Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and culturaltrends, the term “globalization” remains crucial tocontemporary political and academic debate. In contemporary populardiscourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonymfor one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classicalliberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy(“economic liberalization”), the growing dominance ofwestern (or even American) forms of political, economic, and culturallife (“westernization” or “Americanization”),a global political order built on liberal notions of international law(the “global liberal order”), an ominous network oftop-down rule by global elites (“globalism” or “global technocracy”),the proliferation of new information technologies (the “InternetRevolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at thethreshold of realizing one single unified community in which majorsources of social conflict have vanished (“globalintegration”). Globalization is a politically-contestedphenomenon about which there are significant disagreements andstruggles, with many nationalist and populist movements and leadersworldwide (including Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan,Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and former US President DonaldTrump) pushing back against what they view as its unappealingfeatures.

Fortunately, recent social theory has formulated a more preciseconcept of globalization than those typically offered by politiciansand pundits. Although sharp differences continue to separateparticipants in the ongoing debate about the term, most contemporarysocial theorists endorse the view that globalization refers tofundamental changes in the spatial and temporal contours of socialexistence, according to which the significance of space or territoryundergoes shifts in the face of a no less dramatic acceleration in thetemporal structure of crucial forms of human activity. Geographicaldistance is typically measured in time. As the time necessary toconnect distinct geographical locations is reduced, distance or spaceundergoes compression or “annihilation.” The humanexperience of space is intimately connected to the temporal structureof those activities by means of which we experience space. Changes inthe temporality of human activity inevitably generate alteredexperiences of space or territory. Theorists of globalization disagreeabout the precise sources of recent shifts in the spatial and temporalcontours of human life. Nonetheless, they generally agree thatalterations in humanity’s experiences of space and time areworking to undermine the importance of local and even nationalboundaries in many arenas of human endeavor. Since globalizationcontains far-reaching implications for virtually every facet of humanlife, it necessarily suggests the need to rethink key questions ofnormative political theory.

• 1. Globalization in the History of Ideas
• 2. Globalization in Contemporary Social Theory
• 3. The Normative Challenges of Globalization
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Globalization in the History of Ideas

The term globalization has only become commonplace in the last threedecades, and academic commentators who employed the term as late asthe 1970s accurately recognized the novelty of doing so (Modelski1972). At least since the advent of industrial capitalism, however,intellectual discourse has been replete with allusions to phenomenastrikingly akin to those that have garnered the attention of recenttheorists of globalization. Nineteenth and twentieth-centuryphilosophy, literature, and social commentary include numerousreferences to an inchoate yet widely shared awareness that experiencesof distance and space are inevitably transformed by the emergence ofhigh-speed forms of transportation (for example, rail and air travel)and communication (the telegraph or telephone) that dramaticallyheighten possibilities for human interaction across existinggeographical and political divides (Harvey 1989; Kern 1983). Longbefore the introduction of the term globalization into recent popularand scholarly debate, the appearance of novel high-speed forms ofsocial activity generated extensive commentary about the compressionof space.

Writing in 1839, an English journalist commented on the implicationsof rail travel by anxiously postulating that as distance was“annihilated, the surface of our country would, as it were,shrivel in size until it became not much bigger than one immensecity” (Harvey 1996, 242). A few years later, Heinrich Heine, theémigré German-Jewish poet, captured this same experiencewhen he noted: “space is killed by the railways. I feel as ifthe mountains and forests of all countries were advancing on Paris.Even now, I can smell the German linden trees; the North Sea’sbreakers are rolling against my door” (Schivelbusch 1978, 34).Another young German émigré, the socialist theorist KarlMarx, in 1848 formulated the first theoretical explanation of thesense of territorial compression that so fascinated hiscontemporaries. In Marx’s account, the imperatives of capitalistproduction inevitably drove the bourgeoisie to “nestleeverywhere, settle everywhere, and establish connectionseverywhere.” The juggernaut of industrial capitalism constitutedthe most basic source of technologies resulting in the annihilation ofspace, helping to pave the way for “intercourse in everydirection, universal interdependence of nations,” in contrast toa narrow-minded provincialism that had plagued humanity for untoldeons (Marx 1848, 476). Despite their ills as instruments of capitalistexploitation, Marx argued, new technologies that increasedpossibilities for human interaction across borders ultimatelyrepresented a progressive force in history. They provided thenecessary infrastructure for a cosmopolitan future socialistcivilization, while simultaneously functioning in the present asindispensable organizational tools for a working class destined toundertake a revolution no less oblivious to traditional territorialdivisions than the system of capitalist exploitation it hoped todismantle.

