The cosmopolitan ideal that individuals have common rights that accrue to them as human beings, or as citizens of the world, has a 3,000-year history stretching back to ancient Greece. However, democracy did not carve out a place in cosmopolitan theory until relatively recently. Indeed, the cosmopolitan ideal was often thought to be irreconcilable with democracy and its traditional connection with a territorially bounded polity that prescribes different rules for relations between fellow nationals and outsiders (Benhabib 2009). Even in recent times, many cosmopolitans have considered world citizenship to be a moral standard to guide political practice rather than the basis for a political system of global democracy (Linklater 1998a; Pogge 2002). In the contemporary era of globalization, however, an increasing number of cosmopolitans have argued that democratic politics must be extended to the global level to realize cosmopolitan ideals of freedom, world citizenship, and human rights. Like liberal internationalists, they argue that globalization poses serious threats to national democracy and stress the importance of constitutional solutions underpinned by the rule of law. However, cosmopolitan democrats see the overly proceduralist and statist approach of liberal internationalism as being inadequate under conditions of globalization. Cosmopolitan democrats contend that safeguarding the democratic freedoms of individuals requires more than merely enhancing the accountability of national officials or making global governance more transparent; new institutions beyond the nation-state are needed to express the will of global and transnational publics in managing complex processes of globalization.
This chapter explores a range of cosmopolitan perspectives that advocate a new global architecture of democracy. These perspectives are grounded in a universal ethic of humanity that posits the moral equality of all human beings and the creation of a global constitutional order based on human rights and cosmopolitan political institutions. The central normative claim of cosmopolitan democrats is that democracy must be extended into the global sphere to safeguard autonomy by creating communities made up of all those affected by a decision or policy. The first section examines the key “disjunctures” associated with globalization and the reconfiguration of power and authority that have undermined the assumption of symmetry between decison-makers and affected citizens that underpins traditional democratic theory. The second section examines the normative arguments of David Held, Daniele Archibugi, and Richard Falk for globalizing structures of democratic action, including the creation of a global parliament that would both “tame” globalization and transcend the anachronistic “fiction” of national sovereignty. Finally, the chapter argues that while the goals of cosmopolitans are compellingly articulated, less attention has been devoted to the political pathways that could lead to a global democratic order. The failure to couple the cosmopolitan institutional ideal to pathways of democratization results in an approach that might be normatively attractive to many liberals, but has limited usefulness in guiding social movements struggling for the democratization of existing global governance.
Cosmopolitan democrats argue that contemporary globalization has eroded the democratic arrangements of nation-states to such an extent that we need to rethink the very nature of democracy. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, democratic theory and practice was constructed on national foundations in which there is a “congruent” or “symmetrical” relationship between decision-makers and the recipients of decisions within a delimited territory (Held 1995: 18). Because decison-makers and their constituents were assumed to reside within the same territorial jurisdiction, it was possible to think of citizens as democratic agents capable of determining their own fate by authorizing national representatives through the ballot box and holding these representatives to account for significant decisions affecting their lives. In a world of regional and global interconnectedness, however, the outcomes of decisions often stretch beyond national frontiers. For example, motorists around the world impact on carbon concentrations in the atmosphere that produce problematic sea level rises for Pacific Island countries. Consequently, political communities can no longer be characterized as “discrete worlds” that are independently capable of determining their own future. For David Held (2006a: 292), this breakdown of symmetry between decison-makers and affected citizens has troubling implications for the key democratic ideas relating to the scope of public deliberation, representation, and accountability.
Specifically, the democratic state has become enmeshed in overlapping political structures where effective power is shared and struggled over by diverse forces and agencies at national, regional, and international levels (Held 2000: 26). According to Held (1995: 99–140), this results in major “disjunctures” between our traditional conceptions of a sovereign democratic state and the actual processes of globalization that limit the options of individual states and transform the possibilities of a democratic polity. First, the development of international law has placed individuals, governments, and NGOs under new systems of legal regulation that transcend national sovereignty (e.g. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Second, the vast array of international regimes and organizations has led to an internationalization of political decision-making where the power of even the greatest states comes to depend on cooperation with others for its successful execution (Held 2003: 467). Third, the position of an individual state in the global security hierarchy and the need for collective defence arrangements to coordinate technological development, arms production, and intelligence gathering, for example, imposes constraints upon the foreign policies which governments may pursue and challenges the idea of national security. Fourth, developments in communication technology and the globalization of media have created a pull between national identities and globalized cultural practices that threaten the cultural hegemony of the nation-state. Fifth, the enmeshment of national economies in global economic transactions has shifted the balance of power in favour of capital, forcing nation-states to tailor their economic programs to the anticipated responses of global markets (Held et al. 1999: 74). And finally, environmental problems such as the degradation of global commons and transboundary pollution create fundamental pressures on the efficacy of the nation-state and national democracy to respond to these pressures (Held 2000: 23–4).
