In No Man’s Land: Universalization and Globalization as Philosophical Constructs and Political Narratives | Federico Lorenzo Ramaioli
Federico Lorenzo Ramaioli is a diplomat and lawyer, presently serving as Deputy Head of Mission of the Embassy of Italy in Qatar. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any Italian institution or agency. At the time of submission, he is currently located in Doha, Qatar. He has publications in comparative law and philosophy of law.
In a fast-changing scenario like the one characterizing our contemporaneity, having the theoretical and intellectual methodological instruments to properly understand reality is more than ever a necessity to comprehend social, political and legal dynamics. This is even truer having regard to a context in which the post-Westphalian order is constantly dissolving, and in which a consolidated and alternative political model is lacking[1]. Multiple and overlapping levels of power and authority progressively emerge and decline, eluding the schemes of qualification that we came to elaborate based on a world that was fundamentally different from ours.
Globalization[2] is undoubtedly the most pervasive and yet elusive phenomenon characterizing our present, and although a great number of books and articles have been written about it, it is still quite difficult to inscribe it into a univocal and defined sociopolitical theoretical framework. The question seems now unavoidable: how is it actually possible to make sense of a globalized world, and to elaborate a shared theory to explain its dynamics and inscribe it into a theoretical model? This question is furtherly challenging if we think that, so far, the only minimum common denominator of this context is not the way in which the world is ordered, but actually the way in which it seems not to be. If the order shaping the globalized world is fundamentally a non-order or a dis-order, then the unique model that it will be possible to elaborate to explain it cannot but be the one characterized by the absence of a model, at least considered in the way we have been conceiving it so far.
This difficulty of categorization is not due to the absence of clear-cut defined borders and boundaries in a geographical sense. It could be erroneously argued that the progressive abandonment of the post-Westphalian system, based on multiple sovereignties whose jurisdictions were clearly defined, caused the dissolution of the idea of territorial sovereignty in a global space that it is not possible to make sense of. If previously it was possible to easily define one territory based on shared criteria of belonging and classification, like the national one, now everything becomes indeed more difficult, in multiple shades of gray where such criteria become fundamentally outdated and unapplicable. In no man’s land, it is clearly more difficult to say where we actually are.
However, if we consider world history, we can actually observe that the absence of geographical boundaries did not prevent political and legal thinkers to elaborate proper instruments and methodologies to make sense of a borderless reality, and to categorize it and inscribe it within a comprehensive and all-encompassing narrative. Physically speaking, the world remained exactly the same as it is nowadays. What has changed, however, is the way in which we make sense of it.
In my opinion, this point highlights the deep difference between two concepts that only apparently refer to the same phenomenon: universalization and globalization. In his celebrated article on the concept of glocalization, Bauman has briefly pointed out that these two ideas are not to be confused. According to Bauman, “the term ‘globalization’ differs radically from another term, that of ‘universalization’ – once constitutive of the modern discourse of global affairs, but by now fallen into disuse and by and large forgotten”[3]. This remark is dense in implications, and deserves a dedicated reflection, which I will try to develop in this article. The idea of universalization, as Bauman argues, is something not really part of the political or legal discourse anymore; nonetheless, it represents a powerful counterpart to the concept of globalization, whose comparison highlights structural differences highly impacting on the way in which we think about political and legal governance.
In this article, I will analyze the two concepts and how they differentiate, paying particular attention to how the idea of universalization was conceived and developed in world history, in different cultures and civilizations, and to the impossibility of equating the two concepts. This is not simply a matter of phraseology, or an “explicatio terminorum” that could be agreed upon based on shared terminological rules, but on the contrary a way of understanding how the same borderless context, a world without clearly defined geographical boundaries, can give birth to different concepts, based on which it is possible to give significance to reality. Or, on the contrary, based on which it is not.
Universalization and the idea of order
To define the term, I will assign to universalization a meaning quite different from the one that had characterized literature on this point. For universalization, I refer here to a cultural, political and legal narrative envisaging a borderless world, and characterized by a certain degree of comprehensiveness and harmonization, within which to locate various phenomena and where to assign each of them a shared significance. Universalization produces a vision of universalism, which may clearly vary depending on a given cultural milieu in which it emerges. In the course of history, human civilizations have elaborated various universalisms, with a less common denominator: each one was supported by a theoretical framework capable of making sense of the “universum” it aimed at comprehending, shaping an ideal unity out of a multiplicity. I do not refer to the later idea of homogenization of (Western) values in different cultural contexts, which is inextricably linked to globalization itself[4]. Similarly, I do not refer to an utopist scenario of equality amongst human beings, one which globalization has not been able to achieve[5]. On the contrary, I refer here to universalization as a normative socio-political construct.
