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The `International Community': Facing the Challenge of Globalization
Bruno Simma1 and Andreas L. Paulus2
Full text available: PDF format *
Abstract
The article seeks to analyse the current state of the `international community' in the light of different traditions of thought. It finds the distinctive element of `community' in the prioritization of community interests as against the egoistic interests of individual states. Whereas factual interdependence seems to be present in the contemporary state system, several traditions of thought shed a different light on the existence of common values and institutions. Modifying a classification coined by Hedley Bull, the article distinguishes four views of the international system: a `Hobbesian' or `realist' tradition, a `Vattelian' or internationalist tradition, a `Grotian' or `communitarian' tradition, and a `Kantian' or universalist tradition. In an analysis of the current state of affairs, the article claims that the classical `Lotus principle' is giving way to a more communitarian, more highly institutionalized international law, in which states `channel' the pursuit of most of their individual interests through multilateral institutions. Nevertheless, the authors do not deny the aspirational element of the `community' concept.
In this brief comment we do not wish to put forward yet another analysis of the state of international affairs in the age of globalization.3 Instead, our intention here is to examine the question of the significance of the term `international community' from the perspective of several traditions of thought in international law, politics and ethics. We will then seek to draw upon the insights gained for a reflection on the situation of the international community as this century comes to a close.
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1 Professor of International and Community European Law, Institut
für Internationales Recht - Völkerrecht,
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Professor-Huber-Platz 2, D-80539
München, Germany; member of the Editorial Board.
2 Institut für Internationales Recht - Völkerrecht,
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
3 On globalization see A. Giddens, The Consequences of
Modernity (1990), at 64 et passim (presenting globalization as
interdependence without differentiation of time and space); N. Luhmann, Das
Recht der Gesellschaft (1993), at 571 et seq; idem, Die
Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (1997), at 148-170, 806-809; Teubner, `Legal
Pluralism in the World Society', in G. Teubner (ed.), Global Law without a
State (1997) 3, at 23 note 6 (both emphasizing functional instead of
territorial differentiation); Alston, `The Myopia of the Handmaidens', 8
EJIL (1997) 435; Delbrück, `Globalization of Law, Politics, and
Markets - Implications for Domestic Law - A European Perspective', 1 Indiana
Journal of Global Legal Studies (1993/4) 9, at 14-19; Sur, `The State
between Fragmentation and Globalization', 8 EJIL (1997) 421, at
428-434.
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