Page 86 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

72 Politics in a Small World

to be seen as a breach of international law. If, however, an international
agreement is more honored in the breach than the observance, it is dif-

ficult to see it as law . It was only after conflicts between the Great Powers
about how the world should be divided led to the First World War that
questions of Empire began to be seriously raised in international affairs,
at a time when the high - point of European Imperialism was already
passed. Until then, David Chandler argues, the international states system
supported formal imperialism because it was based solely on the recogni-
tion of sovereignty as effective power. Chandler argues that the Westphalian
system enabled the development of Empires because states that did not
“ count ” as such could be appropriated, subject only to the resistance of
those who lived there and to accommodation with other imperial states
(Chandler, 2006 : 122 – 7).
These differences of historical interpretation are crucial to contem-
porary understandings of global governance as inherently imperialist
or as having progressive potential. Political cosmopolitans and “ anti -
imperialists ” fundamentally disagree on what international law now
means. David Chandler sees the ending of World War II as the beginning
of a genuinely world - wide system of equal sovereign states, formally rec-
ognized by the UN, which undertook to maintain the peace by preventing
states from interfering in each other ’ s affairs. The UN Charter restricted
the political sovereignty of the Great Powers, and inaugurated a law -

bound international society of states for the first time, basing the authority
of all states on the “ equal rights and self - determination of peoples ”
(Article 1) (Chandler, 2006 : 126 – 7). Held, however, interprets the UN
system quite differently, seeing fundamental changes in international law
following World War II as going beyond the Westphalian system and
supporting the rights of individual persons rather than states (Held,
1995a : 74 – 89; 2002). In fact, these contradictory accounts of the develop-
ment of global governance after World War II are different interpretations
of aspects of the same legal system, described by Costas Douzinas as
schizophrenic (Douzinas, 2007 : 244). The UN system both inaugurated
formal respect for the integrity of self - determining sovereign states, whilst
the long process of developing human rights law to protect individuals
within those states began at the same time.
Held argues that cosmopolitan law is still in development, following
principles that were fi rst outlined in the Nuremberg trials. First, individu-
als became criminally accountable for violations of the laws of war ( “ just
obeying orders ” was no longer a legitimate legal defense, however lowly
a position the accused held in the military or state hierarchy). Second,
principles of human rights began to be developed that prescribed limits