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Models of international organization in perpetual peace projects*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

Extract

Perpetual peace projects constitute a largely undervalued intellectual tradition that has attracted many polemical arrows. One of the most frequent criticisms levelled at the projects is that their authors too often abandon themselves to utopianism. Yet this tradition has proved to be much more influential than is generally recognized: contemporary international organizations, from the League of Nations to the United Nations, from the European Parliament to the International Court of Justice, were sketched out, if only in embryonic form, in these perpetual peace projects. Yet it is rare to find their authors numbered among the founders of internationalist theory.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1992

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References

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8 Crucé, The New Cyneas, p. 124.

9 Saint-Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe, p. 166.

10 Although Sully attributes the ‘Grand dessin' wholly to Henry IV, it is uncertain to what extent is was actually thought up by the king, and to what extent it should be attributed to Sully's imagination alone. See Puharré, André, Les Projets d'organisation européenne d'apres le Grand Dessin de Henri IV et de Sully (Paris, 1954).Google Scholar

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20 In this regard, the diffused model ends up as a version of federalism. However, I will try to show that this is an unintended result, and not the starting point, of the authors I consider under this heading.

21 Penn, W., An Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe (1693, reprinted: London, 1950), § VII.Google Scholar

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24 Ibid.

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37 Ibid. p. 100.

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39 According to some interpreters of Kant, cosmopolitan law is to be understood as ‘the relations of a state with the subjects of another state’; see Bobbio, N., Diritto e Stato in Emanuele Kant (Turin, 1969)Google Scholar. In fact, within the idea of cosmopolitan law, Kant includes the right of citizens to hospitality in foreign countries and opposition to colonialism. However, he also adds something far more interesting and fruitful for the purposes of transforming international relations, i.e. the separation of the law of nations from the law of individuals as citizens of the world.

40 For opposite interpretations of Kant's ideas a s ‘statist’ or ‘cosmopolitan’, see Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, and Wight, Martin, ‘An Anatomy of International Thought’, Review of International Studies, 13 (1987), pp. 221–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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42 Kant, Perpetual Peace, p. 108.

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44 An overview of the current proposals to reform international organizations is provided in Barnaby, Frank (ed.), Building a More Democratic United Nations (London, 1991).Google Scholar