European intellectuals have hardly been alone in their fascinationwith the experience of territorial compression, as evinced by the keyrole played by the same theme in early twentieth-century Americanthought. In 1904, the literary figure Henry Adams diagnosed theexistence of a “law of acceleration,” fundamental to theworkings of social development, in order to make sense of the rapidlychanging spatial and temporal contours of human activity. Modernsociety could only be properly understood if the seeminglyirrepressible acceleration of basic technological and social processeswas given a central place in social and historical analysis (Adams1931 [1904]). John Dewey argued in 1927 that recent economic andtechnological trends implied the emergence of a “newworld” no less noteworthy than the opening up of America toEuropean exploration and conquest in 1492. For Dewey, the invention ofsteam, electricity, and the telephone offered formidable challenges torelatively static and homogeneous forms of local community life thathad long represented the main theatre for most human activity.Economic activity increasingly exploded the confines of localcommunities to a degree that would have stunned our historicalpredecessors, for example, while the steamship, railroad, automobile,and air travel considerably intensified rates of geographicalmobility. Dewey went beyond previous discussions of the changingtemporal and spatial contours of human activity, however, bysuggesting that the compression of space posed fundamental questionsfor democracy. Dewey observed that small-scale political communities(for example, the New England township), a crucial site for theexercise of effective democratic participation, seemed ever moreperipheral to the great issues of an interconnected world.Increasingly dense networks of social ties across borders renderedlocal forms of self-government ineffective. Dewey wondered, “Howcan a public be organized, we may ask, when literally it does not stayin place?” (Dewey 1927, 140). To the extent that democraticcitizenship minimally presupposes the possibility of action in concertwith others, how might citizenship be sustained in a social worldsubject to ever more astonishing possibilities for movement andmobility? New high-speed technologies attributed a shifting andunstable character to social life, as demonstrated by increased ratesof change and turnover in many arenas of activity (most importantperhaps, the economy) directly affected by them, and the relativefluidity and inconstancy of social relations there. If citizenshiprequires some modicum of constancy and stability in social life,however, did not recent changes in the temporal and spatial conditionsof human activity bode poorly for political participation? How mightcitizens come together and act in concert when contemporarysociety’s “mania for motion and speed” made itdifficult for them even to get acquainted with one another, let aloneidentify objects of common concern? (Dewey 1927, 140).

