Democracy, Freedom, and the Vise of Encompassment

2016

Acknowledgements v Contents vii List of Tables xi List of Diagrams xv 1. Democratic theory and internationalisation in Europe 1 2. A dogma of political inclusiveness and autonomy 53 3. Political autonomy during internationalisation 73 4. Deliberation during internationalisation 5. Participation during internationalisation 6. A dogma of delegation and alienation of authority 7. Comparing national and international democracy 8. Adapting democratic theory to internationalisation References Appendices Dissertation series v Acknowledgements Some time ago, in a hot and airless archive of despairingly little interest to my research, I remember planning to use this page not mainly for acknowledging the contributions of those who helped me to start and bring this project to an end, but rather to give the full details of those institutions and persons who had succeeded in substantially delaying the progression of my work. Now, at a secure distance from fruitless archive sessions, I cannot remember any of those sarcastic formulations that I prepared and meditated on for quite some time-and instead I find myself with nothing but a strong wish to express my most sincere gratitude to all those other persons who have generously shared their knowledge with me. If this sudden feeling of reconciliation has anything to do with a thesis being finished, the following persons, among others, helped me to do so and, more importantly, to get a moment's peace of mind. It has been a great pleasure, and a great intellectual asset, to be supervised by Kjell Goldmann. The Seminars on Internationalisation and European Politics at the Stockholm Department of Political Science that he chaired for some years together with Ulrika Mörth-who inspired an early formulation of what was to become my research problem-provided a venue in which I benefited from thoughtful comments by

boundary 2, 2014

My first hypothesis is a counterintuitive claim. Globalization is a transformation of time, not space. It is a new time, universally shared, transforming our understanding of time itself. A temporal topography structures the empirical world, and it is shifting. Historical actors in multiple countries are politically engaged at this moment, producing new, global realities that even a short time ago could not have been imagined. The present disruption of collective imagination is a disarticulation of the time of modernity, which presumed that the trajectory of Western development would determine the world as a whole. The term globalization first became prevalent in public discourse in the 1990s, when it described a spatial extension, the global spread of what already existed-European modernity, secular reason, the capitalist economy, patterns of consumption, neo-imperialism, US hegemony, or, simply, the West. But these descriptions did not grasp the fact that economically, militarily, and ideologically, a temporal dialectic was in play. The spread of existing forms, far from increasing Western dominance, was in the process of undermining it. At the time, Western vulnerability was difficult to perceive. With the

Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 13 (4): 616-629 (ISSN: 1353-7113), 2007

1998

Democracy is recognized as the primary vehicle for the fulfilment of individual and collective aspirations, the articulation of interests, and the nurturing of civil society. Globalizing forces have underpinned the spread of this message across the globe. Yet the march of democratization is highly contested and politicized and there is little consensus on what democracy is or should be. This volume brings together preeminent scholars from around the world in a collection of essays that point to a changing and broadening agenda of democracy. Themes addressed include challenges to democracy in established democracies and in transitional societies, the media and communications, globalization, criteria of democracy, religion, culture, civil society, and the internationalization of the democratic ethos. While democracy has been given a new lease on life in the post-Cold War context and its sphere of applicability has widened beyond the state closure, this book highlights the limitations ...

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 2008

Democratic practice varies historically, and transformations of the societal context require accompanying reconstructions of democracy if "rule by the people" is to remain meaningful. Contemporary society is witnessing particularly profound changes in underlying structures of space, governance, and identity. Fundamental reconsideration of democracy is therefore also needed. This article first develops a generic understanding of democracy; next elaborates on currently unfolding transformations ofgeography, regime, and community; and then develops a five-faceted reconstruction of democracy to meet these changed circumstances. This prescription entails: (1) reconceptualizing democracy, shifting away from obsolete assumptions of territorialist space, statist regulation, and nationalist identity; (2) refashioning civic education to empower all citizens to act in this new situation; (3) building effective institutional mechanisms ofpublic accountability in respect of an emergent polycentric mode of governance; (4) effecting progressive structural redistributions of resources and power in order that all stakeholders in contemporary public policy issues have more equal opportunities ofpoliticalparticipation; and (5) nurturing positive practices of intercultural recognition, communication, and negotiation.

Democracy is in crisis. This crisis is the paradoxical outcome of its triumph over its erstwhile rivals. Having prevailed over the totalitarian projects of the first half of the 20 th century it has developed in such a way that it is now undermining its original goals of individual and collective autonomy. Modern liberal democracy – the outcome of an inversion of the values of tradition, hierarchy and political incorporation – is a mixed regime. It involves three different dimensions of social existence, political, legal, historical/economic, and organises power around these. A balance was achieved after the upheaval of World War II in the form of liberal democracy, on the basis of reforms which injected democratic political power into liberalism and controlled the new economic dynamics it had unleashed. This balance has now been lost. Political autonomy, which accompanied modern historicity and its orientation towards the future, has been overshadowed by economic activity and its pursuit of innovation. As a result, the very meaning of democracy has become impoverished. The term used to refer to the goal of self-government, it is now taken to be fully synonymous with personal freedom and the cause of human rights. The legal dimension having come to prevail over the political one, democratic societies see themselves as 'political market societies', societies that can only conceive of their existence with reference to a functional language borrowed from economics. This depoliticisation of democracy has facilitated the rise to dominance of a new form of oligarchy.

