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Instructor: Will Kymlicka

Mainstream political theory asks us to think of the world as divided into bounded societies, to think of ourselves as citizens or members of such societies, and then asks us to focus in the first instance on what we owe each other as members of a shared society, either by way of sharing power through democracy or sharing resources through the welfare state. Duties of global justice are seen as analytically separate, and often weaker, tied to more modest requirements of humanitarianism. This basic dualist structure of political theory – and its underlying vision of a world divided into nation-states as the containers of democracy and the welfare state – is subject to increasing critique. Dualist political theory stands accused of obscuring and legitimizing the violence done to Indigenous peoples and racialized minorities in creating and reproducing these national containers, of ignoring the ways nation-states are implicated in global inequalities; and of failing to provide the tools for addressing urgent global issues such as migration and climate change. A growing number of theorists argue for rejecting dualism, and moving towards a more cosmopolitan or post-national approach that divorces democracy and the welfare state from ideas of membership in bounded national containers, and that dissolves the sharp distinction between domestic and global justice. This course will explore dualist theory and its critics. We will begin by focusing on one core feature of dualist theory - namely, the idea (and ideal) of society as a “common possession” of its members, and why this ideal has been so central to many theories of democracy and solidarity. We will then consider whether this ideal is still relevant in the face of challenges of migration, decolonization, globalization and the environmental crisis.