Cosmopolitan Democracy and the Global Order: Reflections on the 200th Anniversary of Kant's “Perpetual Peace”

Abstract

The backdrop of this article is the recent rapid growth in the complex interconnections among states and societies. Part I explores the new context of politics in the light of thc end of the Cold War and the challenges to the nature and efficacy of political communities from processes of globalization. Part 2 discusses the limitations of democratic theory, emphasizing its failure to question whether the nationstate can remain at the center of democratic thought and practice. In Part 3, Kant's understanding of political community, cosmopolitanism, and cosmopolitan law is examined, and through a critique of Kant's views an alternative conception of the requirement of democracy and the democratic good is set out: cosmopolitan democratic law. Part 3 also after contrasting Kant's conception of cosmopolitan law with the notion of cosmopolitan democratic law - focuses on institutional differences. Then Part 4 elaborates an institutional program for a cosmopolitan democracy - a form of democracy, it is argued, that can address the limitations of national democracies in a global era and point to some institutional solutions, both short term and long term. In the spirit of Kant, the case is made for a new cosmopolitanism - but with a substantially different understanding of the components of law, order, and accountability than can be found in his writings.1