The unabated proliferation of high-speed technologies is probably themain source of the numerous references in intellectual life since 1950to the annihilation of distance. The Canadian cultural critic MarshallMcLuhan made the theme of a technologically based “globalvillage,” generated by social “acceleration at all levelsof human organization,” the centerpiece of an anxiety-riddenanalysis of new media technologies in the 1960s (McLuhan 1964, 103).Arguing in the 1970s and 1980s that recent shifts in the spatial andtemporal contours of social life exacerbated authoritarian politicaltrends, the French social critic Paul Virilio seemed to confirm manyof Dewey’s darkest worries about the decay of democracy.According to his analysis, the high-speed imperatives of modernwarfare and weapons systems strengthened the executive and debilitatedrepresentative legislatures. The compression of territory therebypaved the way for executive-centered emergency government (Virilio1977). But it was probably the German philosopher Martin Heidegger whomost clearly anticipated contemporary debates about globalization.Heidegger not only described the “abolition of distance”as a constitutive feature of our contemporary condition, but he linkedrecent shifts in spatial experience to no less fundamental alterationsin the temporality of human activity: “All distances in time andspace are shrinking. Man now reaches overnight, by places, placeswhich formerly took weeks and months of travel” (Heidegger 1950,165). Heidegger also accurately prophesied that new communication andinformation technologies would soon spawn novel possibilities fordramatically extending the scope ofvirtual reality:“Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown on film asif they stood this very moment amidst today’s streettraffic…The peak of this abolition of every possibility ofremoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade anddominate the whole machinery of communication” (Heidegger 1950,165). Heidegger’s description of growing possibilities forsimultaneity and instantaneousness in human experience ultimatelyproved no less apprehensive than the views of many of hispredecessors. In his analysis, the compression of space increasinglymeant that from the perspective of human experience “everythingis equally far and equally near.” Instead of opening up newpossibilities for rich and multi-faceted interaction with events oncedistant from the purview of most individuals, the abolition ofdistance tended to generate a “uniform distanceless” inwhich fundamentally distinct objects became part of a blandhomogeneous experiential mass (Heidegger 1950, 166). The loss of anymeaningful distinction between “nearness” and“distance” contributed to a leveling down of humanexperience, which in turn spawned an indifference that rendered humanexperience monotonous and one-dimensional.

2. Globalization in Contemporary Social Theory

Since the mid-1980s, social theorists have moved beyond the relativelyunderdeveloped character of previous reflections on the compression orannihilation of space to offer a rigorous conception of globalization.To be sure, major disagreements remain about the precise nature of thecausal forces behind globalization, with David Harvey (1989 1996)building directly on Marx’s pioneering explanation ofglobalization, while others (Giddens 19990; Held, McGrew, Goldblatt& Perraton 1999) question the exclusive focus on economic factorscharacteristic of the Marxist approach. Nonetheless, a consensus aboutthe basic rudiments of the concept of globalization appears to beemerging.

First, recent analysts associate globalization withdeterritorialization, according to which a growing variety ofsocial activities takes place irrespective of the geographicallocation of participants. As Jan Aart Scholte observes, “globalevents can – via telecommunication, digital computers,audiovisual media, rocketry and the like – occur almostsimultaneously anywhere and everywhere in the world” (Scholte1996, 45). Globalization refers to increased possibilities for actionbetween and among people in situations where latitudinal andlongitudinal location seems immaterial to the social activity at hand.Even though geographical location remains crucial for manyundertakings (for example, farming to satisfy the needs of a localmarket), deterritorialization manifests itself in many social spheres.Business people on different continents now engage in electroniccommerce; academics make use of the latest Internet conferencingequipment to organize seminars in which participants are located atdisparate geographical locations; the Internet allows people tocommunicate instantaneously with each other notwithstanding vastgeographical distances separating them. Territory in the sense of atraditional sense of a geographically identifiable location no longerconstitutes the whole of “social space” in which humanactivity takes places. In this initial sense of the term,globalization refers to the spread of new forms of non-territorialsocial activity (Ruggie 1993; Scholte 2000).