According to cosmopolitan democrats, these disjunctures suggest a reconfiguration of power and authority that has strongly augmented the importance of external influences within all states (Archibugi 2008: 55). Crucially, this has decreased the areas in which a state’s political community can make autonomous decisions, thereby curtailing the capacities of state-based democracy (Archibugi 2004: 443). That is, the operation of states in an ever more complex global system both affects their autonomy by changing the balance between costs and benefits of policies, and their sovereignty by altering the balance between national, regional and international legal frameworks and administrative practices (Held 2000: 27). Cosmopolitan democrats thus argue that we live in a world of “overlapping communities of fate” where national fortunes are tightly entwined and constituencies for developing and implementing policy in areas ranging from the spread of AIDS to the stability of financial markets spill over and cut across national boundaries (Held 2004: x). These developments serve to constrain national governments and blur the boundaries of domestic politics, raising serious questions about the extent to which consent, legitimacy, and accountability can be secured through national elections under globalized conditions of political decision-making.
Against this background, cosmopolitan democrats argue that the foundations and prospects of the democratic polity must be re-examined. Increasingly, national democratic publics seem like shrinking islands of autonomy in a sea of complex cross-border flows, forcing us to ponder whether the nation-state is the single and most appropriate shell for democracy (Bray 2011: 3). Held (2000: 28) argues that “the idea of a democratic order can no longer be defended as an idea suitable to a particular closed political community or nation-state.” Daniele Archibugi (2008: 53) proposes that we abandon the “fiction” of the sovereign state system of autonomous political communities isolated from each other that has accompanied democratic theory since its origin. While all states are intrinsically shaped by external influences, Archibugi (2008: 56) argues that contemporary globalization causes problems for the democratic state because it distorts its internal “democratic pact” based on principles of nonviolence, popular control, and political equality. The principle of nonviolence is increasingly weakened when external disputes are resolved through diplomacy, intimidation, or war rather than constitutional processes. When a democratic state is oppressed by another community, it can no longer meet democratic commitments to its citizens, and when a democratic state decides to impose its will on others (as in the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003) it forgoes its own constituent democratic principles. A people that oppresses other peoples cannot be fully democratic (Archibugi 2008: 57). In terms of popular control, those holding public posts can be constrained if they are inside a community, but not when they are increasingly located outside of it. And the principle of political equality is overshadowed when only a few of the persons affected by a particular decision have a say in the decision-making process. From this angle, nation-states are increasingly confronted with external pressures that undermine their ability to maintain democratic arrangements that underpin the constitutional pacts with their political communities.
Moreover, these challenges to the viability of the democratic state are particularly troubling for cosmopolitan democrats because they compromise the social democratic project of the post-Second World War period. Traditionally, social democrats have relied on the democratic institutions of an interventionist state to implement policies that promote social justice and cohesion within a national community. During the mid-twentieth century, this project involved establishing a compromise between the powers of capital, labour and the state to encourage the development of economic liberalization, market institutions and private property within a regulatory framework that guarantees not just the civil and political liberties of citizens, but also the social conditions necessary for people to enjoy their formal rights (Held 2004: 13). Governments performed a central role in enacting this program through the moderation of economic volatility, managing domestic demand, and providing social infrastructure, safety nets and adjustment assistance to encourage socially cohesive societies. Citizen participation in party and electoral politics ensured democratic control over the state and justified its interventions in social and economic spheres. Contemporary global forces, however, put considerable pressure on the traditional model of social democracy as the mobility of capital, goods, people, and ideas erodes the capacity of governments to sustain their own social and political compromises within delimited borders (Held 2004: 14). As Held (2004: 14) argues, globalization does not lead to the end of state choice or national political programs, but there is an increasing gap between the proclaimed values of social democracy and the regulative capacity and policy instruments available to realize them.
