore divided between the centre and the periphery as, at least in theory, neither level of government may encroach upon the powers of the other. Traditionally, federalism has been applied to the organization of state power: central or federal government is in effect the national government, as occurs, for instance, in the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Switzerland and India; peripheral government therefore constitutes some form of state, provincial or regional government. As a result, federal states may be regarded as sovereign and independent entities in international affairs even though sovereign power is divided within their borders; they possess external sovereignty though lack an internally sovereign body or level of government. However, during the twentieth century federalism developed from being a principle applied exclusively to the internal organization of the state into one been applied increasingly to supranational bodies.

The most advanced example of an international federation is the European Union (EU), the core of which is the European Community (EC), created in 1967 through the fusion of three existing European organizations: the European Coal and Steel Community, which had come into being in 1952, and the Atomic Energy Community and European Economic Community (EEC), which were established by the Treaty of Rome (1957). In the aftermath of the Second World War, powerful political, economic and strategic considerations pointed in the direction of European integration, and this goal was often understood in clearly federal terms, Winston Churchill envisaging as early as 1946 ‘a kind of United States of Europe’. Politically, European countries wished to ensure that there would be no repeat of 1914 and 1939, when European conflicts had devastated the continent and spilled over into world war. Economic-ally, there was a strong desire for international cooperation and trade to rebuild a Europe ravaged by war. Strategically, many in Europe felt threatened by the expansion of Soviet power into Eastern Europe in the late 1940s, and by the prospect that Europe would become irrelevant in the emerging bipolar world order.

The EU is a very difficult political organization to categorize. In strict terms, it is no longer a confederation of independent states operating on the basis of intergovernmentalism (as the EEC and EC were at their inception). The sovereignty of member states was enshrined in the so-called ‘Luxembourg compromise’ of 1966. This accepted the general practice of unanimous voting in the Council of Ministers, and granted each member state an outright veto on matters threatening vital national interests. As a result of the Single European Act (1986) and the Treaty of European Union or Maastricht treaty (1993), however, the practice of qualified majority voting, which allows even the largest states to be outvoted, was applied to a range of policy areas, thereby narrowing the scope of the national veto. This trend was compounded by the fact that EU law is binding upon all member states and that the power of certain EU bodies has expanded at the expense of national governments. The result is a political body that has both intergovernmental and federal features, the former evident in the Council of Ministers and the latter primarily in the European Commission and the Court of Justice. The EU may not yet have created a ‘federal Europe’, but because of the superiority of European law over the national law of member states, it is perhaps accurate to talk of a ‘federalizing’ Europe.

The process of European integration has, however, stimulated deep divisions and wide-ranging debate. On the one hand, some have remained fiercely loyal to the principle of national sovereignty, believing that it embodies the best opportunity for achieving democratic self-government. This was best reflected in the 1960s in the vision of French president, Charles de Gaulle, of a ‘Europe des patries’, a Europe within which member states would continue to retain the right to veto decisions they considered a threat to vital national interests. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher took up the same theme, dismissing as folly in her famous Bruges speech in 1988 moves towards the creation of a ‘United States of Europe’. De Gaulle’s and Thatcher’s vision of Europe is therefore one of independent nation-states, a confederal not a federal Europe. From this point of view a European ‘super-state’ will never enjoy broad public support, and the attempt to establish what Thatcher called an ‘identikit European personality’ will only serve to undermine national cultures and identities.

On the other hand, the goal of a federal Europe has been openly embraced by many politicians within the EU on both economic and political grounds. The economic benefits of closer integration are linked to the stimulus to growth and investment which will follow from the creation of a larger market with few restrictions upon commercial activity. From this perspective, the introduction of a single European currency in 1999 and the expansion of the EU into the world’s largest trading bloc should underpin growth and prosperity. In political terms, European integration offers the advantages of cosmopolitanism, reflected either in growing understanding and tolerance among the peoples of Europe, who nevertheless retain their distinctive national identities, or in the emergence of a supranational, European political culture which somehow incorpo-rates the various national traditions. What is clear, however, is that the momentum towards European unity can be sustained only if Europe, or at least the EU, is regarded by its peoples as a meaningful political entity.