Second, theorists conceive of globalization as linked to the growth ofsocialinterconnectedness across existing geographical andpolitical boundaries. In this view, deterritorialization is a crucialfacet of globalization. Yet an exclusive focus on it would bemisleading. Since the vast majority of human activities is still tiedto a concrete geographical location, the more decisive facet ofglobalization concerns the manner in which distant events and forcesimpact on local and regional endeavors (Tomlinson 1999, 9). Forexample, this encyclopedia might be seen as an example of adeterritorialized social space since it allows for the exchange ofideas in cyberspace. The only prerequisite for its use is access tothe Internet. Although substantial inequalities in Internet accessstill exist, use of the encyclopedia is in principle unrelated to anyspecific geographical location. However, the reader may very well bemaking use of the encyclopedia as a supplement to course workundertaken at a school or university. That institution is not onlylocated at a specific geographical juncture, but its location isprobably essential for understanding many of its key attributes: thelevel of funding may vary according to the state or region where theuniversity is located, or the same academic major might requiredifferent courses and readings at a university in China, for example,than in Argentina or Norway. Globalization refers to those processeswhereby geographically distant events and decisions impact to agrowing degree on “local” university life. For example,the insistence by powerful political leaders in wealthy countries thatthe International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank recommend to Latinand South American countries that they commit themselves to aparticular set of economic policies might result in poorly paidteachers and researchers as well as large, understaffed lectureclasses in São Paolo or Lima; the latest innovations ininformation technology from a computer research laboratory in Indiacould quickly change the classroom experience of students in BritishColumbia or Tokyo. Globalization refers “to processes of changewhich underpin a transformation in the organization of human affairsby linking together and expanding human activity across regions andcontinents” (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999, 15).Globalization in this sense is a matter of degree since any givensocial activity might influence events more or less faraway: eventhough a growing number of activities seems intermeshed with events indistant continents, certain human activities remain primarily local orregional in scope. Also, the magnitude and impact of the activitymight vary: geographically removed events could have a relativelyminimal or a far more extensive influence on events at a particularlocality. Finally, we might consider the degree to whichinterconnectedness across frontiers is no longer merely haphazard butinstead predictable and regularized (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt &Perraton 1999).

Third, globalization must also include reference to thespeedorvelocity of social activity. Deterritorialization andinterconnectedness initially seem chiefly spatial in nature. Yet it iseasy to see how these spatial shifts are directly tied to theacceleration of crucial forms of social activity. As we observed abovein our discussion of the conceptual forerunners to the present-daydebate on globalization, the proliferation of high-speedtransportation, communication, and information technologiesconstitutes the most immediate source for the blurring of geographicaland territorial boundaries that prescient observers have diagnosed atleast since the mid-nineteenth century. The compression of spacepresupposes rapid-fire forms of technology; shifts in our experiencesof territory depend on concomitant changes in the temporality of humanaction. High-speed technology only represents the tip of the iceberg,however. The linking together and expanding of social activitiesacross borders is predicated on the possibility of relatively fastflows and movements of people, information, capital, and goods.Without these fast flows, it is difficult to see how distant eventscould possibly posses the influence they now enjoy. High-speedtechnology plays a pivotal role in the velocity of human affairs. Butmany other factors contribute to the overall pace and speed of socialactivity. The organizational structure of the modern capitalistfactory offers one example; certain contemporary habits andinclinations, including the “mania for motion and speed”described by Dewey, represent another. Deterritorialization and theexpansion of interconnectedness are intimately tied to theacceleration of social life, while social acceleration itself takesmany different forms (Eriksen 2001; Rosa 2013). Here as well, we caneasily see why globalization is always a matter of degree. Thevelocity or speed of flows, movements, and interchanges across borderscan vary no less than their magnitude, impact, or regularity.

