The global political discourse of dialogue among civilizations: Mohammad Khatami and Václav Havel

The global political discourse of ‘dialogue among civilizations’ emerged in the '90s in the context of the political debate on world order and against the background of the two competing and powerful discourses of the ‘clash of civilizations’ and the ‘end of history’. In the post 9/11 context and after five years from the designation of the UN Year of the Dialogue among Civilizations, this political discourse has been increasingly the object of a double movement of scepticism and hope. Unfortunately very little attention has been devoted by International Relations and Political theorists to clarify and articulate its possible meaning as a normative framework for the future of international relations. Within this normative horizon, this paper shows how two statesmen-intellectuals, Mohammed Khatami, the reformist Muslim cleric then president of Iran, and Václav Havel, the ‘post-modern’ dissident playwright then president of the Czech Republic, have been two of the most interesting proponents of this global political discourse. Their visions, I would contend, allow us to trace more clearly the contours of dialogue among civilisations as a global political discourse as well as to begin a more in-depth theoretical articulation of dialogue of civilisation as international political theory, an academic enterprise that has been largely ignored.