| Despite pervasive references to world opinion in contemporary political discourse, the concept has only found scant attention in international political theory and historical studies of international relations. Based on an episodic conceptual history (and a short pre-history) of world opinion at three quasi-constitutional moments of world politics in the twentieth century---the founding of the League of Nations (1914--1919), the founding of the United Nations (1941--1945), and the recasting of the UN after the Cold War (1992--1996)---this study argues that "world opinion" has constitutive implications for international governance and the structure of the international system. Drawing on Niklas Luhmann's political sociology and systems theory as well as Michel Foucault's analysis of "governmentality," it advances three propositions. First, in response to world-societal differentiation problems "world opinion" emerged and (re-emerged) as a medium of communication, or "currency", of world politics in the founding and reform of international organizations in the twentieth century. Second and more specifically, it has operated as a medium for a "governmentalization" of world politics, creating possibilities for changing post-sovereign, "domesticating" (disciplinary and pastoral), and liberal rationalities of international governance. This included shifts from collective security among states to the social security of populations and the personal security of individuals; from scientific conflict resolution to international "policing" of "criminal" states and humanitarian intervention in "failed states"; and from pastoral wardship to liberal welfarism, developmentalism, and neoliberal self-management for postwar and postcolonial populations and individuals. Third, "world opinion" episodically indicated the emergence (functional differentiation) of an international public sphere as a third subsystem of world politics alongside the states system and international institutions. Using Luhmann's historical sociology as a methodological template, mediation, governmentalization, and differentiation through "world opinion" are traced in their thematic, temporal, and social dimensions. The understanding of "world opinion" as a medium for governmentalization and system differentiation takes issue with both realist dismissals of world opinion as inconsequential and cosmopolitan celebrations of the emerging international public sphere as a harbinger for a democratization of world politics. |