For cosmopolitan democrats, then, the values of social democracy – the rule of law, political equality, social justice, and social solidarity – are of enduring significance, and the key challenge today is to re-examine the conditions for their realization against a background of a changing world order. This is a particularly important task because the contemporary phase of globalization involves a shift away from exclusively state politics to multilevel forms of “global politics” that have been shaped by interests and ideologies hostile to social democratic values. Specifically, the neo-liberal project of economic liberalization, privatization, and small government promoted by Western interests through global economic organizations has contributed to the erosion of the public goods provided by the welfare state without offering any substantial policies to deal with the problems of market failure or increasing inequality (Held 2004: 162). Furthermore, the US-led “war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 reflected a neoconservative doctrine of unilateralism that undermines international law and the multilateral liberal order that supported the post-Second World War welfare state (Held 2006b: 162). According to Held (2004: 162), the other prominent alternative to social democracy, radical anti-globalization, cannot offer any solutions because it is “deeply naive about the potential for locally based action to resolve, or engage with, the governance agenda generated by the forces of globalization.” In consequence, a new project of cosmopolitan social democracy is required that applies the values and insights of social democracy to the new global constellation of economics and politics.
For cosmopolitan democrats, the global reconfiguration of power and authority means democracy must be institutionalized not only at the level of the nation-state, but also at regional and global levels. This requires a new architecture of cosmopolitan social democracy that provides an alternative to neo-liberalism and all forms of anti-globalization in a context where “the traditional international order of states cannot be restored and the deep drivers of globalization are unlikely to be halted” (Held 2004: 162). In this context, cosmopolitan democracy broadly seeks to promote the rule of law at the international level, especially with regard to the use of force, leading to the transcendence of the “war system” in favour of a constitutional global order of “humane governance” (Archibugi 2008: 88–99; Falk 1995: 9; Held 1995: 279). This constitutional order would provide greater transparency, accountability and democracy to strengthen the principle of political equality in the management of global issues (Archibugi 2008: 58–9, 89; Held 2004: 16–17). Furthermore, these constitutional goals are buttressed by social democratic objectives, which include a deeper commitment to social justice to ensure a basic income for all adults and a more equitable distribution of life chances; broad redistribution to alleviate the most pressing and avoidable economic harm; the reinvention of social solidarity within communities at diverse levels insofar as they depend on a set of common values and human rights; the regulation of the global economy through public management of trade and financial flows; and the engagement of leading stakeholders in corporate governance (Held 1995: 279–80; Held 2002: 36–7; Held 2004: 16–17).
Underpinning this vision is the idea that democracy ought to encompass all relationships and provide the primary grounds for institutional legitimacy at all levels and forms of government – not simply the creation of a single level of global government (Falk 1995: 254). For Daniele Archibugi (2008: 86), this rests on the conviction that democracy “is better able to satisfy the demands of the world’s population than any other form of governance.” But more commonly, cosmopolitan democracy is justified because it is necessary to realize democratic autonomy in the contemporary world. For Held (1995: 147), democratic autonomy means citizens “should be free and equal in the determination of the conditions of their own lives,” so long as they do not deploy their freedoms to negate the rights of others. This requires a “common framework of political action” that specifies rights and obligations entrenched in “democratic public law,” empowering and limiting individual citizens and the collective management of their affairs in a legally circumscribed structure of power (Held 1995: 143–218). This understanding of democratic autonomy involves, internally, the ability of citizens to effectively participate in the choices affecting their political community, and, externally, a community that is free from domination by others (Archibugi 2008: 88). Consequently, under conditions of contemporary globalization, democratic public law within a national political community needs to be buttressed and supported by a global structure: an overarching framework of cosmopolitan democratic law to entrench the principle of autonomy for each and every citizen, within and across every site of power (Held 1995: 207). That is, democracy must be promoted within all sites of power – local, national, transnational and international – where restrictions on political participation produce an “asymmetrical production and distribution of life chances” that limit and erode the ability of people to share in economic, cultural or political goods found in their community (Held 1995: 171). This means transferring to the global sphere democratic values such as the legal equality of citizens, the majority principle, public deliberation, and government for the common good.
The model of cosmopolitan democracy, then, is both an ideal and a program for political action that seeks to create a multi-level system of democratic governance to entrench and protect autonomy from the corrosive effects of globalization. It is an attempt to democratize the multiple and overlapping networks of power in the contemporary world through the creation of “a global and divided authority system” that incorporates local, national, regional and global layers of governance where no decision-making centre is regarded as “sovereign” in the conventional Westphalian sense of supreme and exclusive territorial authority (Archibugi 2008: 88–97; Held 1995: 234; Held 2002). The centrepiece of this system of “cosmopolitan sovereignty” (Held) or “global constitutionalism” (Archibugi) is an overarching framework of cosmopolitan law that entrenches seven principles: (1) equal worth and dignity; (2) active agency; (3) personal responsibility and accountability; (4) consent; (5) reflexive deliberation and collective decision-making through voting procedures; (6) inclusiveness and subsidiarity; and (7) avoidance of serious harm and the amelioration of urgent necessities (Held 2002: 24–32). As indicated below, vertically dispersed local, national and regional “sovereignties” are subordinated to these overarching principles of cosmopolitan law, but within this framework associations may be self-governing at diverse levels (Held 1995: 234; Pogge 1992: 58).
