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Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and culturaltrends, the term “globalization” has quickly become one ofthe most fashionable buzzwords of contemporary political and academicdebate. In popular discourse, globalization often functions as littlemore than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: thepursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies inthe world economy (“economic liberalization”), the growingdominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic,and cultural life (“westernization” or“Americanization”), the proliferation of new informationtechnologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as thenotion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one singleunified community in which major sources of social conflict havevanished (“global integration”). Fortunately, recent socialtheory has formulated a more precise concept of globalization thanthose typically offered by pundits. Although sharp differences continueto separate participants in the ongoing debate, 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 are working toundermine the importance of local and even national boundaries in manyarenas of human endeavor. Since globalization contains far-reachingimplications for virtually every facet of human life, it necessarilysuggests the need to rethink key questions of normative politicaltheory.
The term globalization has only become commonplace in the last twodecades, and academic commentators who employed the term as late as the1970s accurately recognized the novelty of doing so (Modelski, 1972).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 compression ofspace.
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 if themountains and forests of all countries were advancing on Paris. Evennow, I can smell the German linden trees; the North Sea's breakers arerolling against my door” (Schivelbusch, 1978: 34). Another Germanémigré, the socialist theorist Karl Marx, in 1848formulated the first theoretical explanation of the sense ofterritorial compression that so fascinated his contemporaries. InMarx's account, the imperatives of capitalist production inevitablydrove the bourgeoisie to “nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,and establish connections everywhere.” The juggernaut ofindustrial capitalism constituted the most basic source of technologiesresulting in the annihilation of space, helping to pave the way for“intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence ofnations,” in contrast to a narrow-minded provincialism that hadplagued humanity for untold eons (Marx, 1979 [1848]: 476). Despitetheir ills as instruments of capitalist exploitation, new technologiesthat increased possibilities for human interaction across bordersultimately represented a progressive force in history. They providedthe necessary 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 (Adams,1931 [1904]). John Dewey argued in 1927 that recent economic andtechnological trends implied the emergence of a “new world”no less noteworthy than the opening up of America to Europeanexploration and conquest in 1492. For Dewey, the invention of steam,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. Economicactivity increasingly exploded the confines of local communities to adegree that would have stunned our historical predecessors, forexample, while the steamship, railroad, automobile, and air travelconsiderably intensified rates of geographical mobility. Dewey wentbeyond previous discussions of the changing temporal and spatialcontours of human activity, however, by suggesting that the compressionof space posed fundamental questions for democracy. Dewey observed thatsmall-scale political communities (for example, the New Englandtownship), a crucial site for the exercise of effective democraticparticipation, seemed ever more peripheral to the great issues of aninterconnected world. Increasingly dense networks of social ties acrossborders rendered local forms of self-government ineffective. Deweywondered, “How can a public be organized, we may ask, whenliterally it does not stay in place?” (Dewey, 1954 [1927]: 140).To the extent that democratic citizenship minimally presupposes thepossibility of action in concert with others, how might citizenship besustained in a social world subject to ever more astonishingpossibilities for movement and mobility? New high-speed technologiesattributed a shifting and unstable character to social life, asdemonstrated by increased rates of change and turnover in many arenasof activity (most important perhaps, the economy) directly affected bythem, and the relative fluidity and inconstancy of social relationsthere. If citizenship requires some modicum of constancy and stabilityin social life, however, did not recent changes in the temporal andspatial conditions of human activity bode poorly for politicalparticipation? How might citizens come together and act in concert whencontemporary society's “mania for motion and speed” made itdifficult for them even to get acquainted with one another, let aloneidentify objects of common concern? (Dewey, 1954 [1927]: 140).
The unabated proliferation of high-speed technologies is probablythe main source of the numerous references in intellectual life since1950 to the annihilation of distance. The Canadian cultural criticMarshall McLuhan made the theme of a technologically based“global village,” generated by social “accelerationat all levels of human organization,” the centerpiece of ananxiety-ridden analysis of new media technologies in the 1960s(McLuhan, 1964: 103). Arguing in the 1970s and ‘80s that recent shiftsin the spatial and temporal contours of social life exacerbatedauthoritarian political trends, the French social critic Paul Virilioseemed to confirm many of Dewey's darkest worries about the decay ofdemocracy. According to his analysis, the high-speed imperatives ofmodern warfare and weapons systems strengthened the executive anddebilitated representative legislatures. The compression of territorythereby paved the way for executive-centered emergency government(Virilio, 1986 [1977]). But it was probably the German philosopherMartin Heidegger who most clearly anticipated contemporary debatesabout globalization. Heidegger not only described the “abolitionof distance” as a constitutive feature of our contemporarycondition, but he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no lessfundamental alterations in the temporality of human activity:“All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reachesovernight, by places, places which formerly took weeks and months oftravel” (Heidegger, 1971 [1950]: 165). Heidegger also accuratelyprophesied that new communication and information technologies wouldsoon spawn novel possibilities for dramatically extending the scope ofvirtual reality: “Distant sites of the most ancientcultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidsttoday's street traffic…The peak of this abolition of everypossibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soonpervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication”(Heidegger, 1971 [1950]: 165). Heidegger's description of growingpossibilities for simultaneity and instantaneousness in humanexperience ultimately proved no less apprehensive than the views ofmany of his predecessors. In his analysis, the compression of spaceincreasingly meant that from the perspective of human experience“everything is equally far and equally near.” Instead ofopening up new possibilities for rich and multi-faceted interactionwith events once distant from the purview of most individuals, theabolition of distance tended to generate a “uniformdistanceless” in which fundamentally distinct objects became partof a bland homogeneous experiential mass (Heidegger, 1971 [1950]: 166).The loss of any meaningful 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.
