Towards a New Constitutionalism: Trách nhiệm công dân toàn cầu qua đối thoại hiến pháp thế giới

Towards a New Constitutionalism Developing Global Civic Responsibility through Participation in World Constitutional Deliberation Richard Mochelle Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2001 RMIT University Declaration I hereby declare that the work presented in this thesis is, except where due acknowledgement has been given, that of mine alone. The work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other award. The content of the thesis is the result of work that has been undertaken since the official commencement date of the approved research program. Richard Mochelle i Acknowledgments My first acknowledgement and grand thankyou must go to my partner, Sandra Ferguson, without whose support and love, this thesis might not have been completed.

I must thank her for her forbearance and suffering in those seeming endless periods when our relationship was sacrificed to the inhuman computer. And I need to thank her for the many hours that she committed to the tedium of proofreading. My thanks go also to Sigrid Ferguson who assisted in this. I need to acknowledge my first supervisor, Norman Blakie, whose scholarly understanding of, and openness to, alternative social research methodologies paved the way for acceptance and encouragement of the somewhat unconventional future-oriented normative approach that this thesis represented.

His move to an overseas posting found in his replacement, Benno Engels, a most supportive and encouraging supervisor. Benno’s eye for technical detail and weaknesses in argumentation, lifted the thesis to a higher standard of writing and scholarship. In the final year of the undertaking, Professor Wayne Hudson, in whom I discovered a shared interest in global civics education, offered valuable criticism in respect to the later chapters, and guidance in the last stages of completion. I must acknowledge the many folk who came to the global ethics workshops that I conducted in Queensland in 1998-99, and who subsequently participated in the ongoing deliberative groups.

While this experience was not undertaken as a formal part of the thesis research, it proved invaluable in many ways. Above all, it provided insight into the practical difficulties confronting the development of global civic responsibility, and to the kinds of provisions that might be needed to overcome them. Finally, I need to acknowledge and thank the small band of colleagues, now good friends, who together with me have invested many hours in democratic deliberations on the issues addressed by the thesis. In March 2001, this group founded CIVIDA, a network of associates committed to pursuing and promoting the world constitutional orientation of the thesis and its integrity development goals.

Our deliberations during the writing of the final chapters were invaluable in helping to clarify the ideas. Thankyou to Paul Wildman, Marielle Jansen, Colin Glover, and again, Sandra Ferguson. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS SUMMARY.1 GLOBAL CRISIS AND CHALLENGE.2 THE THESIS: A RESPONSE TO A KANTIAN CHALLENGE.1 The meaning of ‘constitution’ in the thesis.2 Is the thesis advocating world government?.3 METHODOLOGY: FUTURE-ORIENTED NORMATIVE INQUIRY: A VENTURE WITHOUT MAPS.4 THESIS STRUCTURE AND OUTLINE. 17 2 GLOBAL PROBLEMS AND CONSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE: PIONEERING VENTURES AND IMPEDIMENTS.2 ENVISAGING BETTER WORLD FUTURES: THE PIONEERING CONTRIBUTION OF WORLD FUTURES STUDIES 29 2.3 THE PRIORITY CHALLENGE: WORLD CONSTITUTIONAL DELIBERATION: SOME IMPLICATIONS 37 2.4 IMPEDIMENTS TO WORLD CONSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE.2 Lack of interest?.3 Lack of an open, democratic, world constitutional forum.4 Psychological factors determining response to global problems.

