An Analysis Of Andrew Liklater’s ‘political Community’ Proposition With Reference To His International Critical Theory

Professor Andrew Linklater is one of the representatives in the international political theory field. His critical theory gradually gets our attention since the 1990 s. Political Community is a new key proposition in his critical theory. Traditional political communities are facing challenges under the impact of globalization and fragmentation, the problem of community transformation or new community construction is more worthy of thinking; at the same time, China’s “destiny community” concept also gives a new meaning to the community study.Critical theory aims at the pursuit of human emancipation. Andrew Linklater argues that we can expand the moral boundaries of the political community to understand the meaning of emancipation and introduces it into the study of the new form of political community. He thinks that the new form of political community should be a more universal one that has broken the unjust distinctions between the “insiders” and the “outsiders”; political community has a rising type of hierarchy, which is mainly represented as nation state now; modern citizenship represents the relationship between the responsibilities of people as a citizen or as a human, the responsibility of people as a citizen is not naturally higher than people’s responsibility as a human; globalization and fragmentation has eroded the concept of the traditional political community, reduced the moral meaning of the national borders and led to the transformation of political community; it is possible and necessary for us to build a more universal political community.On the basis of the above analysis of Andrew Linklater’s political community theory, this dissertation discussed and explained the practical significance and some problems that may exist. This paper argues that the proposition of Linklater’s political community is a new development of his critical theory, which can be more fully and deeply understood by the exploration of “critical” and “liberation”; this proposition and the idea of “human destiny community” in our country have some similarities, which have certain reference value for the promotion of human progress. But at the same time, this paper pointed out that the theoretical basis of Linklater’s new political community is not undisputed: first, assertions that the decline of Westphalia System is overly optimistic; second, there is a paradox in universalism itself, so the new political community built by the guidance of universalism may not be harmless in solving inclusion and exclusion problems that the community has to face.