Beyond the Sovereign State: Isopolitan Citizenship, Race and Anglo-American Union

Abstract

Debates about post‐Westphalian forms of citizenship play an important role in contemporary political thought. I analyse a significant precursor to these debates, exploring fin de siècle conceptions of racial and imperial political membership. My argument has two main parts. First, I delineate four rival models of imperial citizenship: imperial‐statist, institutional‐imperial, racial‐imperial and racial‐isopolitan. Second, I dissect the notion of ‘isopolitan’ (or common) citizenship. Isopolity is a practice, derived from the ancient Greeks, in which independent states reciprocally grant citizenship rights to the members of other independent states, thus creating a loose form of political union. It was adapted at the turn of the twentieth century to theorise future Anglo‐American relations. I examine the arguments of some prominent isopolitans, focusing on the constitutional theorist A. V. Dicey. ‘Anglo’ isopolitans challenged the isomorphic relationship between the territorial state, sovereignty and political membership. They did so through constructing a global white supremacist vision.

Before the democratic peace: Racial utopianism, empire and the abolition of war

“…The most far-reaching, produced largely though not exclusively by British thinkers, demanded the formal political (re)unification of the Anglo-world. These ranged from the creation of a racial isopolity — common citizenship between the constituent polities of the Anglo-world (Bell, 2013) — to full-blown federal union. Though differing widely in their proposed institutional architectures, the schemes were all premised on the pivotal importance of race as a factor in world politics, and in particular on the ethico-political superiority of the Anglo-Saxons.…”

State spatiality in an era of global and regional interdependence: The linkage governance approach

“…It reflected a number of contingent, concrete practices that have been continually altered and reproduced as the state has 'remade' itself over time (Ruggie, 1993;Agnew, 1994, pp. 72-76;Sassen, 2008;Bell, 2014).…”

Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the liberal political subject and the settler state

“…5 If citizens are the substance of an autonomous and prosperous polity, then the citizenly capacities and actions of a population must be ensured through social engineering. Crucially, it is the constitution of the settlers as political subjects capable of claiming and improving the land (of reinforcing territorial sovereignty), rather than their racial or cultural identity, that justifies the displacement and marginalization of indigenous peoples.…”