Following this premise, the main feature that differentiates universalization from globalization is represented by the idea of order. In past experiences, as I will show, universalization materialized in an ideal sense of order permeating reality, and according to which reality was to be conceived, classified and ultimately ruled. Only by virtue of a comprehensive idea of order, and on its basis, legal and political theory was able to elaborate an all-encompassing vision disentangled from spatial boundaries, and to produce an idea of universalism. I do not necessarily refer here to an order revealed from above, like in the case of a religious truth, but to an order however originated and conceived, able per se to unify normative and political notions and to inscribe them within a single framework in a coordinated and organic way. In the legal and juridical field, it is this point that makes the difference between a legal order, intended as “a structure consisting exclusively of normative ideas”[6], which ordains such ideas to establish a shared vision of reality in a universalizing sense, and a legal system, on the contrary understood as a mere system of functioning delimited, both spatially and conceptually, by more or less defined borders. Universalization does not limit itself to contain and hold things together, but also put them into a certain order.
It is not by chance that the very terms “universalization” and “universalism”, which I use here, refer to the notion of universe, intended as all that exists, while “globalization” to the globe, intended as an immanent object in its exteriority and in its concreteness, the expression of a physical phenomenon. Globalization, so to speak, “invokes the world”[7]. Moreover, while it is actually not possible to think about something else, or bigger, than the universe, it is actually possible to do it while thinking about the terrestrial globe. From its very etymology, globalization is therefore not a really comprehensive phenomenon considered from a philosophical and theoretical point of view, but an empirical trend describing social, economic and political dynamics however without the necessity of ordaining things according to a determined system of belief. If universalization was something deeply related to the idea of order, concretizing itself in ordaining narratives, globalization eludes every possible order, at the point of defining a “new world disorder”[8], as it has been defined in literature.
Without the necessity of an ordaining force, what is ultimately lacking is also the idea of control. Coming back to Bauman’s writing on glocalization, what is relevant in the present scenario is that “no one seems to be now in control”[9]. Ordaining things means classifying things, and means in a certain way controlling things. Here, I do not refer to a form of political control, but on the contrary to the possibility of locating things and phenomena according to a determined conceptual perspective, and thus obtaining from their interaction a certain predictability. In the Judeo-Christian world, this was made possible by what has been defined logosphere[10], where the language and the power of the word actually gave man the possibility of controlling reality. If it was possible – and even necessary – in a universalized world, it is almost impossible in a globalized world, where the lack of predictability is precisely what seems to define most such a global context. Without proper methods of coordination and harmonization, especially from an intellectual and cultural point of view, not only an ideal sense of comprehensive order will not emerge, but it will not be even possible to think of one. It is precisely here that relies the main difference between these two concepts: if universalization needs an order to be conceived, and in turn perpetuates itself maintaining and preserving such an order, globalization is the expression of a dis-order, that is to say the lack of an order, as its necessary presupposition to emerge as we know it nowadays.
I mentioned that the very term universalization points at the ethereal idea of the universe, and not simply to the physical idea of the terrestrial globe. The inherent connection with the necessity of an order is strengthened since the very etymological origin of the word cosmos, from Greek κόσμος (kosmos), in turn connected to the verb κοσμέω (kosméō), meaning to put in order, to ordain[11]. It is interesting to note that κοσμέω also has the meaning of adorning, underlining the nexus not only between universalization and order, but also between order and beauty. In Latin, the adjective universus literally means something turned or collected into one whole, thus once again ordained to be held together[12]. Universum is therefore all that exists, considered altogether as a whole, and not simply the parts composing it per se. It is in this idea of unavoidable unity, which does not leave anything outside of it, that the necessity of an order emerges and appears as a structural feature of the notion.
These conceptions not only shaped the political form of ancient universalisms, such as the Hellenistic kosmopolis and the Roman empire, but also the Catholic Church in its spiritual universalism. The very word καθολικός (katholikós) means indeed universal; however, it is not a formless and indistinct universality, but a universality considered as a whole (ὅλος, hólos)[13], of which it is actually possible to make sense through the divinely revealed λόγος (lógos). The Church’s universality is held together, in all of its parts, by an order, and by virtues of this order, it reads and explains its universality. Here, it is the philosophical and theological elaboration that actually made possible to conceive and ordain a universal and ideal society, both in the case of the Greek philosophers that theorized and foresaw the Alexandrian dominion and in the case of Christian Europe. It is not by chance that in medieval Europe the institution of the university emerged and spread through the continent: a “universitas”, a place thought to investigate the whole of knowledge, and to make sense of it. Through universal languages, firstly Greek and then Latin, European universalisms produced not only complex forms of political governance, but also a structured and self-consistent culture of universalism, which is fundamentally absent in the case of the more chaotic notion of globalization.
In this cultural context, greatly influencing the Western legal and political culture until the establishment of the Westphalian order, the idea of “universum” cannot but be conceived according to an order, which is the presupposition of its conceivability. An all-encompassing political vision, theorizing a borderless space, necessarily needs to organically locate its principles, postulates and ideas within an ordained framework, where to establish predictable relations and dynamics. In light of what has been said, and as it will be furtherly observed, universalization is a normative concept, in that it norms reality, it recognizes its order and consequently perpetuates it. On the contrary, globalization does not shape a normative order, but is affected by multiple normative influences emerging from below, and from the forces that have been freed from the boundaries within which they had been constricted by the Westphalian system.