Fourth, even though analysts disagree about the causal forces thatgenerate globalization, most agree that globalization should beconceived as a relativelylong-term process. The triad ofdeterritorialization, interconnectedness, and social accelerationhardly represents a sudden or recent event in contemporary sociallife. Globalization is a constitutive feature of the modern world, andmodern history includes many examples of globalization (Giddens 1990).As we saw above, nineteenth-century thinkers captured at least some ofits core features; the compression of territoriality composed animportant element of their lived experience. Nonetheless, somecontemporary theorists believe that globalization has taken aparticularly intense form in recent decades, as innovations incommunication, transportation, and information technologies (forexample, computerization) have generated stunning new possibilitiesfor simultaneity and instantaneousness (Harvey 1989). In this view,present-day intellectual interest in the problem of globalization canbe linked directly to the emergence of new high-speed technologiesthat tend to minimize the significance of distance and heightenpossibilities for deterritorialization and social interconnectedness.Although the intense sense of territorial compression experienced byso many of our contemporaries is surely reminiscent of the experiencesof earlier generations, some contemporary writers nonetheless arguethat it would be mistaken to obscure the countless ways in whichongoing transformations of the spatial and temporal contours of humanexperience are especially far-reaching. While our nineteenth-centurypredecessors understandably marveled at the railroad or the telegraph,a comparatively vast array of social activities is now beingtransformed by innovations that accelerate social activity andconsiderably deepen longstanding trends towards deterritorializationand social interconnectedness. To be sure, the impact ofdeterritorialization, social interconnectedness, and socialacceleration are by no means universal or uniform: migrant workersengaging in traditional forms of low-wage agricultural labor in thefields of southern California, for example, probably operate in adifferent spatial and temporal context than the Internet entrepreneursof San Francisco or Seattle. Distinct assumptions about space and timeoften coexist uneasily during a specific historical juncture (Gurvitch1964). Nonetheless, the impact of recent technological innovations isprofound, and even those who do not have a job directly affected bythe new technology are shaped by it in innumerable ways as citizensand consumers (Eriksen 2001, 16).

Fifth, globalization should be understood as amulti-prongedprocess, since deterritorialization, social interconnectedness, andacceleration manifest themselves in many different (economic,political, and cultural) arenas of social activity. Although eachfacet of globalization is linked to the core components ofglobalization described above, each consists of a complex andrelatively autonomous series of empirical developments, requiringcareful examination in order to disclose the causal mechanismsspecific to it (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999). Eachmanifestation of globalization also generates distinct conflicts anddislocations. For example, there is substantial empirical evidencethat cross-border flows and exchanges (of goods, people, information,etc.), as well as the emergence of directly transnational forms ofproduction by means of which a single commodity is manufacturedsimultaneously in distant corners of the globe, are gaining inprominence (Castells 1996). High-speed technologies and organizationalapproaches are employed by transnationally operating firms, theso-called “global players,” with great effectiveness. Theemergence of “around-the-world, around-the-clock”financial markets, where major cross-border financial transactions aremade in cyberspace at the blink of an eye, represents a familiarexample of the economic face of globalization. Global financialmarkets also challenge traditional attempts by liberal democraticnation-states to rein in the activities of bankers, spawningunderstandable anxieties about the growing power and influence offinancial markets over democratically elected representativeinstitutions. In political life, globalization takes a distinct form,though the general trends towards deterritorialization,interconnectedness across borders, and the acceleration of socialactivity are fundamental here as well. Transnational movements, inwhich activists employ rapid-fire communication technologies to joinforces across borders in combating ills that seem correspondinglytransnational in scope (for example, the depletion of the ozonelayer), offer an example of political globalization (Tarrow 2005).Another would be the tendency towards ambitious supranational forms ofsocial and economic lawmaking and regulation, where individualnation-states cooperate to pursue regulation whose jurisdictiontranscends national borders no less than the cross-border economicprocesses that undermine traditional modes of nation state-basedregulation. Political scientists typically describe such supranationalorganizations (the European Union, for example, or UnitedStates-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA) as important manifestationsof political and legal globalization. The proliferation ofsupranational organizations has been no less conflict-laden thaneconomic globalization, however. Critics insist that local, regional,and national forms of self-government are being supplanted byinsufficiently democratic forms of global governance remote from theneeds of ordinary citizens (Maus 2006; Streeck 2016). In contrast,defenders describe new forms of supranational legal and politicaldecision as indispensable forerunners to more inclusive and advancedforms of self-government, even as they worry about existing democraticdeficits and technocratic traits (Habermas 2015).

3. The Normative Challenges of Globalization

The wide-ranging impact of globalization on human existence means thatit necessarily touches on many basic philosophical andpolitical-theoretical questions. At a minimum, globalization suggeststhat academic philosophers in the rich countries of the West shouldpay closer attention to the neglected voices and intellectualtraditions of peoples with whom our fate is intertwined in ever moreintimate ways (Dallmayr 1998). In this section, however, we focusexclusively on the immediate challenges posed by globalization tonormative political theory.

