ABSTRACT
With its methodological individualism and the privileged, authoritative status attributed to state sovereignty, the liberal tradition cannot provide an adequate justification for the international rule of law and international institutions. Its methodological individualism frustrates an adequate articulation of the legitimacy and limits of political authority; and the presumption that such authority is exercised through an artificial reason of state renders international relations a function of state prerogative. The result is an unstable dialectic between liberal internationalism—advancing individualistic rights at the expense of national solidarity—and a collectivist, state-based nationalism—asserting privileges of sovereignty for those wielding state power. Addressing the justificatory deficit, this contribution seeks to reclaim and extend intellectual resources from the classical philosophical tradition, drawing selectively on Alasdair MacIntyre. Deploying his practice-based account of politics, it explains the legitimacy of political authority by reference to human sociability and the “common good,” and extends that explanation into the transnational domain.