Universalisms in the past
What has been observed in the above paragraph can be better understood having regard to concrete historical experiences. Explaining the idea of universalization and its conceptual differentiation with the less defined and more fluid concept of globalization, I referred so far to fundamentally European notions, as in the case of the Greek and Roman civilizations. Nevertheless, political and legal universalisms emerged not only in the West, but also amongst other cultures and societies. Here, I will propose three examples of universalisms that can better express the idea of universalization as above outlined: the medieval Respublica Christiana, the Islamic experience of the ummah and the Chinese idea of tiānxià. These visions, differentiated as they are by deep cultural characteristics and emerging in various historical phases, show indeed a common trait: the aspiration to achieve a borderless political and legal governance, and to interpret it according to a shared significance.
In Western modernity, the establishment of the Westphalian system marked the transition from a world conceived as “universum” to a world divided in multiple and independent sovereignties. Hobbes’ Leviathan[14] represented indeed a turning point in Western law and politics, whose outline has been an essential basis for the international community up to these days[15]. Before that, however, the medieval Respublica Christiana theorized and progressively systematized an ideal form of universalism, both in terms of secular and of spiritual power. The dualist nature of authority and power as conceived in this period, in spite of ongoing conflicts and disputes, outlined an ideally universal governance whose element of cohesion was represented by the Catholic faith, to the supreme aim of the salus animarusm and once again by a shared significance assigned to reality. The universal Church, which embraces all the created souls, and the monarchia mundi envisaged by the Empire, were not simply the domain of the baptized people, but the overall conception of the created order, with particular reference to politics, law and society[16]. In a context in which the idea of territorial sovereignty had not been yet introduced and consolidated as a fundamental paradigm, divisions and internal tensions were theoretically composed within an organic whole, held together by an eschatological vision of salvation passing through the existence of the dualism of imperium and sacerdotium. The macro-space of medieval Europe was not indeed clearly limited by geographical boundaries, but was ideally open, homogenized by the common belonging to a Weltanschauung. It is not to be believed, therefore, that the universalizing vision of the Respublica was something limited to Christendom, because it also defined a contrario all the world not belonging to it. It makes sense not only of its consociates and to its territories, taken in their factuality, but also to a totality conceived as a universe. On the contrary, the idea of territorial sovereignty, structural and constitutive of modern statehood, makes sense of itself, therefore within its boundaries, but is not actually able to shape an idea of universalism. The medieval Respublica is normative, in that it prescribes a normativity, both spiritual and temporal, inscribing a plurality into a predictable unity, based on the dimension of a complexity that can be not only managed, but also theoretically explained. Pope and Emperor, notwithstanding the ruptures and the tensions between the two, were not simply individuals, but impersonal and metahistorical figures that embodied the guarantors of medieval Europe’s universalism, and the cornerstones of an organic whole conceived in its entirety, and not only as the multiplicity of its parts[17].
Moving to a different cultural and religious context, we can hold as another example of universalism the Islamic civilization, before its hybridization, as for law and politics, with the Western world, with particular reference to the adoption of the paradigm of modern statehood. The Islamic civilizations have been structurally conceived based on the idea of universalization, and in respect of this it is inherently universalizing its all-encompassing perspective. The establishment of the Muslim community (ummah) with Muḥammad’s Hegira in 622 A.D. marked the fundamental transition from the bond of blood, as a tribalistic element characterizing pre-Islamic Arabia, to the bond of faith, that is to say the common belonging to a shared religious and spiritual narrative representing an element of cohesion[18]. The ummah is a community of believers, thus disentangled from territorial belongings or mutual kinship, who consider the world once again as a macro-space based on a determined outlook. As in the experience of the four “rightly guided” (rāshidūn) caliphs, the Muslim community was both a spiritual and a political body, under the guidance of the comprehensive normative framework of the sharīʿa. This latter concept, in all of its variety and its complexity, is indeed not a law in the Western understanding of the term, but “the straight path”, or in a wider sense, the path leading to a watering place[19]. It is not simply a way of regulating society, but also a way toward eternal salvation, revealed by the divinity and understood and systematized by the jurists (fuqahā) by means of juristic hermeneutics. In this context, spatiality is understood in a completely different way. Pre-Islamic Arabia was a land of merchants and traders, and it is not by chance that Muslim political and legal lexicon resents of this influence, with recurring images of traveling and roads[20]. Contrarily to the stationary Western people. the nomad populations that inhabited the lands in which Islam flourished established a different relationship with the category of geographical spatiality, organizing spaces around them in a dynamic way while moving along their routes[21]. With the advent of Islam, the Muslim civilization grew in refinement and sophistication, inscribing this outlook within a universalizing ideal perspective. Based on this, Muslim jurisprudence distinguished between the lands ruled by Muslims and in which the practice of Islam was free (dār al-Islām, or “the house of Islam”) and all the others (dār al-ḥarb, or “the house of war”)[22]. This bipartition embraces once again all the creation, taking into consideration not only the world as a physical manifestation but the universe as a whole, with this life and the hereafter. Caliphal universalism, although never realized in practice like the unaccomplished unity of the ummah, nonetheless represented a powerful narrative to think of law, politics and society in terms of comprehensiveness. Regardless of his real powers and prerogatives, which considerably changed in the course of history, the caliph was the commander of the believers (amīr al-muʾminīn)[23], thus not only of a specific community delimited by specific boundaries, but of a ummah potentially expanding everywhere. In light of this, the ummah can be considered not as a governmental idea[24], but as a normative concept, mirroring the normativity of the Muslim outlook on spatiality, whose universalism, once again, finds a shared significance to its universality.
