Table Of ContentLiberal Internationalism and
the Decline of the State
Liberal Internationalism
and the Decline
of the State
The Thought of Richard Cobden,
David Mitrany,
and Kenichi Ohmae
Per A. Hammarlund
LIBERALINTERNATIONALISMANDTHEDECLINEOFTHESTATE
© Per A.Hammarlund,2005.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-6703-9
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First published in 2005 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-52988-9 ISBN 978-1-4039-8036-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403980366
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hammarlund,Per A.
Liberal internationalism and the decline of the state :the thought of
Richard Cobden,David Mitrany,and Kenichi Ohmae.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.State,The.2.Internationalism.3.World politics.4.Cobden,Richard,
1804–1865.5.Mitrany,David,1888– 6.Ohmae,Kenichi,1943– I.Title.
JC336.H34 2004
320.1—dc22 2004049001
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:February 2005
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my family
Contents
Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Brief Biographies 11
Chapter 2 The Decline of the State: The Empirical Claim 27
Chapter 3 The Obsolete International System 53
Chapter 4 Prescribing the Decline of the State 85
Chapter 5 The Case Against the Nation-State System 115
Chapter 6 The Predictive Element 141
Conclusion 171
Notes 181
Bibliography 211
Index 221
Foreword
T he purpose of this book is to provide a critical analysis of the liberal
idea of the decline of the state based on a historical comparison.
It takes special note of the implications of state failure for interna-
tional relations. The author identifies three acknowledged proponents of the
theme. They are Richard Cobden (1804–65), David Mitrany (1888–1975),
and Kenichi Ohmae (b. 1943). The analysis focuses on how Cobden,
Mitrany, and Ohmae view the state and its role in their respective periods. It
elucidates similarities and differences between their conceptions with the aim
of shedding light on the status of the state in their systems of political and eco-
nomic thought. It also puts the three thinkers into context by exposing the
influence of their historical and social environments. A supplementary objec-
tive of the book is to infuse caution into future prophesies about the state’s
imminent decline.
The text is divided into three sections. The first analyzes Cobden,
Mitrany, and Ohmae’s empirical descriptions of the state. The second focuses
on their normative judgments. Finally, the third directs our attention to their
predictions for the future. For reasons of clarity, the discussion is organized
according to the distinction between the state as a country in its entirety
andthe state as an institution of government separate from the society that
it rules.
The central question of the analysis asks what we can learn from a study
of the history of the liberal idea of the decline of the state. The main con-
tention holds out that this idea—as proposed by Cobden, Mitrany, and
Ohmae—is more of an ideological statement than an objective observation
of an empirically verifiable fact. The concluding chapter highlights four addi-
tional lessons gleaned from the inquiry. First, the liberal hypothesis of the
decline of the state is much more complex than it initially appears. Second,
Cobden, Mitrany, and Ohmae contradict themselves on several key points.
x ● Foreword
Third, our study reveals that each particular form of the idea is highly
contingent on the historical, personal, social, and ideological context of
the thinker. Fourth, the decline of the state is formulated in deliberately
exaggerated and vague terms. While these conclusions may seem uncontro-
versial, they have gone largely unnoticed or disregarded by realist critics of
the liberal notion of state decline.
Acknowledgments
T his book could not have been completed without the helpful critique
and insightful remarks of Peter Wilson, who supervised the Ph.D.
dissertation on which the analysis at hand is based. I am very grate-
ful for his encouragement and steadfast belief in the project. Several friends and
colleagues have also made significant contributions. Sarah Owen-Vandersluis,
Bob Vandersluis, Nick Bisley, Paris Yeros, Harry Gelber, and Anthony Howe
have provided invaluable comments on earlier drafts of chapters and sections
of the manuscript. In addition, I have benefited immensely from discussions
with Sanja Carolina, Karen Smith, Razeen Sally, Andrew Walter, Michi Ebata,
Maria Lensu, Stefan Fritz, Anne Hammerstad, Adam Roberts, Paul Taylor,
Christopher Hill, David MacDonald, Julius Sen, and Lauren Snyder, as well as
all the participants in the International Political Theory, International
Institutions, Foreign Policy, and International Political Economy workshops at
the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). I would also like
to thank Christer Jönsson and the Ph.D. candidates in the Department of
Political Science for providing a forum for discussion of the subject at Lund
University, Sweden. I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to the examiners of
the thesis, Lucian M. Ashworth and Jan Aart Scholte, for their detailed and
incisive comments on the entire text. Thanks are also due to Palgrave
Macmillan and their two anonymous reviewers for offering very useful feed-
back, as well as to Newgen Imaging for correcting grammatical inconsistencies.
All remaining mistakes are, of course, exclusively mine.
Two thirds of chapter 3 have previously appeared as “Liberal
Cosmopolitan Thought and the Decline of the State: A Historical
Exposition” in Politologiske Studier (Vol. 4, No. 2, 2001), pp. 44–56. The
article was substantially strengthened by the observations of one of the jour-
nal’s anonymous reviewers, as well as the revisions suggested by its editor,
Rasmus Schjødt Pedersen.
xii ● Acknowledgments
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Foundation in Memory of
Lars Hierta, and the Carl Jönsson’s Student Support Foundation have pro-
vided generous economic assistance.
However, I owe my greatest debt of gratitude to my wife, Julie Imus, for
her unwavering support, love, and patience throughout the process of writ-
ing and editing this volume.
