Cosmopolitanism and International Economic Institutions

Immanuel Kant viewed economic interdependence among nations as the catalyst for a cosmopolitan legal order. Some of the most advanced international institutions in existence today facilitate such interdependence. Are bodies such as the European Union, World Trade Organization, and North American Free Trade Agreement the harbingers of Kantian cosmopolitan right? This article contends that the commercial motif in Kant's thought deserves greater scrutiny than it has so far received, particularly since it has encouraged some to summon Kant's authority in advocating global economic liberalization, while leading others to attack the cosmopolitan project as a smokescreen for neoliberalism. Maneuvering Kantian cosmopolitanism out of this double bind requires placing renewed emphasis on constitutional states as the building blocks of a cosmopolitan order and paying greater attention to the conditions of legitimacy that supranational institutions must meet in order to claim the cosmopolitan mantle. Cosmopolitanism is not exclusively supranational, and supranational institutions are not necessarily cosmopolitan.