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and citizen is
    by now commensurable only in the framework of Empire. This
    new framework forces us to confront a series of explosive aporias,
    because in this new juridical and institutional world being formed
    our ideas and practices ofjustice and our means ofhope are thrown
    into question. The means ofthe private and individual apprehension
    ofvalues are dissolved: with the appearance ofEmpire, we are
    confronted no longer with the local mediations of the universal
    but with a concrete universal itself. The domesticity of values, the
    shelters behind which they presented their moral substance, the
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    T H E P O L I T I C A L C O N S T I T U T I O N O F T H E P R E S E N T
    limits that protect against the invading exteriority—all that disap-
    pears. We are all forced to confront absolute questions and radical
    alternatives. In Empire, ethics, morality, and justice are cast into
    new dimensions.
    Throughout the course ofour research we have found our-
    selves confronted with a classic problematic of political philosophy:
    the decline and fall of Empire.30 It may seem paradoxical that we
    address this topos at the beginning, at the same time that we treat
    the initial construction ofEmpire; but the becoming ofEmpire is
    actually realized on the basis ofthe same conditions that characterize
    its decadence and decline. Empire is emerging today as the center
    that supports the globalization ofproductive networks and casts its
    widely inclusive net to try to envelop all power relations within
    its world order—and yet at the same time it deploys a powerful
    police function against the new barbarians and the rebellious slaves
    who threaten its order. The power ofEmpire appears to be subordi-
    nated to the fluctuations oflocal power dynamics and to the shifting,
    partial juridical orderings that attempt, but never fully succeed, to
    lead back to a state ofnormalcy in the name ofthe ‘‘exceptionality’’
    ofthe administrative procedures. These characteristics, however,
    were precisely those that defined ancient Rome in its decadence
    and that tormented so many ofits Enlightenment admirers. We
    should not expect that the complexity ofthe processes that construct
    the new imperial relationship ofright be resolved. On the contrary,
    the processes are and will remain contradictory. The question of
    the definition ofjustice and peace will find no real resolution; the
    force of the new imperial constitution will not be embodied in a
    consensus that is articulated in the multitude. The terms ofthe
    juridical proposal ofEmpire are completely indeterminate, even
    though they are nonetheless concrete. Empire is born and shows
    itselfas crisis. Should we conceive this as an Empire ofdecadence,
    then, in the terms Montesquieu and Gibbon described? Or is it more
    properly understood in classical terms as an Empire ofcorruption?
    Here we should understand corruption first ofall not only in
    moral terms but also in juridical and political terms, because accord-
    W O R L D O R D E R
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    ing to Montesquieu and Gibbon, when the different forms of gov-
    ernment are not firmly established in the republic, the cycle of
    corruption is ineluctably set in motion and the community is torn
    apart.31 Second, we should understand corruption also in metaphysi-
    cal terms: where the entity and essence, effectiveness and value, do
    not find common satisfaction, there develops not generation but
    corruption.32 These are some ofthe fundamental axes ofEmpire
    that we will return to later at length.
    Allow us, in conclusion, one final analogy that refers to the
    birth ofChristianity in Europe and its expansion during the decline
    ofthe Roman Empire. In this process an enormous potential of
    subjectivity was constructed and consolidated in terms ofthe proph-
    ecy ofa world to come, a chiliastic project. This new subjectivity
    offered an absolute alternative to the spirit of imperial right—a new
    ontological basis. From this perspective, Empire was accepted