The Diversity Premise: The Legitimacy Gap in International Relations

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the diversity premise as the second thinking tool. To that end, it draws on diversity claims following empirical accounts of diversity along the ethno-methodological dimension of indexicality, on the one hand, and normative arguments about culturally multiverse constitutional contexts, on the other. It refers to research on governance in the global realm as the terrain where the prospect of establishing and maintaining just and legitimate governance has been considered the greatest challenge and hence been most thoroughly imagined and contested by cosmopolitan philosophers ranging from Kant to Tully. It is argued that Tully’s philosophical contestation of Kant’s regulative ideal for a political order in Europe on cultural grounds is crucial for the premise of maintaining diversity. The chapter’s critical investigation into international relations theories hence applies the diversity premise to challenge the community ontology.