Crucially, the principle of inclusiveness and subsidiarity provides the fundamental basis for determining the boundaries of political constituencies. In order to ensure democratic symmetry, inclusiveness requires that those significantly affected by public decisions, issues, or processes have an equal opportunity to influence and shape them, either directly, or indirectly through elected delegates or representatives (Held 1995: 235–6; Held 2002: 28). In general, a group of individuals is considered significantly affected by a decision when it fundamentally constrains their “autonomous capacities” to shape their personal and collective lives, such as a decision leading to economic deprivation (MacDonald 2008: 40). Accordingly, subsidiarity means that democratic processes should be located at the closest level to those whose life chances are significantly affected by a policy or decision. The proper democratic constituency for addressing climate change, for example, would be global in scope, while the constituency for determining the location of a new childcare centre would be the local community that uses, operates and adjoins the centre. Carol Gould (2004: 173) has pointed out that non-territorial political communities already exist in many policy areas (constituted by those affected by the same diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, for example). Consequently, the location of political authority in cosmopolitan democracy would be determined by the degree to which policy issues stretch across and affect populations. That is, democratic authority would be tied to the inclusion of all those affected rather than the idea of fixed sovereign borders and territories governed by states alone (Held 2002: 33). As explained below, cosmopolitan democrats do retain an important role for territorially based political communities, especially those of nation-states. However, the levels of territorial authority would owe the extent of their constitutional power to an effort to incorporate the all-affected principle (Saward 2000: 37).
The constitutional path is important to cosmopolitan democrats because the development of a unified and interconnected legal system is viewed as a fundamental step in transforming international politics from a domain of war and antagonism to one of common rights and obligations. Crucially, this constitutionalization of politics must be underpinned by a cosmopolitan union of states that institutionalizes global governance through a legal coding of relationships in which both individuals and governments have their own representatives in the global sphere (Archibugi 1998: 212; Archibugi 2008: 103). This goes further than a mere confederation where states retain their sovereign rights but consent to treaty-based cooperation in limited areas to promote democratic norms (along the lines of the liberal internationalism). Nor do cosmopolitan democrats propose a federation in which coercive powers are wholly transferred to a world government directly authorized and accountable to individual citizens (for this position see Marchetti 2008; Tannsjo 2008). Cosmopolitan democracy is considered an intermediate constitutional position between confederation and federation because it preserves significant features of the state system, but seeks to limit and enhance it through new centralized regional and global institutions. The aim is to develop democracy at multiple levels of governance by building on the democratic advances within states, rather than centralize coercive and fiscal powers in a global government that “would resemble Plato’s government of guardians more than an authentically democratic government” (Archibugi 2008: 109).
The territorial nation-state thus remains a central facet of political organization in cosmopolitan democracy, but would acquire a transformed and somewhat diminished role in comparison with new regional and global institutions that are needed to realize cosmopolitan principles (e.g. in areas like economic and environmental regulation) (Held 2003: 35). Indeed, H. Patrick Glenn (2013) argues that the “cosmopolitan state” is already an empirical reality and the only appropriate conceptualization of the state in an era of globalization. In terms of decision-making, states would participate as equals in intergovernmental institutions according to the principle of “one government, one vote,” but cosmopolitan institutions would also be created based on equality among world citizens guaranteed by the principle of “one individual, one vote” (Archibugi 2008: 104). Membership of intergovernmental organizations is regulated by the principle of effective control over territory, excluding only governments that violate fundamental human rights (Archibugi 2008: 103–4). States would accept the compulsory jurisdiction of international courts, including the International Criminal Court. Importantly, states would retain their own armed forces, but some coercive powers would shift to regional and global institutions authorized to carry out humanitarian interventions to prevent acts of genocide (Archibugi 2008: 105). Eventually, the nation-state would “wither away” in the sense that its sovereignty would be limited by global constitutional rules aimed at ensuring democratic autonomy and thus would no longer be regarded as the sole centre of political power (Archibugi 2008: 104–5; Held 1995: 233).
