Forum on Heikki Patomäki's World Statehood: The Future of World Politics

In this forum, six scholars discuss Heikki Patom & auml;ki's book World Statehood: The Future of World Politics, published in 2023. The editor's introduction situates it in the discursive contexts of cosmopolitanism, deep history and functional differentiation. Ian Crawford looks at the concept of world statehood from an astrobiologist's point of view, putting the debate in the context of research on the possibility of life existing beyond Earth. Eva Erman notes that there are methodological issues that primarily derive from a missing distinction between theoretical and practical normativity in Patom & auml;ki's thought. Oliver Kessler offers a critical perspective on underlying, and possibly unrealistic, assumptions about a universal translatability of specialized knowledges and vocabularies that he argues underlines Patom & auml;ki's project. Jens Bartelson argues that the concept of world community has probably accumulated too much conceptual baggage to be useful in building world statehood. Mitja Sienknecht observes that the evolution of artificial intelligence is insufficiently addressed in World Statehood and probes possible implications in this respect. Heikki Patom & auml;ki then replies to these contributions.