Wendt's Violation of the Constructivist Project: Agency and Why a World State is Not Inevitable/Agency, Teleology and the World State: A Reply to Shannon

The logic of anarchy and the struggle for recognition push humanity inexorably toward a single global state with a monopoly on legitimate force. Alexander Wendt's teleology goes through five stage -- from a Hobbesian 'system of states'; to a Lockean 'society of states'; to a 'world society'; to a 'collective security' system of one for all and all for one; and to a world state -- whereby the authority to use force and recognize peoples resides with a world government alone. Vaughn Shannon thinks that teleology 'conceptually denies' agency and undermines it in practice. Teleological thinking brings three things to the understanding of world politics -- an awareness of how the agency of each of the people , every day, contributes (or not) to the eventual end-state of the system; a hope that world state will one day be a reality; and the belief that like individuals, collectives too can decide their own fate.