Western political theory has traditionally presupposed the existenceof territorially bound communities, whose borders can be more or lessneatly delineated from those of other communities. In this vein, theinfluential liberal political philosopher John Rawls described boundedcommunities whose fundamental structure consisted of“self-sufficient schemes of cooperation for all the essentialpurposes of human life” (Rawls 1993, 301). Although politicaland legal thinkers historically have exerted substantial energy informulating defensible normative models of relations between states(Nardin and Mapel 1992), like Rawls they typically have relied on aclear delineation of “domestic” from “foreign”affairs. In addition, they have often argued that the domestic arenarepresents a normatively privileged site, since fundamental normativeideals and principles (for example, liberty or justice) are morelikely to be successfully realized in the domestic arena than inrelations among states. According to one influential strand withininternational relations theory, relations between states aremore-or-less lawless. Since the achievement of justice or democracy,for example, presupposes an effective political sovereign, the lacunaof sovereignty at the global level means that justice and democracyare necessarily incomplete and probably unattainable there. In thisconventional realist view of international politics, core features ofthe modern system of sovereign states relegate the pursuit of westernpolitical thought’s most noble normative goals primarily to thedomestic arena (Mearsheimer 2003.) Significantly, some prominentmid-century proponents of international realism rejected thisposition’s deep hostility to international law and supranationalpolitical organization, in part because they presciently confrontedchallenges that we now typically associate with intensifiedglobalization (Scheuerman 2011).

Globalization poses a fundamental challenge to each of thesetraditional assumptions. It is no longer self-evident thatnation-states can be described as “self-sufficient schemes ofcooperation for all the essential purposes of human life” in thecontext of intense deterritorialization and the spread andintensification of social relations across borders. The idea of abounded community seems suspect given recent shifts in thespatio-temporal contours of human life. Even the most powerful andprivileged political units are now subject to increasinglydeterritorialized activities (for example, global financial markets ordigitalized mass communication) over which they have limited control,and they find themselves nested in webs of social relations whosescope explodes the confines of national borders. Of course, in much ofhuman history social relations have transcended existing politicaldivides. However, globalization implies a profound quantitativeincrease in and intensification of social relations of this type.While attempts to offer a clear delineation of the“domestic” from the “foreign” probably madesense at an earlier juncture in history, this distinction no longeraccords with core developmental trends in many arenas of socialactivity. As the possibility of a clear division between domestic andforeign affairs dissipates, the traditional tendency to picture thedomestic arena as a privileged site for the realization of normativeideals and principles becomes problematic as well. As an empiricalmatter, the decay of the domestic-foreign frontier seems highlyambivalent, since it might easily pave the way for the decay of themore attractive attributes of domestic political life: as“foreign” affairs collapse inward onto“domestic” political life, the insufficiently lawfulcontours of the former make disturbing inroads onto the latter(Scheuerman 2004). As a normative matter, however, the disintegrationof the domestic-foreign divide probably calls for us to consider, to agreater extent than ever before, how our fundamental normativecommitments about political life can be effectively achieved on aglobal scale. If we take the principles of justice or democracyseriously, for example, it is no longer self-evident that the domesticarena is the exclusive or perhaps even main site for their pursuit,since domestic and foreign affairs are now deeply and irrevocablyintermeshed. In a globalizing world, the lack of democracy or justicein the global setting necessarily impacts deeply on the pursuit ofjustice or democracy at home. Indeed, it may no longer be possible toachieve our normative ideals at home without undertaking to do sotransnationally as well.

