*I am grateful to the “democracy in the age of globalisation” research group, directed by Furio Cerutti (University of Florence), for support and critical feedback. I am also grateful to Luca Baccelli, Katrin Flikschuh, Otfried Höffe, Thomas W. Pogge and Peter Wagner for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I finally wish to thank the University of Pisa (Dipartimento di Diritto Pubblico) where I started my research on this topic. 1 I am here relying on Wight’s classical distinction of three traditions of International Theory (Wight 1991). Instead of the label “revolutionist” I prefer to use the term referring to its founding father, since I do not find the former appropriate for a thinker so little inclined to sudden violent changes like Kant. 2 Bull 1977, p. 46. 3 Bull 1966a, p. 45. 4 See, for instance, Rosenau 1990; Zolo 1995, 1998; Hardt and Negri 2001. The Domestic Analogy and the Kantian Project of Perpetual Peace* Chiara Bottici Philosophy, European University Institute, Florence I. O NE objection to the Kantian tradition of international relations 1 rests on its reliance on an essentially flawed analogy between domestic and international order. In Hedley Bull’s words, the “domestic analogy is the argument from the experience of individual men in domestic society to the experience of states, according to which states, like individuals, are capable of orderly social life only if, to use the Hobbesian expression, they stand in awe of a common power.” 2 According to Bull, we must abandon the domestic analogy altogether, not only because attempting to understand something by means of something else is a sign of infancy in a subject, but also because the international society is unique and owes its nature to qualities peculiar to the situation of sovereign states. 3 This criticism of the domestic analogy often serves as an argument for rejecting any supranational federal arrangement. According to many critics of the domestic analogy, we must reject not only the Hobbesian hypothesis (which emphasises the contractual process giving rise to a new unitary and transcendental supranational power) but also the so-called Lockean conception (focusing on the counter powers that animate the constitutive process). In both cases, according to this criticism, the necessity of a global power is inferred by analogy with the experience of the domestic society, that is, from the idea that peace can be reached only through subjection to a common power. 4 The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 11, Number 4, 2003, pp. 392–410 © Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.