Moving to a radically different cultural context, the last example I would like to mention here is the Confucian idea of tiānxià, which greatly influenced the political awareness and sensibility of imperial China as well as its tributary system. The transition of power from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600-c. 1046 B.C.E.) to the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046-c. 256 B.C.E.) saw the introduction in the Chinese political discourse of the concept of “mandate of Heaven” (tiānmìng)[25]. Theorized by Confucius and later enriched by Mencius, this idea represented a cultural and political narrative according to which the heavenly favor was accorded to a sovereign, the “son of Heaven” (tiānzǐ), but could also be easily revoked, implying an inherent volatility of the divinely legitimation to rule. Omens, prosperity and even popular favor – especially in Mencius’ view[26] – were considered all signs through which to investigate the will of Heaven, in order to understand if a sovereign still possessed the legitimacy to rule or not. The son of Heaven, that is to say the Chinese Emperor, was therefore blessed with an inscrutable and rapidly changing heavenly mandate[27], sitting on the throne of the Middle Kingdom not just to rule over a State, but to represent the very cornerstone of the known world. This idea is rooted in the concept of tiānxià, which can be translated as “all under Heaven”. This idea, present since the Zhou dynasty, was acquired by Chinese political lexicon thanks to Confucian works like the Dà Xué (Great Learning)[28], and can be considered as a form of universalism in which all that exists revolves around the Chinese throne and is classified and understood accordingly[29]. The tributary system was established following a more or less shared conception regarding China’s supremacy in East Asia, and implied the recognition of the role of the son of Heaven even outside the borders of China, receiving tributes by surrounding countries in a model of international relations based on a similar understanding of the world. The idea of tiānxià is, once again, not simply a conception considering the terrestrial globe, but the way in which all that is under Heaven – therefore, reality intended as a totality and as a universality – is made sense of by virtue of a narrative influencing not only politics but also law and society[30]. It is not simply the self-awareness of a cultural superiority, but the way in which Confucian society structured its categorization of the existence, once again in a normative way. The fashion things acquired in this way was normative, in that according to this normativity the universality of reality was properly understood and located in an all-encompassing framework. Confucian values made sense of the surrounding world, and established a political system that, far from being strictly confined within geographical boundaries, expanded throughout the continent aspiring to universality. Sitting as the key figure of this system, the Emperor was not simply a sovereign, but “a gift from Heaven”[31], thus structurally universal not just in its political, but also in its cultural and spiritual role.
With these three examples, which would undoubtedly deserve dedicated analyses due to their complexity, I tried to put in light the distinguishing characters of the idea of universalization, expressive of various and differentiated forms of universalisms. Regardless of the deep cultural diversity, all these three cases show indeed that universalization subtends the acknowledgment of an order, based on which it is possible to make sense of reality intended as a whole. These forms of ancient universalisms were neither limited to govern a geographical spatiality nor bound to rule over a determined community; on the contrary, they provided an interpretation of the world, not limited to its physical expression – intended as the globe – but considered in terms of universality, that is to say an organic complexity that however could be understood based on shared categories of comprehension. Having regard to this, it will be easier to grasp the difference with the modern phenomenon of globalization, which is in turn worth analyzing in further detail.
Globalization and the idea of dis-order
In the previous paragraphs, I have already hinted to the fact that while universalization, in its various and culture-specific expressions, conceived reality in terms of a whole to which to assign a shared meaning and significance, globalization sees the world eminently the physical expression of its materiality. While universalization can overcome physical spatiality based on a universalizing narrative, globalization somehow erased internal world’s borders, but remain strictly within the external border of the terrestrial globe in its concrete physicality[32]. On the one hand, we have the universe, intended as a figure of meaningful totality, and, on the other hand, we have the globe, intended as a concrete object of immanence. Again, on the one hand, we have the idea of order, and, on the other hand, we have the idea of dis-order.
Evidently, given its structural lack of homogeneity, disorder cannot be defined but as the absence of an order[33]. This state of structural disorder actually prevents analysts to properly elaborate theoretical models to explain globalization, and ultimately to make sense of it. Making sense of it and inscribing its dynamics into explanatory and predictable systems would actually mean to equate it to a form of universalization as defined above. So far, nothing close to it ever happened, and coming back to Bauman the only thing on which everyone seems to agree about globalization is its elusive dimension in respect of every possible categorization[34]. As its inherent form of order is a dis-order, the model to possibly explain it is a non-model, that is to say the structural impossibility to elaborate a model to understand it and explain it from a theoretical point of view. While universalization comes from an order, whose rise and fall can possibly be predicted and understood, globalization simply happens.
