Cosmopolitan Extraterritoriality

This chapter argues that extraterritoriality (ET) is an important idea and practice in the contemporary world that can be a possible site of state cosmopolitan responsibility. However, it also contains a serious potential for interstate domination and the assertion of national rather than cosmopolitan interests. Therefore, in order to avoid merely being a further opportunity for interstate domination, it must be understood in cosmopolitan terms as being concerned with regulating and restricting the state, and its agents and citizenry’s capacity for transnational harm. Only when understood in cosmopolitan terms can ET be a legitimate exercise of state responsibility beyond borders, even in the absence of a ‘cosmopolitan’ world order.