Title: A Federation of Democracies: Towards Universal Basic Rights and the End of Tyranny
by John J. Davenport
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy
Abstract: This monograph will synthesize three published articles and several conference
presentations on global justice into a new short monograph on the need for a worldwide
federation of democracies to meet the demands of human rights and other global public goods
(including solving environmental issues involving international collective action problems).
This project aims to introduce students and general readers to a closely related set of issues
bearing on global governance, focusing especially on human rights and glaring problems in the
existing UN system. The topic, one of growing interest among policy theorists, has started to gain
wider public attention since it was discussed in the 2008 Presidential election. However, my
specific proposal and my way of defending it are both new. The central ideas and arguments for it
should be accessible to any undergraduate or educated general reader; Fordham students have
found them fresh and eye-opening even when they resist the conclusions. In the context of
arguing for its main institutional proposal, the book will introduce students and general readers to
several challenging problems in democratic theory and ethics, such as the nature of human rights
and whether their universality conflicts with cultural pluralism; the nature of collective action
problems and public goods requiring coordination at different levels of government; why pure
majoritarian conceptions of democratic governance are inadequate, and how this is reflected in
deliberative theories of democracy, Locke's account of the right to revolution, and problems with
unlimited rights to secession, etc.; why just war norms can only be specified in the context of
general theories of global justice; and the need for a clear agent of first resort when humanitarian
intervention is essential to prevent massive crimes against humanity.
Chapter Outline
1. Introduction: the Problems with 'Globalism'
Economic globalism vs global political governance.
Tragedies of the 'global commons': how far are we from a state of nature between nations?
High aspirations and colossal failures: the United Nations and Cold War realpolitik.
2. Federalist Arguments for Replacing the Security Council with a Democratic Federation
Collective Action Problems and the concept of global public goods.
Ten categories of global public goods that cannot be realized through treaties alone.
1787: the American Experience as an analogy for the world today.
The Coordination Principle: the central insight of the Federalist Papers
The Relation to Principles of Enumeration and Subsidiarity
The Consolidation Argument for higher levels of government (general form)
The Consolidation Argument for global government.
3. Hobbesian Global Goods, Economic Development, Future Generations:
Security from State Aggression and Transnational Terrorism
Control of Weapons Proliferation
International crime, tax havens, pandemics.
Global finance and steering of the global economy.
Environmental Sustainability and Economic Development.
4. Kantian Global Goods: Human Rights and International Law
Theories of Human Rights: Pogge, Habermas, Rawls and others
5.
6.
7.
8.
Nuremberg, the Geneva Conventions, and limits to state sovereignty.
The basic inadequacy of free-standing international courts and war crimes tribunals.
Human Rights, Just War Theory, and Humanitarian Intervention
Two Levels of Just War Norms and the dependence on theories of justice.
The history of Just War Theory supports humanitarian intervention
The contemporary consensus in favor of restricted humanitarian intervention.
Broadening Intervention: A Critique of Michael Walzer on self-determination
Broadening Intervention: intractable tyrannies, failed states, kleptocracy and poverty.
The Right to Democracy and Answers to Pluralist Objections
Habermas on the connection between basic civil rights and the right to democracy.
The Moral Presuppostions of popular sovereignty: Locke, Lincoln, and Habermas
The Lockean Right to Revolution and the Remedial Right to Secession
Objections from Cultural Pluralism, sincere and cynical.
Why the objections are either insincere or self-defeating.
Nonwestern proponents of basic rights standards for legitimate government.
Postmodern skeptics and crimes against humanity: a critical response to vices of theory.
Why Strengthening the UN and other Alternatives short of a Federation Won't Work.
The impossibility of amending key provisions in the UN Charter: critique of Peter Singer.
An unmanageable a rapid response force (under the Security Council, or freestanding).
Can a coalition of democracies play second fiddle to the UN?:
A Response to Buchanan and Keohane.
Why Habermas's theory of democracy entails a federation of democracies
Answer to the worry about shared political culture and the EU
Answer to Kant's worry about a 'world state'.
Answer to the worry about 'exclusivism.'
How to Design and Create a Stable and Effective Federation of Democracies
The great bargain between the US and the rest of the democratic world.
Founding members: continental pluralism and the need for Russia
Criteria for two levels of membership; Islamic nations and China
Direct election of lower house and national representation in the upper house.
Direct election of the executive and the structure of the Democratic Council.
Enforcement powers: the standing armed forces of the Federation.
Current stage of the research:
a. Most of chapters 1, 2, and part of 3 can be developed from a 2008 essay I've published in the
Journal of Value Inquiry. The rest of chapter 3 exists in a draft of about 6,000 words.
b. Almost all of chapters 4 and 5 will be drawn from a 2010 essay I published on "Just War,
Humanitarian Intervention, and the need for a Federation of Democracies" in the Journal of
Value Inquiry. I will draw the first half of chapter 6 from a conference paper; the second half
of chapter 6 on pluralist objections will require another 15 pages or roughly 4500 words.
c. The Habermas sections of chapter 7 exist in a conference paper of 20 pages or about 6500
words. The rest of this chapter exists in notes and will be about 12 more pages / 3000 words.
d. Chapter 8 is sketched in a conference paper of about 10 pages. The full version will be about
10,000 words. I would also present this chapter at a fall conference to which I've been invited.
