The Contested Freedom of the Moderns: Conceiving Norm Contestation as the ‘Glue’ for Re-Ordering the Globalized World

Abstract

Fundamental norms such as democracy, sovereignty, citizenship, and the rule of law are both foundational and deeply contested concepts. Their foundational role has been extensively discussed with reference to modern nation-states and global order in International Law and International Relations. While their contested quality is well known in theory, it has especially come to the fore through contestations of norms and orders in current conflicts and crises. The role of fundamental norms has thus changed from taking a rear-seat in political theory to making headlines in current issues of global governance. This chapter argues that this move into the political limelight is an opportunity for addressing the ‘future of democracies’. It argues that first, due to norms’ value- and practice-based roots, their contestedness is to be expected. Second, this contestedness has implications for both, norm use in everyday practice and norm conceptualization in theory. Leading questions are then: What are the effects for democracy in practice (i.e. politics and policymaking) and for democracy in theory (i.e. on conceptualizations of democracy as a foundational constitutional norm)? Following these questions, the chapter discusses the future of democracies in a globalized world. It conceives norms and their multiple contestations as the constitutive ‘glue’ of global ordering, rather than as a ‘means’ towards implementing governance rules. The argument is presented in four sections. Section one identifies a conceptual gap between state-negotiated norms of global governance and societal contestations of norms (i.e. a lacking focus on the ontology of societal multiplicity). Section two recalls Tully’s claim about the ‘Unfreedom of the Moderns’ and the central role of agonism (contestation) for the purpose of including the multitude of affected stakeholders in establishing norms of governance. Section three presents the cycle-grid model to frame democracy from below. The details practices of contestation (i.e. reactive and proactive) and validation (formal, societal, cultural) to address the gap between societal interactions and global order-building. Section four concludes with an outlook on the future of democracies in a globalized world.