In addition to a cosmopolitan union of states, the crowning feature of cosmopolitan democracy is the eventual creation of a global parliament, or “Global Peoples Assembly” (GPA). For cosmopolitan democrats, a parliament that is directly elected by world citizens must be part of any serious attempt to address the global democratic deficit (Falk and Strauss 2001: 213–14). A global parliament would deal with specific global issues such as the environment, demographic issues, development and disarmament; or with broader political mandates such as the safeguarding of fundamental human rights and future generations, or even identifying the appropriate levels of governance for cross-border issues (Archibugi 2008: 112, 173). Most proposals envisage the electoral constituencies for a GPA as being situated in territorial states, but also see possibilities for allocating reserved seats for non-territorial communities such as the Roma, and stateless people such as the Palestinians. Johan Galtung (2000: 158) suggests that each state should have the right to one representative for every one million people (amounting to approximately 7,000 parliamentarians today), which he concedes is “unwieldy but not impossible.” George Monbiot (2003: 133) argues that a parliament of 600 delegates is appropriate, but with a model of proportional representation to ensure people from smaller countries are fairly represented and to offset the excessive influence that could be wielded by countries with large populations.
Aware of the political obstacles, cosmopolitan democrats tend to propose an initially “weak” assembly constituted by existing democratic societies and aided by receptive states. This nascent parliament would have an advisory role that could begin to address these issues while posing only a long-term threat to the realities of state power (Falk and Strauss 2001: 217). It would sit alongside the UN General Assembly (representing states) and supplement rather than replace IGOs and local initiatives addressing global issues. Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss (2001: 216–17) argue that this assembly could help to promote the peaceful resolution of international conflicts; exercise democratic oversight of IGOs such as the IMF, WTO and World Bank; shape the global agenda and challenge the ability of states to opt out of collective efforts to protect the environment and control or eliminate weapons, for example; and encourage compliance with international norms and standards, especially in human rights. The significant cost of meeting facilities, translation services and other support staff for parliamentary activities could be met by contributions from supportive democratic states and international taxes on air tickets and financial transactions (Archibugi 2008: 118). Given its electoral mandate, these monitory functions would likely be followed by formal legislative powers over time as international institutions attempt to secure the approval of a democratically elected assembly (Falk and Strauss 2000: 215). If the institution were successful, people from all parts of the world, including those from nondemocratic states, would demand representation. This would give individual citizens legal rights and legislative standing in global politics.
In order for citizens to exercise these rights, however, cosmopolitan democrats argue that it is necessary to regulate capitalism to establish the social and economic conditions for effective participation and a fair and equal electoral system. This involves the elimination of poverty and the creation of social arrangements with the capacity to meet the basic needs of every person, including the need for self-esteem, health, a sustainable environment, and meaningful and safe work for those of this and future generations (Falk 1995: 172). Crucially, this means the legal rights and social conditions for establishing cosmopolitan democracy must be bridged by the political interventions in the global economy. For Held (1995: 266), cosmopolitan law is enhanced “through its enactment in the agencies and organizations of economic life; through democratic deliberation and coordination of public investment priorities; through the pursuit of non-market policies to aid fair outcomes in market exchange, and through experimentation with different forms of ownership and control of capital.” Democratic autonomy requires that the production, distribution and allocation of resources must be focused on “transforming the conditions of those whose circumstances fall radically short of equal membership in the public realm” (Held 1995: 271). While Held (1995: 248) accepts the argument that an unbounded concept of politics can in practice lead to powerful actors controlling all aspects of life, he argues that “if the rule of law does not involve a central concern with distributional questions and matters of social justice, it cannot be adequately entrenched, and the principle of autonomy and democratic accountability cannot be realized adequately.” Thus cosmopolitan democracy requires a “double-democratization”: the interdependent transformation of both state and civil society (Held 2006a: 276).
These institutional innovations and redistributive goals are ultimately directed at the development of cosmopolitan citizenship that will allow individuals to participate in the management of global problems. The underlying assumption is that the creation of cosmopolitan institutions will produce a globally conscious citizenry: a global parliament with representatives directly elected by citizens would be more likely to promote global policies rather than state-centred ones, and will foster the sense of global community required for electoral politics and economic redistribution (Archibugi et al.2000: 136; Archibugi 2004: 461). This is precisely the assumption that is rejected by liberal internationalists like Robert Keohane in their argument about the impossibility of a global electoral democracy (see Chapter 3). However, cosmopolitan citizenship is not intended to replace national citizenship. Rather, the development of global and transnational identities fostered by cosmopolitan institutions is the basis for a different kind of citizenship consisting of multiple and overlapping loyalties. According to Held (2000: 28), if the possibility of cosmopolitan democracy is to be consolidated:
each citizen of a state must learn to become a cosmopolitan citizen – a person capable of mediating between national traditions, communities and alternative forms of life. Citizenship in a democratic polity of the future must increasingly involve a mediating role: a role which encompasses dialogue with the traditions and discourses of others with the aim of expanding the horizons of one’s own framework of meaning and prejudice, and increasing the scope of mutual understanding. Political agents who can reason from the point of view of others are likely to be better equipped to resolve, and resolve fairly, the new and challenging transboundary issues that create overlapping communities of fate.