Open Citizenship 4(1): 74-79, 2013

The current financial crisis highlights two trends that offer some indication of what post-democracy might look like. The first trend – authoritarian repression – is characterised by increased acceptability of far-right ideologies and pre-emptive, militarised policing, both of which make protest more dangerous. The second trend, by contrast, involves the refusal of many social movements to express their demands through traditional democratic channels, such as elected representatives and referenda. These movements have designed elaborate decision-making procedures that promote a form of radical equality dubbed horizontality, which is viewed by many participants as a potential replacement for political systems based on representation and electoral politics.

Studies In Global Justice, 2007

In today's world, national borders seem irrelevant when it comes to international crime and terrorism. Likewise, human rights, poverty, inequality, democracy, development, trade, bioethics, hunger, war and peace are all issues of global rather than national justice. The fact that mass demonstrations are organized whenever the world's governments and politicians gather to discuss such major international issues is testimony to a widespread appeal for justice around the world. Discussions of global justice are not limited to the fields of political philosophy and political theory. In fact, research concerning global justice quite often requires an interdisciplinary approach. It involves aspects of ethics, law, human rights, international relations, sociology, economics, public health, and ecology. Springer's new series Studies in Global Justice takes up that interdisciplinary perspective. The series brings together outstanding monographs and anthologies that deal with both basic normative theorizing and its institutional applications. The volumes in the series discuss such aspects of global justice as the scope of social justice, the moral significance of borders, global inequality and poverty, the justification and content of human rights, the aims and methods of development, global environmental justice, global bioethics, the global institutional order and the justice of intervention and war. Volumes in this series will prove of great relevance to researchers, educators and students, as well as politicians, policy-makers and government officials.

year: 2008, 2008

Even if we could find an agreement concerning the appropriate degree of centralization, however, the question would remain: what constitutional goals such an international order should pursue? Should it primarily oversee the enforcement of basic human rights and perhaps the 'juridification' of international relations? Or should it also attempt to "govern"-in a democratic way-over economic and environmental affairs, and perhaps even over social and cultural issues? That is, should the final aim be to mirror the classical nation-state, or not? Looking at the fierceness with which the democratic deficit of WTO law, IMF governance or the Security Council's use of force has recently been discussed, this is a highly relevant question. Independent of the lack of institutional advances, the de facto political integration of the world seems unstoppable. Many people, moreover, are dedicated to making the global setup more 'legitimate', mostly by making it mirror more closely the political institutions of the classical nation-state. But can the same type of legitimacy really be recreated at levels beyond the nation-state? Are we able to export "democratic principles and practices […] from the domestic to the regional or global level" (Cabrera 2008, 223)? In short: is some form of democracy across and beyond national borders possible at all? Some authors are fairly pessimistic in this regard. Robert Dahl, for instance, famously argued that global institutions "are not and are not likely to be democratic" (1999, 32). Others, such as Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss (2000; 2001), are more optimistic and propose a series of institutional reforms to democratize our world order. For them the idea of 'democracy beyond borders' 3 is a litmus test for our basic ideas about democracy. In this special issue, a number of renowned political philosophers and social scientists critically examine the assumptions behind the democratization of global politics and offer different models of global democracy. In this introductory contribution, we will briefly indicate why global democracy has become such a hotly debated issue within political theory, and survey some of the theoretical challenges and objections that proponents of global democracy often encounter.

Journal of Social Philosophy, 2006

The practical context for the theoretical reflections in this article is set by two apparently conflicting tendencies: On one side, we have the progression of global economic, technological, and, to a degree, legal and political integration, where this entails a certain diminution of sovereignty. Sovereign nation-states of the so-called Westphalian paradigm, possessing ultimate authority within a territory, are increasingly overwhelmed by the cross-border interconnections or networks that escape their purview; or they are legitimately constrained by new human rights regimes across borders. On the other side, especially in view of the hegemonic activities of the United States, but also in the European Union, new calls for the reestablishment of the sovereignty of nation-states can be heard. This may take the form of a reassertion of a right of states against military interference and a retreat from ideas of humanitarian intervention; or again, it may take the form of an assertion of the priority of nation-states from the standpoint of the administration of welfare or that of the distinctiveness of particular cultures that they sometimes embody. Indeed, a third tendency can also be discerned in present practice: In the face of economic globalization of the first sort, diagnosed as U.S.led and one-sidedly serving the interests of large industrial societies, but also with an understandable fear of the power of coercive and sometimes violent sovereign nation-states, some actors in the global justice movement seek what they call autonomy, as a self-organization of societies or communities in a diversity of more local forms. We can see here a complex assemblage of norms and a difficult situation for social and political philosophy: While it is clear that global economic integration is one-sided and cannot in its present form conduce to global justice or to meeting people's economic human rights worldwide, nonetheless the increased interconnections facilitated by communications technologies and the new forms of cultural creativity and cooperation that these interconnections may enable have a definite positive aspect. And while sovereignty is evidently problematic in permitting the disregard of human rights abroad as well as within nation-states, and by contributing to war, violence, and perhaps also empire through the exclusive pursuit of national interests, it seems that a right against intervention in a differ