While universalization conceived its universality as an ideal unity although possibly divided by immanent contingences, globalization happens in the context of a postmodernity that has been correctly described as an extreme form of fragmentation[35]. Here, fragmentation is not simply the objective description of a process, but it is a structural feature of a state of things. This point can be better explained having regard to Lyotard’s well-known definition of postmodernity as disbelief and incredulity in meta-narratives[36]. Regardless of their actual content, narratives and meta-narratives are what established and preserved universalisms in their processes of progressive universalization; they were what helped such universalisms establishing dynamics and relations somehow predictable and stable, making sense of the idea of order subtended to them, and ultimately distinguishing them from present-day globalization. The lack of belief in narratives, including political constructs such as that of territorial statehood[37] that had been the cornerstones of the international system since recent times, marked the transition to a different phenomenon. In other words, the fall of narratives marked the transition to the loss of sense it was possible to assign to a universality to establish, develop and explain it. As universalization followed a process of narratological construction, globalization saw its postmodern presupposition in a process of deconstruction. This idea of deconstruction, intended as a way of progressively dismantling narratives on which ancient universalisms were built or on which new ones could be made up, is actually the only unquestionable and common trait of this ethereal phenomenon. Once again, it cannot but be defined as a contrario, that is to say not a fil rouge represented by a presence, but by an absence. If universalization was distinguished by an ideally global and ordaining community with a shared belief, globalization is characterized by a so-called “global village”[38] however without one.
In such a context, the lack of an order is mirrored by the lack of a center, intended not necessarily as a geographical space but as a point of reference around which to build and shape a theoretical form of political, legal and social governance. Regarding this, literature has spoken about polycentrism[39]. In a polycentric world, the presence of multiple centers actually prevents the organization of life around a single one, as well as the elaboration of a coherent and self-consistent narrative about reality and the universality of existence. This also prevented the establishment of hierarchical and pyramidal structures, which had structurally characterized the idea of modern and territorial statehood and the State’s monopoly of coercion and of legislative power. If universalizing models of the past were also diffuse in their overall structures, like the medieval Respublica with its multiple and overlapping layers of law and politics, what represents a novelty in the context of globalization is actually the interchangeability of the factors. Not only politics, but law itself appears to be now conceived as a network[40], whose multiple knots are somehow expendable and interchangeable. Without a coherent and shared form of belief subtending the construction of an order, nobody is really essential, and everything can be replaced by more or less spontaneous processes of self-adaptation. This fluidity evidently presides from every form of organized planning of social and political dynamics, but mainly relies on the idea of autopoiesis. Luhmann[41] had already pointed out that modern society is organizing itself in self-regulating and self- reproducing systems. In a world in which the processes of globalization are even emphasized in respect of the years in which Luhmann wrote, this is even truer. A particularly interesting example is represented by multinational corporations, whose internal rules and standards outline a spontaneous and diffuse system of self-regulation[42]; the same could be said for the Internet, the image of the network par excellence, producing autonomous and factual customs in a context in which traditional law does not seem to possess the instruments to govern it[43]. Norms and rules are spontaneously produced and reproduced, in a horizontal system of interchangeable relations, whose structure cannot be reduced simply to past figures of hierarchies and sources, losing at the same time every conception of predictability and stability.
Following this reasoning, another feature of globalization, which differentiates it from universalization, eventually emerges: the lack of a temporal projection. Ancient forms of universalism elaborated theoretical models and schemes that were ideally thought to last in time, regardless of how they effectively last on the scene of history. They were stable intellectual frameworks in which locating political dynamics, in order to explain and develop them in an ordained way. Temporal stability was thus an essential feature somehow intrinsically inscribed into the idea of universalization, because an overall conception of reality can be made sense of only having regard both to its past and to its future. Homogenizing social and political relations based on shared beliefs is indeed an operation that needs to embrace a wider perspective not only on space, but also on time, in order to build up narratives meant to last. In such a context, and from a theoretical point of view, relations internal to the universality are more or less predictable, based as they are on pre-existing criteria of understanding the same reality. However, if the universe is ideally everlasting in its comprehensive extension in the spatiotemporal field, the globe as a physical object undergoes periodical changes. Globalization tends indeed to lose its temporal projection, and with it the predictability of its processes of development and its internal dynamics. In the absence of a shared narrative, globalization explicates itself in punctual events and facts, which progressively emerges from its multiple centers and are overcome with the same easiness. In the globalizing world, just as nothing is really essential, nothing seems to be really meant to last forever. This aspect is particularly evident regarding law, which served in the past as an instrument outlining a form of durability, embodying the stability of the legal order. Law defined a model of thought and even anthropology, and at the same time was defined by it, always with the pretense of lasting in time, to lay the foundations of a stable framework. In the globalizing perspective, law itself comes to be an expendable tool, to be easily replaced following practical contingencies. This actually marks the transition from the idea of temporal stability to the idea of punctual equilibrium[44], in a context in which nothing is really predictable. Equilibrium is temporary in its essence, in that it refers only to the dimension of the present, to the dimension of here-and-now that has already been linked to a globalizing perspective following a process of space and time compression[45]. If everything can change and everything can be ultimately replaced in exchange of something else, then it is not actually possible to elaborate reliable models of predictions in social life. The only element that can be foreseen is that when a point of equilibrium is lost, another point of equilibrium will emerge elsewhere, in turn characterized by this intrinsic dimension of impermanence.