At the heart of cosmopolitan democracy, then, is an argument for developing cosmopolitan citizens that enjoy membership in a diverse range of political communities that significantly affect them, from the local to the global. The creation of global and transnational institutions will create cosmopolitan political horizons to inform action in the global common good. Cosmopolitan democrats contend that this is the only justifiable response to the pressing political challenges posed by globalization.
Not surprisingly, such a wide-ranging and ambitious agenda for the democratization of global politics has attracted significant criticism. Within global democratic theory, the underlying aim of cosmopolitan democrats to promote democratic autonomy in an era of globalization has widespread appeal, but many democratic theorists have serious concerns about the ability of a new global architecture to generate the conditions for democratic politics beyond the nation-state. These concerns are of two kinds: concerns about the risks of shifting democracy away from the nation-state onto global and non-territorial foundations; and skepticism about the feasibility of creating a new cosmopolitan architecture and the absence of any systematic consideration about the political pathways for getting us there.
The first set of concerns is based on the claim that democracy has traditionally needed a territorial state to safeguard democratic institutions and guarantee citizenship rights and obligations. Michael Saward (2000: 38) argues that the protection of democratic rights requires a territorial foundation because the grounds of citizenship and rightful political participation can only be clearly defined by membership in a territorial entity. As long as membership of a permanent territorial community is in place, the all affected principle is attractive as a supplementary guide for democratic reform that advances the claims of groups commonly affected by cross-border issues (Saward 2000: 37–8). A baseline territorial unit is also necessary for Carol Gould (2006: 50) who argues that the democratization of global and transnational cooperative activities (perhaps using the all affected principle) hinges first on the protection of basic democratic rights within a territorial community. People cannot democratize global governance or effectively participate in global institutions if they are denied basic democratic rights in the territories where they reside and work. While supplementing them with participation rights in communities beyond the nation-state is certainly achievable (e.g. in the EU), transferring the constitutional power to enforce basic democratic rights to global institutions is an enormous and democratically risky endeavour. Furthermore, republicans and com-munitarians would emphasize the importance of citizenship and some sense of patriotism and public virtue as being important political preconditions for creating shared burdens and the redistribution of resources (S. Slaughter 2005: 177–9). As such, it is necessary to recognize that the starting point for pursuing cosmopolitan democracy is the existing set of territorial communities that guarantee basic democratic rights and practices.
From this angle, many scholars have criticized cosmopolitan democrats for using the all-affected principle as a constitutional rule. From within the liberal democratic tradition, Terry MacDonald (2008: 30) argues that creating such a “closed” and unified legal system presents serious practical difficulties when the current structure of global public power is fragmented and uneven in impact, and is not designed to serve any unifying democratic purposes. In this pluralist global order, the constitutional approach of cosmopolitan democracy seems inconsistent with the fluid and overlapping nature of affected communities. Difficulties arise when a new constituency is potentially required for every collective decision that needs to be made, and when the range and complexity of actions means it would be difficult or impossible to know who was affected (Bray 2011: 57; Gould 2006: 54). Furthermore, the principle seems to restrict constituencies to those who can demonstrate they are directly affected when it is often in the interests of democracy to involve a broad range of actors relevant to solving a social problem. Hans Agne (2006: 438–41) points out that democrats generally applaud the international community’s support for the democratization of South Africa in the 1990s, even though affected South Africans had no direct involvement in decisions to apply diplomatic pressure and trade embargos. However, this is not to say cosmopolitan democrats ignore these difficulties. To address situations where demarcations among appropriate levels of decision-making are unclear or contested, they propose the creation of global constitutional courts, or “issue-boundary courts,” to decide who counts as a stakeholder and assign appropriate competences (Held 1995: 237; Archibugi 2008: 101). The question of who appoints the judges in these cases is not clear, but is likely to be controversial given that boundary disputes are among of the most intense types of political conflict (Whelan 1983: 15). The important underlying assumption is that global conflicts of this kind can be resolved by constitutional and legal procedures rather than by force.