How can global problems exist if not in the minds of people?.6 Epistemological denial: How can global problems be perceived and resolved if global knowledge is impossible?.7 Problem of definitional clarity: What distinguishes a problem as ‘global’?.8 When time is money, no time for constitutional response. 57 iii 3 UNIVERSAL INTERESTS: GROUNDS FOR A NEW CONSTITUTIONALISM……………………………… 60 3.2 DOES RADICAL DIFFERENCE DENY UNIVERSAL INTERESTS?.1 The language difference argument.2 The ideological/ontological difference argument.3 The rationality difference argument.3 ASSUMPTION OF UNIVERSAL INTERESTS IN CONSTITUTIONALISM: EXTANT GROUNDS FOR GLOBAL CIVIC CULTURE.4 HOW TO IDENTIFY UNIVERSAL INTERESTS?.1 Galtung’s ‘basic needs’ approach.2 Connolly’s ‘real interests’ approach.3 Max-Neef’s ‘fundamental needs’ approach.5 FOR ALL TO IDENTIFY AND DECLARE UNIVERSAL INTERESTS?.2 Assuring capability equality.3 For each to publicly declare constitutional interests.6 CONCLUDING REMARKS: TOWARD A PROCEDURAL METACONSTITUTION……………………. 98 4 THE PRIACTIVE CONSTITUTION ……………………………………………… 100 4.2 THE PRIACTION PRINCIPLE AND ITS JUSTIFICATIONS.1 The sustainability argument – The Natural Step.2 The economic security argument.3 The agape love argument…………………………………………….3 FROM OUGHT TO CAN: CONSTITUTIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE PRIACTION PRINCIPLE 122 4.1 Universally accessible priactive information and communication system.2 Priorities indicator system.3 System reciprocity: contractual relation between the right of life-long economic security and priactive responsibility.4 Consistent voluntarism: implies an extensive trade-free zone.5 Custodian title: cost-free property transfer.6 Priaction principle incompatible with taxation principle.7 Linguistic implications: a political economy that does not ‘work’.8 Non-segregative world order: impartiality and the right and responsibility not to belong to any nation.9 Conditional sovereignty and world custodianship.10 Global participatory democracy: principle of equal participation….11 Educational qualification for world custodianship.12 Non-doctrinaire moral education. 134 5 THE RIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY TO PARTICIPATE IN WORLD CONSTITUTION MAKING………………………………………….2 THE RIGHT TO UNENCUMBERED PARTICIPATION IN WORLD CONSTITUTION MAKING.1 Is the right implied by the democratic ideal?.2 The dependence of political legitimacy on the right to unencumbered participation in constitution-making.3 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MORALLY AUTONOMOUS PARTICIPATION IN WORLD CONSTITUTION MAKING.1 The Golden Rule’s world constitution making imperative.2 Reconsidering the defence responsibility of the citizen.1 The current defence responsibility of the citizen.2 Citizen defence weaknesses.

167 Political identity construction: the illusion problem. 167 The indoctrination problem. 173 The citizen as defender and victim of irrationality.3 Overcoming defence weaknesses: maintaining constitutional defence exercise.3 Responsibility to determine and defend constitutional impositions… 185 5. 189 6 JUSTIFYING COMPULSORY EDUCATION: TO PROTECT ALL - CIVIC INTEGRITY DEVELOPMENT………………….1 INTRODUCTION: CAPTURING ATTENTION.2 JUSTIFYING COMPULSORY EDUCATION AND ITS CURRICULUM PRIORITIES.1 Aims and justifications for compulsory education: an overview of the current arguments.1 The all protection argument: J.2 Segregating the classes: the immaturity argument: J.3 The religious/cultural/national induction argument.4 The self-survival argument.5 The parental rights argument.6 The autonomy argument(s).2 Justifying compulsory curriculum priorities from a constitutional perspective.3 CONSTITUTING CIVIC INTEGRITY DEVELOPMENT AS COMPULSORY CURRICULUM PRIORITY.1 The all protective purpose and priority of compulsory education.2 Moral autonomy: an all-protective necessity.3 Dispute resolution skills and the priority of world constitutional deliberation.4 Redefining constitutionalism as civic integrity development (with education in lead role).5 Public disclosure as a civic integrity and trust imperative.6 How to improve dependability of political motivation? The problem of internalisation and civic character development.

241 7 CONCLUSIONS, REFLECTIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS……………….1 REFLECTION ON THESIS PROBLEM: A CRISIS OF CONSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE.2 CONCLUSIONS AND REFLECTIONS.3 STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS FOR THE FUTURE. 251 APPENDIX DESIGN BRIEF FOR PROTOTYPE CIVIC WEBSITE. 270 vi SUMMARY Confronted by major global problems, our ‘foremost challenge’, according to the 1995 report of the Commission on Global Governance, is to develop the vision of a better world – one more democratic, secure and sustainable.1 The report concludes with a call for ‘a global civic ethic’ – for commitment by all to a set of globally protective responsibilities. The thesis asks, what does this challenge imply? How to achieve an effective response? What provisions, in principle, ought to be instituted to meet the Commission’s call? The call is a tall order – for a quantum leap from passive, rights-oriented, civic culture to one based on global responsibility.

