When the state doesn’t commit: A review essay of Julian Culp’s Democratic Education in a Globalized World

The world has evolved from being international to being global. Increasingly, global issues like climate change, migration, pandemics, trade, big data, and terrorism spill over borders drawn centuries ago as if they were no longer there. In this globalized world, however, people are still born and educated as citizens of particular nation states. Indeed, education is still used as one of the state’s main tools for shaping citizen virtues and commitments. Political philosophers have acknowledged both the increasingly global nature of contemporary political problems and the power of education to shape citizens—but have failed to recognize how the two are interconnected. In his book, Democratic Education in a Globalized World: A Normative Theory, Julian Culp seeks to rectify this double-sided failure by building a theory of and framework for educating people for democratic citizenship in a world of border-crossing issues. Below, I outline how he seeks to overcome this problem, set out an analytical framework with which to engage with his account, and note some significant worries that arise from this analysis. In particular, I focus on a specific blindness from which Culp’s account suffers, which makes it unable to detect wrongs that arise when the state fails to commit to fundamental normative principles.