The genius of the nation-state was that political rule was underpinned by social cohesion: government was legitimate because it was exercised within what was thought to be a natural or organic community. Nations have a number of clear advantages in this respect, being, in most cases, bound together by a common culture, language, traditions and so forth. Supranational entities, like regions or continents, must seek to develop political solidarity among peoples who speak different languages, practise different religions, and are bound to very different traditions and cultures. In short, nationalism must give way to some form of supranationalism or internationalism. The difficulty of achieving this was underlined by the sometimes tortuous process of ratifying the Maastricht treaty. This was only achieved in France, previously thought to be one of the strongest supporters of European unity, by the slimmest possible referendum result; and in Denmark it took a second referendum to demonstrate public support for the treaty. In the UK where no referendum was held, in part because it was likely to produce the ‘wrong’ result, Parliament only ratified Maastricht after the government declared the issue to be a matter of confidence and threatened to call a general election if defeated. What is clear is that if further European integration takes place without broad popular support this is likely to provoke a nationalist backlash against institutions that are not perceived to exercise legitimate authority; and this form of nationalism is likely to be resentful, insular and possibly aggressive.

Prospects of World Government 

World government would be the highest form of supranational organiza-tion. It looks to the construction of a global state which would stand above all other states, national and supranational. Indeed, strictly speaking, it would render both the nation-state and the supranational state mean-ingless, in that neither would any longer enjoy sovereign power. Two, sharply contrasting, models of such a body have been envisaged. The first is embodied in the notion of world domination by a single, all-powerful state. In some respects, imperial Rome established such an empire in ancient times, at least within what for them was the ‘known’ world. In the twentieth century, Germany under Adolf Hitler embarked upon a programme of expansion which, if Hitler’s writings are to be taken seriously, ultimately aimed to establish Aryan world domination. Such a world empire, like all earlier empires, could only be held together by military domination, and from what is known of the potency of nationalism it is doubtful that this form of world government could ever establish a stable and enduring existence.

The second model of world government would, in effect, be a ‘state of states’. Immanuel Kant developed what amounted to an early version of world government in his proposal for a ‘league of nations’. Formed through voluntary agreement, by some form of international social contract, such a global state could develop the kind of federal structure which the USA and the EU already possess. Existing nation-states would, in other words, become peripheral institutions, enabling nations to retain their separate identities and to control their own internal affairs. However, central government in the form of the global state would be responsible for international affairs, coordinating economic interaction, arbitrating in cases of disputes among nations and providing collective security for all peoples of the world. For a global state of this kind to be viable it would need, as all states do, to monopolize the means of legitimate violence within its territorial jurisdiction, or at least have access to greater military power than is possessed by any individual state. This vision of ordered rule extending throughout the world provided the inspiration for both the League of Nations and the United Nations.

The argument for world government is clear and familiar. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, political thinkers argued the case for government by envisaging what life would be like in a ‘state of nature’, a stateless society. They suggested that if individuals were not constrained by enforceable laws, social life would quickly descend into chaos, disorder and, ultimately, civil war. They concluded, therefore, that rational individuals would willingly enter into a social contract to establish a system of law and government which alone could guarantee orderly existence. During this period, human societies were relatively small, and it made sense to invest power in the hands of national governments. However, since the nineteenth century a genuinely international society has come into existence through an increase in travel and tourism, the internationalization of economic life and, facilitated by modern technol-ogy, widespread media, cultural and intellectual exchanges among nations. In such circumstances, social contract theory can be re-cast. Without some form of global state, the world order will degenerate into what G.L. Dickinson (1926), in the light of the First World War, called ‘international anarchy’, each individual state being bent on pursuing its selfish national interests. The absence of a sovereign international power is a recipe for chaos, disorder and, as the twentieth century twice demonstrated, world war. Individual states will therefore realize, just as did individuals in the state of nature, that their interests are best served by the establishment of a supreme authority, which in this case would take the form of a global state.