Thus a first draft of this book manuscript can be completed in a summer. It will take no more than
a month to edit and combine these existing articles and conference papers, and another month to
complete chapters 6 and 7 with additional work on Habermas's thought. The last month would be
spent completing the draft of chapter 8, which involves looking at a few more recent publications
in political science, though I have already done most of the reading necessary for it (see biblio.).
Background and Contribution to the fields: While only about a fifth of my scholarly work has
focused on political philosophy to date, I am teaching and writing more in this area all the time;
this monograph would position me as a significant contributor to this field, especially in growing
and dynamic genres of new work on human rights and global justice, with their obvious relevance
to a fast-changing world and to NYC. The book would be controversial but likely to get attention
and be used in courses increasingly attending to these questions at colleges across the world.
To my knowledge, there are almost no works in political philosophy (even in critical theory or
the expanding genre of work on deliberative accounts of legitimate democracy) that argue for a
federation of democracies to work alongside, or even to replace, the UN Security Council. There
are works on global distributive justice and poverty relief with some institutional suggestions,
Didier Jacobs' book on Global Justice which proposes to expand NATO, Habermas's arguments
against the possibility of a global government, and similar arguments from Michael Walzer in just
war theory. There is also a lot of recent scholarship on humanitarian intervention and the duty to
protect, but without sufficiently robust institutional proposals included. There is also some
fundamental philosophical work on political legitimacy and secession (e.g. a book by Allan
Buchanan) but little on the basic structure of justification for higher levels of government.
Thus the central arguments I have drafted in the works to be combined and developed in this
new book make several novel contributions, especially in (1) developing the argument for
consolidation of authority from the Federalist Papers and applying it directly to the current
interstate system under the UN, (2) in using the justifications for humanitarian intervention in
existing international law as a basis for my new institutional proposal, and (3) in using Habermas's
democratic theory to argue for a federation despite his own preference for the weak UN model.
There are four recent books and several articles in political science (from different sides of the
political spectrum) that make a case for something like a loose "concert" or a stronger "league" of
democracies, but they focus on pragmatic questions of how to establish, design, and run it as an
institution, more than on the ethical justification for it, or its deduction from basic principles of
justice. While these details are important (and I will consider them along in the planned chapter
8), the structure and enumerated powers of such an organization need to be guided by a deeper
systemic philosophical foundation that my book will provide. So this project also promises to
span an interdisciplinary gap between discussion of such a league in political science and analysis
of just war, human rights, and global justice across sub-disciplines in political philosophy.
Brief Bibliography of Select Relevant Work:
ASEAN Organization
1997 Vision 2020: AA Community of Caring Societies@ (Adopted in Kuala Lumpur):
see http://www.aseansec.org/1814.htm.
Association to Unite the Democracies: http://www.iaud.org/
Aung San Suu Kyi, Daw
1995 "Freedom, Development, and Human Worth," Journal of Democracy 6 no. 2
(April, 1995): 11-19.
Bellamy, Alex
2009 The Responsibility to Protect. Philadelphia: Wiley & Sons.
Beitz, Charles
2005 "Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice." The Journal of Ethics 9: 11-27.
2009 The Idea of Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press.
Beitz, Charles, and Marshal Cohen, Thomas Scanlon and John Simmons, eds.
1980 International Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Benhabib, Seyla
2006 Another Cosmopolitanism: Tanner Lectures with responses by Waldron, Honig,
and Kymlicka. Oxford University Press.
2008 "Another Universalism: On the Unity and Diversity of Human Rights," Presidential
Address to the Eastern APA (Dec. 2007). Proceedings and Addresses of the
American Philosophical Association 81.2 (April): 7-32.
Buchanan, Allan
2007 Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International
Law. New York: Oxford University Press. First published in hardcover, 2004.
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2004 AThe Preventative Use of Force: A Cosmopolitan Institutional Proposal.@ Ethics
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2006 AThe Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions.@ Ethics and International
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2009 "Is a League of Democracies a Good Idea?" Carnegie Endowment Policy Brief
no.59 (May). http://www.carnegieendowment.org/2008/05/19/is-league-ofdemocracies-good-idea/aiy
Daalder, Ivo and James Lindsay
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http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=220
Davenport, John J.
2005 "Just War Theory Requires a New Federation of Democratic Nations." Fordham
International Law Journal 28.3 (Feb): 763-85.
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2009 "For a Federation of Democracies: A Response to Stephen Schlesinger." Ethics
and International Affairs 23.1 (Spring 2009), Online Roundtable supplement:
http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/23_1/roundtable/006
2010 AJust Wars, Humanitarian Intervention, and the Need for a Federation of
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Ellis, Anthony
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