American Exceptionalism, Exemptionalism and Global Governance

Abstract

Are America and global governance on a collision course? And if so, with what consequences? I make two arguments in this chapter. First, unlike the situation in 1945, when the U.S. truly was the world's political Archimedean point, global governance in the 21st century is being stitched together by a multiplicity of actors and interests - in considerable measure reflecting the success of America's own postwar transformational agenda. Indeed, the very system of states is becoming embedded within an increasingly mobilized and institutionalized global public domain that includes not only states but also non-state actors involved in the promotion and production of global public goods. While the American state remains by far the most powerful force among them, platforms and channels for transnational action that it does not directly control have proliferated - and are deeply entwined with American society itself. Enacting a strict exemptionalism posture, therefore, has become much harder than it seems. Second, although the debate fueled by the recent upsurge of U.S. resistance to global governance involves highly technical questions of constitutional law, on which I, a non-specialist, touch only lightly, it is also fundamentally a political debate, requiring us to make political choices. For on close inspection, many of the solutions proposed by the exemptionalists not only are unnecessary, but also impose a greater burden on us than the problems they seek to solve. In the conclusion I spell out some implications for the future of global governance of the continuing dialectic, if you will, between the two forms of American exceptionalism, acknowledging that the path ahead does not promise to be smooth, but noting that neither has it been getting to where we are today.

Full text

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Faculty Research Working Papers Series

































American Exceptionalism, Exemptionalism and Global Governance
John Gerard Ruggie



February 2004
RWP04-006
This paper can be downloaded without charge from the
Social Science Research Network at:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=517642

The views expressed in the KSG Faculty Research Working Paper Series are those of the author(s) and do not
necessarily reflect those of the John F. Kennedy School of Government or Harvard University. Copyright
belongs to the author(s). Papers may be downloaded for personal use only.

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AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, EXEMPTIONALISM
AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE






by
John Gerard Ruggie


in
Michael Ignatieff, editor
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS
(Princeton University Press, forthcoming)













*Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs and Weil Director, Center for
Business and Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University; and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the Bucerius University Program
on Global Governance in Hamburg, Germany, the Kennedy School’s Carr Center
for Human Rights Policy seminar on American Exceptionalism, and a conference on
American Unilateralism at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. I am
indebted to Cary Coglianese, Michael Ignatieff, Kal Raustiala, Frederick Schauer
and Anne-Marie Slaughter for particularly helpful comments, and to Jason Scott
for bibliographical assistance.

[15 November 2003]

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More than any other country, the United States was responsible for creating the
post-World War II system of global governance. But from the start, that historic mission
exhibited the conflicting effects of two very different forms of American exceptionalism.
For Franklin Roosevelt, the key challenge was to overcome the isolationist legacy of the
1930s and to ensure sustained U.S. engagement in achieving and maintaining a stable
international order. Old world power-political reasoning in support of that mission held
little allure for the American people – protected by two oceans, with friendly and weaker
neighbors to the North and South, and pulled unwillingly into two costly world wars by
that system’s breakdown. So Roosevelt framed his plans for winning the peace in a
broader vision that tapped into America’s own sense of self as a nation: the promise of an
international order based on rules and institutions promoting human betterment through
free trade and American-led collective security, human rights and decolonization, as well
as active international involvement by the private and voluntary sectors. For Roosevelt’s
successors, prevailing against the Soviet threat reinforced the mission and in many
respects made it easier to achieve. This first form of American exceptionalism – the need
for an animating vision beyond the dictates of balance-of-power politics – became the
basis for an international transformational agenda whose effects are unfolding still.1
Yet from the outset the United States also sought to insulate itself from the
domestic blowback of certain of these developments. This, too, has been justified on the
grounds of American exceptionalism: a perceived need to safeguard the special features
and protections of the U.S. constitution from external interference. And it also taps into a
core element of American identity: ours is a civic nationalism, defined by the institutions
and practices that bind us, not by blood and soil, and none is more foundational than the

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constitution itself. While the executive branch traditionally drove the international
transformational agenda, the “exemptionalist” resistance has been anchored in Congress.
It has been most pronounced and consequential in the area of human rights and related
social issues, where it typically has been framed in terms of protecting states rights
against federal treaty-based incursions. In drafting the United Nations charter, for
example, the U.S. delegation introduced language “reaffirming faith” in fundamental
human rights. But because the support of Southern Democrats was critical to the charter’s
ratification by the Senate, keeping Jim Crow laws beyond international scrutiny obliged
the U.S. to balance that reaffirmation by adding what became Article 2.7: that “nothing
contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters
which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”2 Reacting strongly
against U.S.-initiated negotiations of several UN human rights instruments, beginning
with the genocide convention, the Senate nearly adopted a constitutional amendment in
1954 – the Bricker amendment – that would have eviscerated the president’s formal
treaty-making powers.3 That same political constituency historically has resisted all
forms of international jurisdiction and has led Congressional opposition to the UN.
During the cold war, presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan sought to
minimize the international embarrassment resulting from the exemptionalist impulse,
especially in relation to civil rights, often acting through executive agreements or other
such means.4 Starting in the 1990s, the escalating wave of globalization and the end of
the cold war’s disciplining effects have produced a broader resurgence of opposition to
global governance among parts of the American political elite. Scholarship on the role of
international law in domestic courts has been consumed by what Harold Koh calls the

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transnationalist vs. nationalist debate, in which the latter appears to have seized the
intellectual offensive.5 A “new sovereigntist” movement has shaped corresponding
Beltway policy debates.6 The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and
robust international inspections of chemical and biological weapons production – in the
latter two cases raising the constitutional specter of unreasonable searches. A straw poll
in that chamber made it abundantly clear that the Kyoto protocol would be dead on
arrival. President Clinton did not dare submit the statute of the International Criminal
Court (ICC) for ratification knowing that it stood accused of giving away Americans’
constitutional due process protections and, therefore, faced a similar fate. But what may
be politically most significant, the current U.S. administration has been far more
hospitable to the exemptionalist agenda than its predecessors. Indeed, in its vigorous
opposition to the ICC it may end up sabotaging what most American allies consider a
crowning achievement of the postwar move towards global governance.7
What does this augur for the future? Are America and global governance on a
collision course? And if so, with what consequences? I make two arguments in this
chapter. First, unlike the situation in 1945, when the U.S. truly was the world’s political
Archimedean point, global governance in the 21st century is being stitched together by a
multiplicity of actors and interests – in considerable measure reflecting the success of
America’s own postwar transformational agenda. Indeed, the very system of states is
becoming embedded within an increasingly mobilized and institutionalized global public
domain that includes not only states but also non-state actors involved in the promotion
and production of global public goods. While the American state remains by far the most
powerful force among them, platforms and channels for transnational action that it does

3