Furthermore, many critics suggest that this transition to cosmopolitan democracy threatens to unravel the hard-won democratic institutions of the nation-state. In the context of global capitalism, a diminished role for states has the potential to undermine governmental institutions that already exist to keep political and economic power accountable. As Richard Bellamy and R. J. Barry Jones (2000: 212) argue, “the weakening of established state-level public government could create a serious regulatory hole that might all too readily be filled, in the short and medium term at least, by undemocratic structures of private governance.” Moreover, cosmopolitan citizenship requires an increased identification with global representative institutions that will inevitably be quite distant to most people. If the only avenue for citizens to participate in these institutions is through the election of global parliamentarians, or through membership of a select group of non-governmental organizations admitted to global institutions, then as powers shift to these institutions there is a risk that democracy will become even more elitist and make citizens feel even more alienated from politics. This is compounded by a problem of enforcement. When people must rely on global actors to enforce their new cosmopolitan rights, a disjuncture is created between the citizens who bear rights, and the parliamentarians, judges, and officials with the duty of acting on those rights in global institutions that have little coercive capacity (Chandler 2003: 341). As David Chandler (2003) argues, trading these new rights for old could create forms of dependency rather than empowerment that abrogate existing rights of democracy and self-government. In this context, it is likely that many citizens of nation-states will be unwilling to trade their concrete and protected rights in a territorial community for the much more abstract, fluid and conditional guarantees of cosmopolitan citizenship in multiple and overlapping constituencies (Bray 2011: 214).
While these critics suggest cosmopolitan democrats go too far in attempting to shift democracy away from territorial states, others argue that their proposals are too closely wedded to states and need to go further to create a global system that is genuinely democratic. From a “cosmo-federalist” position, Rafaele Marchetti (2008: 139) argues that cosmopolitan democracy fails to guarantee inclusion because it is based on an opaque and uncoordinated system of independent jurisdictions determined by an all affected principle of stakeholdership. Restricting democratic rights to those affected by an issue creates a “club model of democracy” that avoids direct exploitation, but not democratic exclusion: it does not grant political power to create public rules to all citizens regardless of their level of affectedness (Marchetti 2008: 140). This is a problem because the “clubs” are likely to be constituted by a limited number of self-appointed actors and the actual victims and vulnerable people would have little chance of being heard (Marchetti 2008: 139). Since states retain a large degree of national autonomy within an intergovernmental structure, and given that any additional global parliament would begin with only consultative powers, a participation deficit is identified that compromises the democratic credentials of the model of cosmopolitan democracy. Indeed, it is argued that the model unjustifiably relies on territorial communities to give effect to cosmopolitan and democratic ideals (Kuper 2004: 160–3); and views supra-state parliaments as the total extent of people’s rule in global politics when the experience with elected regional parliaments has been disappointing, and global legislatures could well elicit even less popular engagement (Scholte 2014: 10). For Marchetti (2008: 139), this means cosmopolitan democracy should only be considered a transitional project on the way to the federal reform of IGOs. The long-term objective should be nothing less than an “all-inclusive democracy” involving a partial delegation of sovereignty to a centralized world government that has constitutionally entrenched powers of legislation, taxation, and coercive enforcement in relation to global public goods (Marchetti 2008: 149–69).
The second set of concerns relates to the feasibility of cosmopolitan democracy and the political pathways for realizing it. Feasibility concerns are especially pertinent given that the process of double-democratization of state and civil society would necessarily involve change on a scale that has historically only taken place in the wake of revolutionary upheavals (Roper 2011: 261). Sympathetic liberals tend to question the project of grand institutional design and its lack of a systematic analysis of the existing pattern of political relations that can be harnessed to achieve cosmopolitan democracy. For example, Terry MacDonald (2008: 30–2) argues that a top-down approach prioritizing a new constitutionalized framework of public power ignores the contemporary reality of global structural fragmentation where an underlying principled order of the kind cosmopolitan democrats want is lacking. MacDonald (2008: 89–92) contends that the first step should be to democratize the current pluralist structure of global power by creating channels of accountability for overlapping and non-exclusive “stakeholder communities” consisting of people affected by political decisions with institutional stability over time and who share core values of democratic autonomy. In this regard, the institutional pathway for generating a shared cosmopolitan citizenship is particularly open to question. One need only observe the European Union to see how the existence of a European Parliament does not preclude a strong nationalist mentality in European citizens, or indeed does not necessarily produce an informed and engaged “European” public. Cosmopolitan democrats have traditionally paid insufficient attention to how global and transnational democratic publics can be developed and therefore struggle to explain how cosmopolitan institutions could generate the necessary senses of community that would enable them to operate democratically. The failure to couple the cosmopolitan institutional ideal to pathways of democratization thus results in an approach that might be normatively attractive to liberals, but has limited usefulness in guiding social movements struggling for the democratization of existing global governance.
