Should-Read: Dani Rodrik: Global Citizens, National Shirkers

Should-Read: Dani Rodrik: Global Citizens, National Shirkers: “I know what a ‘global citizen’ looks like…

…I see a perfect specimen every time I pass a mirror. I grew up in one country, live in another, and carry the passports of both. I write on global economics, and my work takes me to far-flung places…. Yet May’s statement… contains an essential truth…. Real citizenship entails interacting and deliberating with other citizens in a shared political community…. Global citizens do not have similar rights or responsibilities. No one is accountable to them, and there is no one to whom they must justify themselves…. Political representatives are elected to advance the interests of the people who put them in office. National governments are meant to look out for national interests, and rightly so….

But what happens when the welfare of local residents comes into conflict with the wellbeing of foreigners – as it often does? Isn’t disregard of their compatriots in such situations precisely what gives so-called cosmopolitan elites their bad name?… Economics teaches that countries should maintain open economic borders, sound prudential regulation and full-employment policies, not because these are good for other countries, but because they serve to enlarge the domestic economic pie…. Policy failures… reflect poor domestic governance….
Hiding behind cosmopolitanism… is a poor substitute for winning policy battles on their merits…. Cosmopolitans often come across like the character from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov who discovers that the more he loves humanity in general, the less he loves people in particular….

We have to live in the world we have, with all its political divisions, and not the world we wish we had. The best way to serve global interests is to live up to our responsibilities within the political institutions that matter: those that exist.