Conclusions
Having regard to all these features and of a lacking centralized and sovereign authority, it is not surprising that someone has already described contemporary society as a form of neo-medievalism[46], with special reference to law. However, at a closer look this comparison tends to be misunderstanding, once again based on the absence of a shared idea of order subtending the overall legal and political conception[47]. The impossibility of understanding and fully explaining contemporary globalization processes using the lenses of neo-medievalism highlights precisely the difference between universalization and globalization.
Universalization is normative, in that it recognizes a normative order, understands reality accordingly, and acts to preserve such an order throughout the dimension of time. It acknowledges things as they should be based on theoretical criteria, and is all-encompassing in its vision. On the contrary, globalization is descriptive: it describes phenomena, events and forces that however it does not necessarily originate, and simply acknowledges things as they are. It describes a state of things in a punctual moment, which may inevitably change at a different time, and that had already changed in the past. It is fluid in its proceedings, and this fluidity actually reflects its fragmentation, in the structural incapability of elaborating a prescriptive and comprehensive model of thought to explain it and to guide it.
It is also possible to conclude that universalization is the pursuit of a sense to explain reality, it is the acknowledgment of a possible meaning – one out of many possibilities – based on which we can comprehend and understand all that exists. Globalization is a complexity that is not actually possible to make sense of, not because of the degree of such a complexity, but because it inherently lacks the idea of meaning, this last intended as the progressive and ideal explanation of a pre-existing order of things. Universalization both is shaped by an order and in turn shapes an order on its own – a political, social and legal order – as a reflection of both a νόμος (nómos) and a τέλος (telos). Globalization is not shaped by an order and does not originate one, but is on the contrary a form of unpredictable dis-order, in whose contexts new processes and dynamics spontaneously emerge from its structural polycentrism. While universalization actually needs to make sense of reality to properly express a universalizing idea, globalization does not, simply because it prescinds from every possible idea of order. Moreover, while order can be an idea, based on which it becomes possible or even necessary to ordain and norm society, dis-order is simply a state of things, which can be empirically described but not necessarily regulated.
In present days, law and politics seem to be outdated instruments to face the challenges of globalization, where everything moves so fast and in a way so unpredictable that it seems to be impossible to pursue it with our current schemes of analysis. Nevertheless, we should firstly ask ourselves if the entire operation is actually meaningful and unbiased, or if on the contrary we are simply analyzing a new phenomenon with ancient categories of comprehension, which are evidently unfit for it. Before the question about how to make sense of globalization and how to regulate it, we should ask ourselves whether it is possible to do it without completely changing our viewpoint. Regardless of the answer that we will provide to this question, which will inevitably vary based on multiple factors, what is undoubtedly possible to do is to manage the various processes that take place in the context of globalization. It is therefore possible to react to it[48], based on the contingent points of equilibrium that will progressively emerge, and on the scenarios that will be progressively outlined in this eternal here-and-now. If globalization is adaptive and descriptive, then the instruments to respond to its threats and to profit from its opportunities must be accordingly shaped. Perhaps, only in this way will we be able to gradually acknowledge an initial form of order out of a structural disorder.
[1] On this, see Hedley Bull [1977], The Anarchical Society. A Study of Order in World Politics, Palgrave, Basingstoke-New York 2002, pp. 225-308; Richard A. Falk, “The Interplay of Westphalia and Charter Conceptions of the International Legal Order”, in The Future of the International Legal Order, vol. I, Trends and Patterns, eds. Richard A. Falk, Cyril E. Black, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1969, pp. 32-72.
[2] Literature on globalization is clearly extensive. For a monographic work, see Ulrich Beck [1997], What is Globalization?, Polity Press, Cambridge 2009. Although the situation undoubtedly change since the tiome in which Beck wrote, the text offers the opportunity to analyze various aspects of this phenomenon that are still topical nowadays.
[3] Zygmunt Bauman, “On Glocalization, or Globalization for Some, Localization for Others”, in Thesis Eleven, n. 54, August 1998, p. 38. This differentiation is also found in Ulrich K. Preuss, “The Force, Frailty and Future of Human Rights under Globalization”, in Theoretical Inquiries in Law, vol. I, n. 2, July 2000, p. 301. As I will note, however, Preuss assign to universalization a completely different meaning than the one based on which I will carry out my analysis.
[4] Cf. Christian Etzrodt, “Adam Smith and the Neo-Calvinist Foundations of Globalization”, in Experiencing Globalization. Religion in Contemporary Contexts, eds. Derrick M. Nault, Bei Dawei, Evangelos Voulgarakis, Rab Paterson, Cesar Andres-Miguel Suva, Anthem Press, London-New York 2013, p. 24.
[5] Cf. Preuss, The Force, Frailty and Future of Human Rights under Globalization, cit., p. 301.
[6] Åke Frändberg, The Legal Order. Studies in the Foundations of Juridical Thinking, Springer, New York 2018, p. 25.
[7] James Collins, Stef Slembrouck, Mike Baynham, “Introduction: scale, migration and communication practice”, in Globalization and Language in Contact, eds. James Collins, Stef Slembrouck, Mike Baynham, Continuum, London-New York 2009, p. 1.