To claim, for example, that questions of distributive justice have nostanding in the making of foreign affairs represents at best empiricalnaivete about economic globalization. At worst, it constitutes adisingenuous refusal to grapple with the fact that the materialexistence of those fortunate enough to live in the rich countries isinextricably tied to the material status of the vast majority ofhumanity residing in poor and underdeveloped regions. Growing materialinequality spawned by economic globalization is linked to growingdomestic material inequality in the rich democracies (Falk 1999; Pogge2002). Similarly, in the context of global warming and the destructionof the ozone layer, a dogmatic insistence on the sanctity of nationalsovereignty risks constituting a cynical fig leaf for irresponsibleactivities whose impact extends well beyond the borders of thosecountries most directly responsible. Global warming andozone-depletion cry out for ambitious forms of transnationalcooperation and regulation, and the refusal by the rich democracies toaccept this necessity implies a failure to take the process ofglobalization seriously when doing so conflicts with their immediatematerial interests. Although it might initially seem to beillustrative of cleverRealpolitik on the part of theculpable nations to ward off strict cross-border environmentalregulation, their stubbornness is probably short-sighted: globalwarming and ozone depletion will affect the children of Americans whodrive gas-guzzling SUVs or use environmentally unsoundair-conditioning as well as the future generations of South Africa orAfghanistan (Cerutti 2007). If we keep in mind that environmentaldegradation probably impacts negatively on democratic politics (forexample, by undermining its legitimacy and stability), the failure topursue effective transnational environmental regulation potentiallyundermines democracy at home as well as abroad.

Philosophers and political theorists have eagerly addressed thenormative and political implications of our globalizing world. Alively debate about the possibility of achieving justice at the globallevel pits representatives of cosmopolitanism against myriadcommunitarians, nationalists, realists, and others who privilege thenation-state and moral, political, and social ties resting on it(Lieven 2020; Tamir 2019). In contrast, cosmopolitans tend tounderscore our universal obligations to those who reside faraway andwith whom we may share little in the way of language, custom, orculture, oftentimes arguing that claims to “justice athome” can and should be applied elsewhere as well (Beardsworth2011; Beitz 1999; Caney 2006; Wallace-Brown & Held 2010). In thisway, cosmopolitanism builds directly on the universalistic impulses ofmodern moral and political thought. Cosmopolitanism’s criticsdispute the view that our obligations to foreigners possess the samestatus as those to members of particular local and nationalcommunities of which we remain very much a part. They by no means denythe need to redress global inequality, for example, but they oftenexpress skepticism in the face of cosmopolitanism’s tendency todefend significant legal and political reforms as necessary to addressthe inequities of a planet where millions of people a year die ofstarvation or curable diseases (Miller 2007; 2013; Nagel 2005). Nor docosmopolitanism’s critics necessarily deny that the process ofglobalization is real, though some of them suggest that its impact hasbeen grossly exaggerated (Kymlicka 1999; Nussbaumet al.1996; Streeck 2016). Nonetheless, they doubt that humanity hasachieved a rich or sufficiently articulated sense of a common fatesuch that far-reaching attempts to achieve greater global justice (forexample, substantial redistribution from the rich to poor) could provesuccessful. Cosmopolitans not only counter with a flurry ofuniversalist and egalitarian moral arguments, but they also accusetheir opponents of obscuring the threat posed by globalization to theparticular forms of national community whose ethical primacycommunitarians, nationalists, and others endorse. From thecosmopolitan perspective, the tendency to favor moral and politicalobligations to fellow members of the nation-state represents amisguided and increasingly reactionary nostalgia for a rapidlydecaying constellation of political practices and institutions.