Since the mid-1980s, social theorists have moved beyond therelatively underdeveloped character of previous reflections on thecompression or annihilation of space to offer a rigorous conception ofglobalization. To be sure, major disagreements remain about the precisenature of the causal 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, contemporary analysts associate globalization withdeterritorialization, according to which a growing variety ofsocial activities takes place irrespective of the geographical locationof participants. As Jan Aart Scholte observes, “global events can-- via telecommunication, digital computers, audiovisual media,rocketry and the like -- occur almost simultaneously anywhere andeverywhere in the world” (Scholte, 1996: 45). Globalizationrefers to increased possibilities for action between and among peoplein situations where latitudinal and longitudinal location seemsimmaterial to the social activity at hand. Even though geographicallocation remains crucial for many undertakings (for example, farming tosatisfy the needs of a local market), deterritorialization manifestsitself in many social spheres. Business people on different continentsnow engage in electronic commerce; television allows people situatedanywhere to observe the impact of terrible wars being waged far fromthe comfort of their living rooms; academics make use of the latestvideo conferencing equipment to organize seminars in which participantsare located at disparate geographical locations; the Internet allowspeople to communicate instantaneously with each other notwithstandingvast geographical distances separating them. Territory in the sense ofa traditional sense of a geographically identifiable location no longerconstitutes the whole of “social space” in whichhuman activity 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, recent theorists conceive of globalization as linked to thegrowth of socialinterconnectedness across existinggeographical and political boundaries. In this view,deterritorialization is a crucial facet of globalization. Yet anexclusive focus on it would be misleading. Since the vast majority ofhuman activities is still tied to a concrete geographical location, themore decisive facet of globalization concerns the manner in whichdistant events and forces impact on local and regional endeavors(Tomlinson, 1999: 9). For example, this encyclopedia might be seen asan example of a deterritorialized social space since it allows for theexchange of ideas in cyberspace. The only prerequisite for its use isaccess to the Internet. Although substantial inequalities in Internetaccess still exist, use of the encyclopedia is in principle unrelatedto any specific geographical location. However, the reader may verywell be making 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 a growingdegree on “local” university life. For example, theinsistence by powerful political leaders in the First World that theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) should require that Latin and SouthAmerican countries commit themselves to a particular set of economicpolicies might result in poorly paid teachers and researchers as wellas large, understaffed lecture classes in San Paolo or Lima; the latestinnovations in information technology from a computer researchlaboratory in India could quickly change the classroom experience ofstudents in British Columbia or Tokyo. Globalization refers “toprocesses of change which underpin a transformation in the organizationof human affairs by linking together and expanding human activityacross regions and continents” (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt,Perraton, 1999: 15). Globalization in this sense is a matter of degreesince any given social activity might influence events more or lessfaraway: even though a growing number of activities seems intermeshedwith events in distant continents, certain human activities remainprimarily local or regional in scope. Also, the magnitude and impact ofthe activity might vary: geographically removed events could have arelatively minimal or a far more extensive influence on events at aparticular locality. 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 thespeed orvelocity of social activity.Deterritorialization and interconnectedness initially seem chieflyspatial in nature. Yet it is easy to see how these spatial shifts aredirectly tied to the acceleration of crucial forms of social activity.As we observed above in our discussion of the conceptual forerunners tothe present-day debate on globalization, the proliferation ofhigh-speed transportation, 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 activities acrossborders is predicated on the possibility of relatively fast flows andmovements of people, information, capital, and goods. Without thesefast flows, it is difficult to see how distant events could possiblyposses the influence they now enjoy. High-speed technology plays apivotal role in the velocity of human affairs. But many other factorscontribute to the overall pace and speed of social activity. Theorganizational structure of the modern capitalist factory offers oneexample; certain contemporary habits and inclinations, including the“mania for motion and speed” described by Dewey, representanother. Deterritorialization and the expansion of interconnectednessare intimately tied to the acceleration of social life, while socialacceleration itself takes many different forms (Eriksen, 2001). Here aswell, we can easily see why globalization is always a matter of degree.The velocity or speed of flows, movements, and interchanges acrossborders can vary no less than their magnitude, impact, orregularity.
