Please choose whether or not you want other users to be able to see on your profile that this library is a favorite of yours. 1 i use the term criticism in its theoretical and analytical sense though, not polemical. I do not question, and in fact i share the aspiration to make the economic and political global order more just and respectful of the life and dignity of the world’s inhabitants. The kantian maxims commanding us to seek peace and respect human rights have enriched classical cosmopolitanism with a practical goal all are responsible for realizing. Post kant, the burden of proof is on those who want to argue against cosmopolitan civil rights.

My main objection to cosmopolitical democracy is its translation of the kantian maxims into the project of devising global decision making set of procedures that are actually the province of nation state sovereignty. My criticism interrogates in the name of democratic premises the cogency and desirability of making the cosmos into a unified political space. Theorists of cosmopolitical democracy do not simply claim for democracy within and between states. Much more radically, they argue for constructing a supranational political body endowed with the power of legislation, administration, and military intervention/coercion. cosmopolis is a project of centralization and unification of power, not decentralization or mere cooperation.

Thus, despite their pledge of allegiance to kant’s plane of perpetual peace, theorists of cosmopolitical democracy de facto violate the kantian lex aurea according to which cosmopolitan rights entail the containment of political power, not its supererogation. Recognizing the value and essence of a rights based democracy should alert us to the anti democratic risk contained in the idea of a spaceless democracy. As jьrgen habermas has recently argued, postnational democracy can hardly aim at more than weak forms of legitimation to retain a democratic character. the european paradigm of cosmopolitan democracy cosmopolitanism is a composite family of ancient lineage.

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Its liberal humanist branch is rooted in classical stoicism and the modern doctrine of natural rights. Its neo liberal branch has grown from the theory of the free market and the liberation of civil society from the fetters of feudalism and state absolutism. Thus cosmopolitanism can mean the aspiration for global justice and the universalization of human rights, as well as an uncritical celebration of globalization. 2 their differences notwithstanding, both liberal and neo liberal cosmopolitanism see national sovereignty as an obstacle because it resists outside interference and obstructs transnational exchange and/or cooperation. In their humanist, liberal, and economic versions, scholars of different disciplines, countries, and political orientation share remarkably similar cosmopolitan ideals. Democratic cosmopolitanism bills itself as a political response to the acknowledged fact of globalization. Unlike its neo liberal counterpart, however, it does not see globalization as a natural like and self regulating phenomenon.

As an ideal, democratic cosmopolitanism represents the reluctance of politics to capitulate in the face of the so called ‘spontaneity’ of global economic competition. It reaffirms the power of associated individuals and peoples to shape their lives. 4 thus despite its affiliation with the utopian legacy of perpetual peace, its aspiration to reassert the place of politics puts democratic cosmopolitanism in the camps of rousseau and hegel. Not because, like rousseau and hegel, it opts for autonomous sovereign city republics or nation states, but because in its proponents’ eyes, the liberty envisioned by global civil society falls short, and they aspire to create a space for political liberty at the global level. And they propose cosmopolitan political institutions in the name of citizenship as a status, not simply as a symbolic or moral value. So it is their view of the relationship between civil society and politics that distinguishes the various interpretations of democratic cosmopolitanism.

In one view, democracy’s natural place is civil society in the other, the political realm. The former approach shares a liberal anti coercive view of politics and interprets democracy more as a civic culture of association, participation and mobilization than as a political process of decision making. His theoretical and ideal background is libertarian insofar as it stresses one particular aspect of democratic action, the one that values spontaneous public practice from below. Here civil society is the most genuine place of participation and freedom because it resists organized power, and above all state power. Cosmopolitan democracy is identified with a postmodernist view of democracy as post state based.

5 the political approach to democratic cosmopolitanism, on the contrary, is much more attentive to the actual and potential relationship between civil society and the sphere of political institutions. It acknowledges social movements and non governmental organizations as fundamental components of global democracy but it also believes that in the absence of institutionalized procedures of decision and control, social movements and ngos can hardly be made democratically accountable. The writings of daniele archibugi and david held approach cosmopolitan democracy from this perspective, and envision international political organisms empowered to enact enforceable legal collective decisions in response to globalization and human rights violations. Their cosmopolitanism rests on the assumption that civil society lacking the generality of citizenship will revert to a ‘state of nature’ where liberty thrives at the expense of equality and economic power at the expense of justice. As the eastern european states’ exit from communism demonstrates, a healthy civil society and secure individual freedoms need a legal and governmental system that enjoys institutional autonomy from social interests and operates under rules of impartiality and rational efficiency.

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6 thus the aim of a world polis is to promote a democratic global society, a goal that in falk's mind is achievable instead by the autonomous initiative of self governing social actors and movements. Cosmopolitical democracy reflects the belief that peoples should have the legal and political means to assert and exercise their influence over their natural and social environment. As a cultural phenomenon, the political branch of democratic cosmopolitanism is largely european in character, both in its deliberative discourse version habermas and in its political institutional one archibugi and held.

In both cases, the moral justification for a global democratic order is derived from the kantian premise that a degree of association among the peoples of the world is needed to protect human rights and successfully oppose and prevent their violation. Both conceive a postnational democratic order as the most advanced answer to the challenge posed by the erosion of nation state sovereignty and the international/domestic order set up by the westphalia treaty. Whereas in the past, international issues were inter state issues, or boundary matters resolved by pursuing reasons of state, backed, ultimately, by coercive force, today, the source of contemporary international issues are most of the cases transnational actors that states are more and more unfit to face.