Clearly, however, major obstacles stand in the way of such a develop-ment. Perhaps the most crucial of these is the irony that the power politics which makes some form of world government so desirable also threatens to make it impossible to achieve. Economically powerful and militarily strong states undoubtedly reap benefits within an anarchic international order and may be very reluctant to concede power to a higher, suprana-tional authority. This can be seen in the case of the United Nations, the most advanced experiment in world government so far attempted. The UN is a difficult organization to characterize. Like the League of Nations which it replaced, the UN is dedicated to the maintenance of international peace and security, and to fostering international cooperation in solving political, economic, social and humanitarian problems. It has, however, been far more successful than the League in establishing itself as a genuinely world body, comprising almost all the world’s independent states. The UN has undoubtedly achieved a number of successes, but for much of its history it has been virtually paralysed by power politics. The UN has authorized military action on only two occasions, in Korea in 1950 and against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. During the bipolar cold war period, the USA and the Soviet Union often took opposing positions, thus preventing the Security Council from taking decisive action. In the present unipolar world order, the USA has shown itself to be unwilling to allow the UN to constrain its freedom of action, as in its decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The possibility that the UN could develop into some form of global state is clearly dependent upon the development of a very high level of international trust and cooperation. This must, moreover, apply not only at the state level, among national politicians, but also at the level of ordinary people, among national populations. Just as the success of supranational federations ultimately requires that they are perceived to be legitimate political associations, so world government will be impossible to establish unless the concept of world citizenship becomes meaningful and attractive. This vision is one which supporters of ‘universalist’ creeds such as liberalism (see p. 29) and socialism are drawn to because they have traditionally looked beyond the nation and proclaimed the importance of human rights or a common humanity. However, so long as nationalism continues to exert a potent appeal, the prospect of a global state, underpinned by the idea of world citizenship, will remain a utopian dream.

Summary

1 Sovereignty means absolute and unlimited power. This may, however, take the form of legal sovereignty, ultimate legal authority, or political sovereignty, unchallengeable coercive power. Internal sovereignty refers to the location

of a final authority within the state. Although much of political theory in-volves a debate about where such sovereignty should be located, the idea may be inapplicable to fragmented and pluralistic modern societies.

2 External sovereignty refers to a state’s autonomy in international affairs. Fused with the idea of democratic government, this has developed into the principle of national sovereignty, embodying the ideals of independence and self-government. Critics nevertheless argue that in view of the internationalization of many areas of modern life, the idea may now be redundant or, since it gives a state exclusive jurisdiction over its people, dangerous.

3 The nation is a cultural entity, reflecting a sense of linguistic, religious, ethnic or historical unity: the nation-state therefore offers the prospect of both cultural cohesion and political unity. However, although its significance may be overstated, globalization in its various forms has created a web of interconnectedness that alters both the character of the nation-state and

the nature of global politics.

4 Supranational forms of rule have developed to enable states to take concerted action and to cooperate for mutual benefit. In the form of inter-governmentalism – treaties, alliances and confederations – national security can be preserved. However, in federal international bodies sovereignty is divided between supranational institutions and member states. The success of such bodies depends on their ability to establish legitimacy and com-mand popular allegiance, ultimately their ability to transcend political nationalism by fostering cosmpolitanism.

Further Reading

Booth, K. and Smith, S. (eds) International Political Theory Today. Cambridge:

Polity Press, 1995.

Brown, D. Contemporary Nationalism: Civic, Ethnocultural and Multicultural

Politics. London: Routledge, 2000.

Burgess, M. and Gagnon, A. G. (eds) Comparative Federalism and Federation.

Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.

Canovan, M. Nationhood and Political Theory. Cheltenham: Elgar, 1996.

Hindley, F.H. Sovereignty, 2nd edn. New York: Basic Books, 1986.

Miller, D. On Nationality. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.

Ohmae, K. The End of the Nation State. London: HarperCollins, 1995.

Ruggie, J.G. Constructing the World Polity. London: Routledge, 1998.

Scholte, J. A. Globalization: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.

Smith, A.D. Theories of Nationalism. London: Duckworth, 1991.

Spencer, P. and Wollman, H. Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage, 2002.