A similar divide characterizes the ongoing debate about the prospectsof democratic institutions at the global level. In a cosmopolitanmode, Daniele Archibugi (2008) and the late David Held (1995) haveargued that globalization requires the extension of liberal democraticinstitutions (including the rule of law and elected representativeinstitutions) to the transnational level. Nation state-based liberaldemocracy is poorly equipped to deal with deleterious side effects ofpresent-day globalization such as ozone depletion or burgeoningmaterial inequality. In addition, a growing array of genuinelytransnational forms of activity calls out for correspondinglytransnational modes of liberal democratic decision-making. Accordingto this model, “local” or “national” mattersshould remain under the auspices of existing liberal democraticinstitutions. But in those areas where deterritorialization and socialinterconnectedness across national borders are especially striking,new transnational institutions (for example, cross-border referenda),along with a dramatic strengthening and further democratization ofexisting forms of supranational authority (in particular, the UnitedNations), are necessary if we are to assure that popular sovereigntyremains an effective principle. In the same spirit, cosmopolitansdebate whether a loose system of global “governance”suffices, or instead cosmopolitan ideals require something along thelines of a global “government” or state (Cabrera 2011;Scheuerman 2014). Jürgen Habermas, a prominentcosmopolitan-minded theorist, has tried to formulate a defense of theEuropean Union that conceives of it as a key stepping stone towardssupranational democracy. If the EU is to help succeed in salvaging theprinciple of popular sovereignty in a world where the decay of nationstate-based democracy makes democracy vulnerable, the EU will need tostrengthen its elected representative organs and better guarantee thecivil, political, and social and economic rights of all Europeans(Habermas 2001, 58–113; 2009). Representing a novel form ofpostnational constitutionalism, it potentially offers some broaderlessons for those hoping to save democratic constitutionalism undernovel global conditions. Despite dire threats to the EU posed bynationalist and populist movements, Habermas and othercosmopolitan-minded intellectuals believe that it can be effectivelyreformed and preserved (Habermas 2012).

In opposition to Archibugi, Held, Habermas, and other cosmopolitans,skeptics underscore the purportedly utopian character of suchproposals, arguing that democratic politics presupposes deep feelingsof trust, commitment, and belonging that remain uncommon at thepostnational and global levels. Largely non-voluntary commonalities ofbelief, history, and custom compose necessary preconditions of anyviable democracy, and since these commonalities are missing beyond thesphere of the nation-state, global or cosmopolitan democracy is doomedto fail (Archibugi, Held, and Koehler 1998; Lieven 2020). Criticsinspired by realist international theory argue that cosmopolitanismobscures the fundamentally pluralistic, dynamic, and conflictualnature of political life on our divided planet. Notwithstanding itspacific self-understanding, cosmopolitan democracy inadvertently opensthe door to new and even more horrible forms of political violence.Cosmpolitanism’s universalistic normative discourse not onlyignores the harsh and unavoidably agonistic character of politicallife, but it also tends to serve as a convenient ideological cloak forterrible wars waged by political blocs no less self-interested thanthe traditional nation state (Zolo 1997, 24).

Ongoing political developments suggest that such debates are of morethan narrow scholarly interest. Until recently, some ofglobalization’s key prongs seemed destined to transform humanaffairs in seemingly permanent ways: economic globalization, as wellas the growth of a panoply of international and global political andlegal institutions, continued to transpire at a rapid rate. Suchinstitutional developments, it should be noted, were interpreted bysome cosmopolitan theorists as broadly corroborating their overallnormative aspirations. With the resurgence of nationalist and populistpolitical movements, many of which diffusely (and sometimesmisleadingly) target elements of globalization, globalization’sfuture prospects seem increasingly uncertain. For example, withpowerful political leaders regularly making disdainful remarks aboutthe UN and EU, it seems unclear whether one of globalization’smost striking features, i.e., enhanced political and legaldecision-making “beyond the nation state,” will continueunabated. Tragically perhaps, the failure to manage economicglobalization so as to minimize avoidable inequalities and injusticeshas opened the door to a nationalist and populist backlash, with manypeople now ready to embrace politicians and movements promising topush back against “free trade,” relatively porous borders(for migrants and refugees), and other manifestations of globalization(Stiglitz 2018). Even if it seems unlikely that nationalists orpopulists can succeed in fully halting, let alone reversing,structural trends towards deterritorialization, intensifiedinterconnectedness, and social acceleration, they may manage toreshape them in ways that cosmopolitans are likely to find alarming.Whether or not nationalists and populists can successfully respond tomany fundamental global challenges (e.g., climate change or nuclearproliferation), however, remains far less likely.

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