Cosmopolitanism: Sovereignty denied or sovereignty restated?

This article explores and criticizes key assumptions of contemporary cosmopolitanism, not least the notion of post-sovereignty, trying to understand how the cosmopolitan power and sovereignty critique may be very compatible with present-day reconfigurations and relegitimizations of state power and sovereignty. Through a critique of how cosmopolitans sketch out a problematic nation state's past and a more factual efficient and morally appropriate post-nation state condition the article claims that cosmopolitanism may come to serve as legitimizing cover for a new sovereigntist language and practice wielded by the same powers who were dominant in the nation state age, namely the Western states. The purpose of the article is to ask whether cosmopolitanism and humanitarianism have become the new sovereigntist language uniting state officials and state-critical scholars?