39
In Rousseau’s account, the political community (the state) differs from all these other
communities because it alone creates the legitimate authorization to use coercive force.
Authority in every other sort of community is limited by and subordinate to the authority
of the state.
We believe also that there are emerging quasi-political trans-national
communities, with their own quasi-civic identities, their own general wills, and their own
emergent standards of right. Consider, for example, the idea of “the West” (or the “free
world”) as it emerged in the Cold War, or the idea of “Europe” as it is beginning to
emerge today. There was no single institution embodying “the West,” but there were a
variety of multi-national agreements and institutions that both reflected and helped to
constitute a shared conception of a common good (at least on certain issues) and helped
to formulate a will to protect that community from internal and external threats. We add
that these trans-national communities must be understood as constituted by the wills of
the natural persons who comprise them. That political leaders execute some agreement
linking two (or more) countries need not create any sort of widely shared common
identity that can generate the sort of deep willingness to regard threats as common
problems requiring common solutions and to regard questions of justice arising between
them as matters requiring arbitration and settlement according to a shared standard. This
is the challenge now facing the leaders of the European Union in light of the French and
Dutch electorates’ rejection of the EU draft constitution: to foster among their peoples a
communal identity and a common willingness to deepen the range of issues they view as
requiring to be settled in common. (There is no suggestion, for example that the
jurisdiction of the European Court for Human Rights be limited),
Convention