The thesis is not concerned with the probability of such shift occurring. The premise is that if we believe that the call ought to be met – that it commands an ethical response from all – we ought first to comprehend the ethical and practical implications, and second, seek to comply with them. The thesis is concerned with the first obligation. It requires an inquiry disciplined by moral reasoning and persistent focus on the long range, world future.

It has led the thesis into somewhat underdeveloped terrains. The call to enact global civic responsibilities implicitly entreats us to recognise the validity and gentle power of Kant’s categorical imperative,2 to unleash it from its remote, theoretical mountaintop and allow it to reign supreme as the preeminent, constitutional principle for personal and global governance. The thesis argues that this recognition will require, and result in, a new, education-led constitutionalism centred on civic integrity development. Logically derived from the Golden Rule, the categorical imperative and its universality and moral autonomy constraints are adopted by the inquiry, somewhat experimentally, as a methodological discipline.

For it is argued that such discipline should be cultivated by the new, education-based constitutionalism. This requires persistent, uncompromising focus on the universal ought. Where ought leads, the inquiry follows, even when it invokes an 1 Commission on Global Governance (1995: 1) 2 ‘Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become universal law’ (Kant, 1785) 1 apparently ‘unrealistic’ future beyond the margins of current educational and constitutional practice. The new constitutionalism appears vaguely outlined on the horizon, largely beyond political and educational experience.

The thesis moves towards this horizon to consider grounding assumptions and transit impediments, with the goal, above all, to determine the more prominent, ‘in principle’ landmarks toward which the world’s educational resources could be steered. The term constitution is minimally defined as a paramount, overarching strategy of mutual protection, not bound to current national constitutions, territories, and identities, nor to familiar constitution-making processes. Invoked by growing recognition of global interdependence and mutual risk, it stands for inclusive protection, ideally of, by and for ‘We the People of the World’. The Commission’s recommendation that people should deliberate on ‘the vision of a better world’ has been pursued by futurists since the 1960’s.

Their pioneering ventures are examined in chapter 2 and found contributive yet insufficient to meet the constitutional requirements implied by the Commission’s challenge. Various conceptual and practical obstacles impede effective response to the challenge. These preoccupy much of chapter 2 and indeed the whole thesis. The new constitutionalism presupposes, as does prevailing national constitutionalism, that despite cultural differences, there are certain universal interests that all want protected.

Most would want reliable protection against preventable mayhem, slaughter and environmental destruction. It is argued in chapter 3 that while the universalist assumption can reasonably withstand relativist scepticism, universal interests remain to be identified. Upon examination of notable identification procedures it is asked – should this be left to social researchers? Arguments are raised to suggest that, as a civic harm preventative measure, all people should be constitutionally required to identify these interests. Universal interests cannot be protected while people take no responsibility for their protection.

Were the Commission’s call for globally responsible civic culture taken seriously, what would this imply for world political economy? Chapter 4 undertakes an exercise in future-oriented normative inquiry to explore world constitutional implications in outline. 2 Revealed on the horizon is a new economic game with new words – the priactive constitution. The exercise demonstrates the challenging nature of the substantive ethical agenda confronting deliberants of the new constitutionalism. What right does one have to participate in world constitutional deliberations and consider such agendas? Chapter 5 argues that one has a right, and a responsibility to do so.

The arguments appeal to the democratic ideal, political legitimacy, the Golden Rule, the defence role of citizenship and the fact that each imposes the world constitutional order on all. But the participatory right and responsibility cannot be exercised without universally accessible constitutional fora, procedures and education. The theoretical ideals of deliberative democracy are summoned. The current technical feasibility of creating an Internet-based system of democratic deliberative provisions is illustrated in the Appendix.

Even were such provisions made available, a key impediment to effective response to the Commission’s call is that most work-committed adults are unlikely to volunteer substantial time for the learning engagement. Given the unacceptability of political coercion, chapter 6 considers the moral proposition that youngsters worldwide be submitted to the learning challenge in their years of compulsory education. The literature on moral justifications for compulsory education reveals considerable disagreement. These justifications seem anyhow unrelated to curriculum priorities that are actually imposed on captive audiences.