Communitarianism emerged as a distinct strand of political philosophy in the 1980s through critiques of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971). Writers commonly associated with the label—Michael Sandel, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer—argued that liberal theory rests on an implausibly "unencumbered self" abstracted from the social roles, traditions, and shared meanings that actually give moral life its content. Sandel's Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982), MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981), Taylor's Sources of the Self (1989), and Walzer's Spheres of Justice (1983) are the canonical texts.
In international relations theory, communitarianism is usually contrasted with cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitans (e.g., Charles Beitz, Thomas Pogge) treat individuals as the ultimate units of moral concern and extend principles of justice globally. Communitarians—drawing especially on Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars (1977) and Spheres of Justice—argue that:
- Political communities are the primary sites of meaningful justice because distributive principles depend on shared understandings of social goods.
- States possess moral standing derived from the communities they represent, grounding norms of non-intervention and self-determination.
- Human rights, while not rejected, are interpreted through cultural and historical context rather than as deductions from abstract reason.
This produces predictable disagreements over humanitarian intervention, global redistribution, immigration, and the authority of international law. Communitarians tend to defend a thicker conception of sovereignty and a thinner conception of cross-border duties than cosmopolitans, though figures like Walzer accept intervention against acts that "shock the conscience of mankind."
Communitarianism is not the same as nationalism, conservatism, or republicanism, though it overlaps with each. A separate responsive communitarian movement, associated with Amitai Etzioni and the 1991 Responsive Communitarian Platform, applies similar ideas to domestic policy, emphasizing the balance between rights and responsibilities.