[8] Ken Jowitt, New World Disorder. The Leninist Extinction, University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles 1993. Since then, the expression has been widely used in literature.
[9] Bauman, On Glocalization, cit., p. 38.
[10] Cf. Maria Felicia Schepis, Colui che ride. Per una ricreazione dello spazio politico, Franco Angeli, Milan 2011, pp. 107-108; René Alleau [1976], La scienza dei simboli. Contributo allo studio dei principi e dei metodi della simbolica, Sansoni, Florence 1983, p. 166.
[11] Cf. Paul Cartledge, Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2009, pp. 41-42.
[12] Cf. James Mitchell, Significant Etymology. Or, Roots, Stems, and Branches of the English Language, William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh 1908, p. 1.
[13] Cf. Mitchell, Significant Etymology, cit., p. 427.
[14] The reference is clearly to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall & Civill, for Andrew Crooke, at the Green Dragonin St. Pauls Church-yard, London 1651.
[15] On the transition between these phases, see Mark Greengrass, Christendom Destroyed. Europe 1517-1648, Penguin Books, London 2014. See also Jeremy Larkins, From Hierarchy to Anarchy. Territory and Politics Before Westphalia, Palgrave Macmillan, New York-Basingstoke 2010.
[16] With particular reference to the legal order, see the fundamental work of Paolo Grossi [1995], L’ordine giuridico medievale, Laterza, Rome-Bari 2004. By the same author, see Grossi [2007], A History of European Law, transl. Laurence Hooper, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester 2010, pp. 1-38.
[17] On the relationship between spiritual and temporal powers, see J. A. Watt [1988], “Spiritual and Temporal Powers”, in The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c. 350-c. 1450, ed. J. H. Burns, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, pp. 367-423. On the relationship between Pope and Emperor, see Othmar Hageneder [1985], “Il dominio del mondo nel medioevo”, in Il Sole e la Luna. Papato, Impero e regni nella teoria e nella prassi dei secoli XII e XIII, trans. Gabriele Ingegneri, ed. Maria Pia Alberzoni, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2000, pp. 11-31.
[18] See Henry Siegman, “The state and the individual in Sunni Islam”, in The Muslim World, vol. LIV, n. 1, 1964, p. 14.
[19] Cf. Shaheen Sardar Ali, Modern Challenges to Islamic Law, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2016, pp. 23-24. Literature on sharīʿa in general is extensive, and falls outside of the scope of this article.
[20] Cf. Patricia Crone, God’s Rule. Government and Islam, Columbia University Press, New York 2004, p. 21.
[21] Cf. John Hooker, Working Across Cultures, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2003, pp. 21-37.
[22] On this, see Johannes Bork, Zum Konstrukt von dār al-islām und dār al-ḥarb. Die zeitgenössische Rezeption eines Konzepts des klassischen islamischen Rechts, De Gruyter, Berlin-Boston 2020. For a contemporary perspective, see see Sarah Albrecht, Dār al-Islām Revisited. Territoriality in Contemporary Islamic Legal Discourse on Muslims in the West, Brill, Leiden-Boston 2008.
[23] On the title, see Yusra Khanam, “Amir al-Mu’minin” (voice), in Islam. A Worldwide Encyclopedia, ed. Cenap Çakmak, Abc-Clio, Santa Barbara 2017, pp. 131-132. For an in-depth analysis on the caliphal office in the course of Muslim history, see Patricia Crone, Martin Hinds [1986], God’s Caliph. Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003.
[24] Frederick Mathewson Denny [1994], An Introduction to Islam, Routledge, London-New York 2016, p. 201.
[25] See Michael J. Puett, To Become a God. Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-divinization in Early China, Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge 2002, pp. 54-60; Wang Aihe, “Moral Rulership and World Order in Ancient Chinese Cosmology”, in Morality and Responsibility of Rulers. European and Chinese Origins of a Rule of Law as Justice for World Order, eds. Anthony Carty, Janne Elisabeth Nijman, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018, pp. 247-269.
[26] On Mencius’ position and its interpretations, see A. T. Nuyen, “The “Mandate of Heaven”: Mencius and the Divine Command Theory of Political Legitimacy”, in Philosophy East and West, vol. LXIII, n. 2, April 2013, pp. 113-126.
[27] In the Shījīng (Book of Songs, one the five Confucian classics) it is indeed stated that “Heaven’s charge is not forever” and that the mandate is “not easy to hold” (The Book of Songs. The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry, trans. Arthur Waley [1937], Grove Press, New York 1987, p. 251, 234 respectively).
[28] “Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their States were rightly governed. Their States being rightly governed, the whole empire [tiānxià] was made tranquil and happy” (Confucius, The Great Learning, in The Chinese Classics, vol. I, trans. James Legge, Trübner & Co., London 1861, pp. 222-223).
[29] On this fundamental idea, see Zhao Tingyang, Redefining a Philosophy for World Governance, trans. Tao Liqing, Palgrave MacMillan, New York 2019, pp. 1-20.