However, more strident criticisms emerge from those outside of the liberal tradition that see any attempt to tame international politics through new cosmopolitan institutions as completely at odds with the existing distribution of power and vested interests. Marxists, for example, categorically deny that any state of affairs approximating democratic autonomy can be achieved as long as capitalism exists – capitalist relations of production, distribution, and exchange are fundamentally exploitative and therefore inherently anti-democratic (Roper 2011: 261–2). Indeed, since cosmopolitan democracy would involve large-scale economic redistribution it would face intense resistance from capitalist classes and state elites who would seek to preserve their wealth and privileges. From this perspective, Brian Roper (2011: 264–5) asks: “what social and political forces are going to push through ‘double democratization’ against probably violent resistance of the powers that be?” Other “realist” critics argue that cosmopolitan democracy is a utopian fantasy that ignores the ways that conflict and difference shape all politics, and therefore is blind to the centralization of power required for cosmopolitan democracy to operate (see Zolo 1997). This charge often comes with an argument that cosmopolitan democracy is inherently undesirable because it would lead to a dangerous centralization of power. Geoffrey Hawthorn (2003: 20) argues that if cosmopolitan democracy “by some extraordinary transformation” were to be enacted, global institutions would need the capacity to enforce their orders through armed force against those who refused to comply (see also Zolo 1997: 153). In the contemporary age, this would mean a nuclear capability. According to Hawthorn (2003: 20–1), this would be the “ultimate nightmare”: a global system “run by factions of professionalized politicians for purposes of their own power, directing what would, in all but name, be a world state against which there would even in principle be no countervailing authority.” Ultimately, it is simply not tenable to suggest that through parties of professional politicians facing each other in a global assembly that the voices of individuals could ever possibly be heard (Hawthorn 2003: 19–20).
Cosmopolitan democrats argue that they want to distribute power globally rather than centralize power in a world government (Archibugi 2008: 128–9), but the lack of attention to political pathways and agents is one area they concede has been underdeveloped. In recent years, cosmopolitan democrats have attempted to address this shortcoming. On the issue of feasibility, Daniele Archibugi (2008: 127) argues that it is incorrect to assert that the main actors in global politics are unanimously opposed to a democratic management of power: today’s states express and represent a multitude of agents and interests, each of which has its own agenda and connections beyond the nation-state. Indeed, “cosmopolitan states” that champion equal treatment of citizens and aliens within their own borders are a key facet of any pathway to cosmopolitan democracy (Archibugi and Held 2011: 442; see also Glenn 2013). In addition, the agents with the greatest interest in supporting cosmopolitan democracy are: the poor and dispossessed who want to gain access to rights and opportunities to improve their lives; migrants who want rights in receiving countries and freedom of movement; cosmopolitan groups of intellectuals, businesspeople, activists and celebrities who already live cosmopolitan lives; global stakeholders and global civil society that have specific cross-border interests; political parties that increasingly have to deal with global issues; trade unions and labour movements whose mandate to guarantee adequate standards of living and social and economic rights is now situated in a global economy; and TNCs who require effective and accountable global governance to facilitate their business activities (Archibugi and Held 2011: 448–55). Moreover, perhaps recognizing their previous emphasis on institutional goals, Daniele Archibugi and David Held (2011: 437, 455–8) now argue that cosmopolitan democracy “is very unlikely to happen as a result of a single grand plan,” but rather as a plethora of proposals and campaigns that combine top-down and bottom-up initiatives to develop global governance in a democratic direction. Against the background of almost no progress in the past two decades, cosmopolitan democrats now recognize that all forms of democratization rest on a bottom-up struggle of individuals to be heard and make power accountable.
Cosmopolitan democracy is a project that seeks to reorder global politics according to democratic rules. This is driven by a strong commitment to tame globalization so that democratic autonomy can be secured for all of humanity. In the words of David Held (2000: 237): “in a world of intensifying regional and global relations, with marked overlapping’ communities of fate,’ the principle of autonomy requires entrenchment in regional and global networks as well as in national and local polities.” The core elements of this project are global and transnational institutions constituted by all those affected by an issue, and a program of social policies and economic regulation to ensure that capitalism provides all individuals with the means to effectively exercise their human rights. In the next chapter, we address the approach of deliberative democracy, which tends to have less grand ambitions for the democratization of global politics. Deliberative democrats focus on the more limited but extremely important aim of increasing the deliberative capacity of existing global governance and creating new forms of deliberation that can contribute to wider democratic inclusion in the decision-making structures of global politics.
Archibugi, D. (2008) The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford.
Falk, R. (1995) On Humane Governance: Toward a New Global Politics. Polity, Cambridge.
Held, D. (1995) Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Global Governance. Stanford University Press, Stanford.
Held, D. (2010) Cosmopolitanism: Ideas and Realities. Polity, Cambridge.
Marchetti, R. (2008) Global Democracy: For and Against. Routledge, London and New York.