(English) Cosmopolitan democracy: paths and ways (Italiano) Cosmopolitan democracy: paths and ways
(English) One of the recurrent criticisms to the cosmopolitan democracy project has been that it has not highlighted which are the political and social forces that will have an interest to pursue this agenda. This criticism is addressed in this paper, showing that there are a variety of actions that, in its own right, will contribute to more democratic global governance. The paper also identifies the political and social agents that may have an interest and contribute to the pursuit of each of these actions. (Italiano) One of the recurrent criticisms to the cosmopolitan democracy project has been that it has not highlighted which are the political and social forces that will have an interest to pursue this agenda. This criticism is addressed in this paper, showing that there are a variety of actions that, in its own right, will contribute to more democratic global governance. The paper also identifies the political and social agents that may have an interest and contribute to the pursuit of each of these actions.
Bringing the State Back into Cosmopolitanism: The Idea of Responsible Cosmopolitan States
When surveying the cosmopolitan literature one is often struck by the ease with which the state is rendered morally and empirically otiose and by resulting ambiguities about the role states could play in creating a cosmopolitan condition. In response to these ambiguities, the purpose of this article is to examine some recent cosmopolitan arguments and to see what answers, if any, they have for bridging the gap between cosmopolitan theory and state practice. By doing so, this article will map out the recent relationship between cosmopolitanism and the state while also suggesting that cosmopolitans should reconsider a research agenda based on the idea of responsible cosmopolitan states as a means to create stronger links between cosmopolitan theory and contemporary international practice.
What's So Special about States? Liberal Legitimacy in a Globalising World
Throughout the history of liberal thought, questions about political legitimacy concerned with the protection of individual rights and the entrenchment of democratic public decision making have typically focused on the structure and conduct of state-based institutions. Normative political theorists have so far said less, however, about the prospects for achieving liberal legitimacy via new non-state forms of political organisation involving powerful actors such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and transnational corporations (TNCs). The goal of this article is to present a preliminary theoretical assessment of the prospects of non-state institutions for delivering liberal political legitimacy in the context of globalisation. It asks: is there anything special about the various institutional forms associated with ‘states’ and ‘sovereignty’, or should these be superseded by some new public institutional order more suited to our era of globalisation? It is argued that while certain institutional characteristics of states will remain essential for achieving liberal political legitimacy in a globalising world, state-based institutional forms will be unable to deliver such legitimacy alone. Non-state forms of regulation and democratic decision making are increasingly essential for securing political legitimacy in a globalising world, but they have certain inherent weaknesses relative to state institutions. In light of this, global political legitimacy could perhaps best be achieved through the development of hybrid regulatory and democratic institutions, with selected characteristics of both state and non-state institutional forms. Questions about how best to develop such hybrid institutions should therefore receive more attention than they have done so far from normative political theorists.