[30] Cf. David A. Pankenier, “The Cosmo-Political Background of Heaven’s Mandate”, in Early China, vol. XX, 1995, p. 166. Based on the narrative of the mandate of Heaven, law itself becomes “a concrete embodiment of the cosmic order” (Jiang Yonglin, The Mandate of Heaven and the Great Ming Code, University of Washington Press, Seattle-London 2011, p. 4.).
[31] Mencius, “Wan Chang”, part. I, in The Works of Mencius, The Works of Mencius, trans. James Legge, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1895, p. 357.
[32] Cf. Giacomo Mulé [2001], “Confini e Globalizzazione”, in Globalizzazione e contesti locali. Una ricerca sulla realtà italiana, ed. Vincenzo Cesareo, FrancoAngeli Editore, Milan 2008, p. 174.
[33] On this concept at an international level, see Janice Bially Mattern, Ordering International Politics. Identity, Crisis and Representational Force, Routledge, London-New York 2005, p. 23.
[34] “The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalization is that of the indeterminate, unruly and self-propelled character of world affairs: the absence of a centre, of a controlling desk, of a board of directors, a managerial office. […] Globalization is not about what we all or at least the most resourceful or enterprising among us wish or hope to do. It is about what is happening to us all. It explicitly refers to the foggy and slushy ‘no man’s land’ stretching beyond the reach of the design and action capacity of anybody in particular.” (Bauman, On Glocalization, cit., pp. 38-39).The title of this article comes from this quotation, better representing the contemporary situation.
[35] In this sense, Robert G. Dunn, Identity Crises. A Social Critique of Postmodernity, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis-London 1998, especially pp. 143 ff.
[36] Jean-François Lyotard, La Condition postmoderne. Rapport sur le savoir, éditions de Minuit, Paris 1979.
[37] On the State as a narrative, see Andrea Tagliapietra, “Lo Stato come narrazione”, in Giornale Critico della Storia delle Idee, year III, n. 5, Mimesis, Milan 2011, p. 3.
[38] This well-known definition comes from Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy. The Making of Typographic Man, University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1962.
[39] See Jan Aart Scholte, Globalization. A Critical Introduction, Palgrave McMillan, New York 2000, chap. 6.
[40] Cf. François Ost, Michel van de Kerchove, De la pyramide au réseau? Pour une théorie dialectique du droit, Presses de l’Université Saint-Louis, Bruxelles 2010, especially part 2; Giovanni Bombelli, Diritto, Comportamenti e Forme di “Credenza”, Giappichelli, Turin 2017, pp. 215-255.
[41] The reference is to Niklas Luhmann [1984], “Social Systems”, trans John Bednarz jr., Dirk Baecker, eds. Timothy Lenoir, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1995, especially pp. 15-17. According to Luhmann, the system “generates itself. Not only does it produce its own structures, like certain computers that are able to develop programs for themselves, but it is also autonomous at the level of operations” (Niklas Luhmann [2002], Introduction to Systems Theory, trans. Peter Gilgen, ed. Dirk Baecker, Polity Press, Cambridge-Malden 2013, p. 77).
[42] Wesley Cragg, “Multinational Corporation, Globalization, and the Challenge of Self-Regulation”, in Hard Choices, Soft Law. Voluntary standards in global trade, environment and social governance, eds. John J. Kirton, Michael J. Trebilcock, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham 2004, pp. 213 ff.
[43] On the redefinition of space and time in the virtual reality, see Katerina Diamantaki, “The ambiguous construction of place and space”, in Real Virtuality. About the Destruction and Multiplication of World, eds. Ulrich Gehmann, Martin Reiche, Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2014, p. 261. For an analysis on the relationship between the Internet and the idea of jurisdiction, see Matthew R. Burnstein, “Conflicts on the net: choice of law in transitional cyberspace”, in Vanderbilt Journal of Transitional Law, vol. XXIX, n. 75, Vanderbilt University, Nashville 1996, p. 81.
[44] In this sense, Bruno Montanari, “Dall’ordinamento alla governance. Uno slittamento di piani”, in La costruzione dell’identità europea. Sicurezza collettiva, libertà individuali e modelli di regolazione sociale, vol. I, ed. Bruno Montanari, Giappichelli, Turin 2012, pp. 3-38.
[45] In this sense, Donald G. Ellis, Transforming Conflict. Communication and Ethnopolitical Conflict, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham 2006, pp. 90-91. Cf. William H. Mott IV, Globalization. People, Perspectives, and Progress, Praeger, Westport-London 2004, p. 305.
[46] Cf. Jörg Friedrichs, “The Meaning of New Medievalism”, in European Journal of International Relations, vol. VII, n. 4, december 2001, pp. 475-501; Maria Rosaria Ferrarese, “Globalizzazione giuridica” (voice), in Enciclopedia del diritto. Annali dal 2007, vol. IV, Giuffrè, Milan 2007, pp. 547 ff.
[47] I have already anbalyzed this point if further detail in Federico Lorenzo Ramaioli, “La postmodernità come transizione a un neo-medievalismo giuridico? Tra frammentazione e globalizzazione”, in Rivista della Cooperazione Giuridica Internazionale, year XXIII, n. 66, september-december 2020, pp. 80-115.
[48] On possible responses, see Beck, What is Globalization, cit., pp. 129-155.