The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal ...

Acknowledgements
This volume began in 2003 when we first read the English translation of Carl
Schmitt’s The Nomos of the Earth and felt compelled to introduce this book and
make its insights better known to scholars of International Relations, Political
Theory and International Law, in other words, scholars keenly thinking about
the present international predicament.
For this purpose, we convened a special workshop on the international political
thought of Schmitt at the fifth Pan-European International Relations Conference
which took place in September 2004 in The Hague. A number of
coincidences were immediately striking: the conference was called ‘Constructing
World Orders’, and it took place on 9–11 September in The Hague – the city
which Schmitt associates with the final dissolution of the jus publicum
Europaeum. Not only this: the conference and the workshop also shared the
Netherlands Congress Centre with the newly convened International Criminal
Court.
We would like to thank Douglas Bulloch, Christoph Burchard, Dominika
Dufferova, Jörg Friedrichs, Montserrat Herrero, Robert Howse, Carmelo
Jiménez Segado, Jerónimo Molina Cano, Sergio Ortino, David Pan, Mikkel
Thorup, Lars Vinx, Howard Williams and Thalin Zarmanian for their contributions
to the workshop and their comments, which helped to shape not only this
volume but also our understanding of Schmitt’s international thought. Moreover,
we would like to thank Fred Dallmayr, Alexander Wendt, Michael Cox, Richard
Bellamy, R. B. J. Walker and Peter Wilson for their critique and help with
getting this volume to publication. Finally, our gratitude goes to Stefan Elbe and
Irène Petito for their support and patience over the past few years, without which
this volume would not have been possible.
A shorter version of Chantal Mouffe’s chapter was published under the title
‘Schmitt’s Vision of a Multipolar World Order’ in South Atlantic Quarterly 104,
no. 2, 2005.
Louiza Odysseos and Fabio Petito
Brighton and Paris