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 social life.Globalization is a constitutive feature of the modern world, and modernhistory includes many examples of globalization (Giddens, 1990). As wesaw above, nineteenth-century thinkers captured at least some of itscore features; the compression of territoriality composed an importantelement of their lived experience. Nonetheless, some contemporarytheorists believe that globalization has taken a particularly intenseform in recent decades, as innovations in communication,transportation, and information technologies (for example,computerization) have generated stunning new possibilities forsimultaneity 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 technologies thattend to minimize the significance of distance and heightenpossibilities for deterritorialization and social interconnectedness.Although the intense sense of territorial compression experienced by somany of our contemporaries is surely reminiscent of the experiences ofearlier generations, some contemporary writers nonetheless argue thatit would be mistaken to obscure the countless ways in which ongoingtransformations 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 (Gurvitch,1964). Nonetheless, the impact of recent technological innovations isprofound, and even those who do not have a job directly affected by thenew technology are shaped by it in innumerable ways as citizens andconsumers (Eriksen, 2001: 16).
Fifth, globalization should be understood as amulti-pronged process, since deterritorialization, socialinterconnectedness, and acceleration manifest themselves in manydifferent (economic, political, and cultural) arenas of socialactivity. Although each facet of globalization is linked to the corecomponents of globalization described above, each consists of a complexand relatively autonomous series of empirical developments, requiringcareful examination in order to disclose the causal mechanisms specificto it (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, Perraton, 1999). Each manifestation ofglobalization also generates distinct conflicts and dislocations. Forexample, there is substantial empirical evidence that cross-borderflows and exchanges, as well as the emergence of directly transnationalforms of production by means of which a single commodity ismanufactured simultaneously in distant corners of the globe, aregaining in prominence (Castells, 1996). High-speed technologies andorganizational approaches are employed by transnationally operatingfirms, the so-called “global players,” with greateffectiveness. The emergence of “around-the-world,around-the-clock” financial markets, where major cross-borderfinancial transactions are made in cyberspace at the blink of an eye,represents a familiar example of the economic face of globalization.Global financial markets also challenge traditional attempts by liberaldemocratic nation-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 ozone layer),offer an example of political globalization. Another would be thetendency towards ambitious supranational forms of social and economiclawmaking and regulation, where individual nation-states cooperate topursue regulation whose jurisdiction transcends national borders noless than the cross-border economic processes that may underminetraditional modes of nation state-based regulation. Politicalscientists typically describe the trend towards ambitious forms ofsupranational organization (the European Union, for example, or NorthAmerica Free Trade Association) as important recent manifestations ofpolitical globalization. The proliferation of supranationalorganizations has been no less conflict-laden than economicglobalization, however. Critics insist that local, regional, andnational forms of self-government are being rapidly supplanted byinsufficiently democratic forms of global governance remote from theneeds of ordinary citizens, whereas their defenders describe new formsof supranational legal and political decision as indispensableforerunners to more inclusive and advanced forms ofself-government.
The wide-ranging impact of globalization on human existence meansthat it necessarily touches on many basic philosophical questions. At aminimum, globalization suggests that academic philosophers in the richcountries of the West should pay closer attention to the neglectedvoices and intellectual traditions of peoples with whom our fate isintertwined in ever more intimate ways (Dallmayr, 1998). In thissection, however, we focus exclusively on the immediate challengesposed by globalization to normative 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. The contemporaryliberal political philosopher John Rawls continues to speak of boundedcommunities whose fundamental structure consists 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), they typically have relied on a cleardelineation 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 more likelyto be successfully realized in the domestic arena than in relationsamong states. According to one influential strand within internationalrelations theory, relations between states are fundamentally lawless.Since the achievement of justice or democracy, for example, presupposesan effective political sovereign, the lacuna of sovereignty at theglobal level means that justice and democracy are necessarilyincomplete and probably unattainable there. In this“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 (Morgenthau, 1954).
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)over which they have limited control, and they find themselves nestedin webs of social relations whose scope explodes the confines ofnational borders. Of course, in much of human history social relationshave transcended existing political divides. However, globalizationimplies a profound quantitative increase in and intensification ofsocial relations of this type. While attempts to offer a cleardelineation of the “domestic” from the“foreign” probably made sense at an earlier juncture inhistory, this distinction no longer accords with core developmentaltrends in many arenas of social activity. As the possibility of a cleardivision between domestic and foreign affairs dissipates, thetraditional tendency to picture the domestic arena as a privileged sitefor the realization of normative ideals and principles becomesproblematic as well. As an empirical matter, the decay of thedomestic-foreign frontier seems highly ambivalent, since it mighteasily pave the way for the decay of the more attractive attributes ofdomestic political life: as “foreign” affairs collapseinward onto “domestic” political life, the relativelawlessness of the former potentially makes disturbing inroads onto thelatter (Scheuerman, 1999). As a normative matter, however, thedisintegration of the domestic-foreign divide probably calls for us toconsider, to a greater extent than ever before, how our fundamentalnormative commitments about political life can be effectively achievedon a global scale. If we take the principles of justice or democracyseriously, for example, it is no longer self-evident that the domesticarena is the main site for their pursuit, since domestic and foreignaffairs are now deeply and irrevocably intermeshed. In a globalizingworld, the lack of democracy or justice in the global settingnecessarily impacts deeply on the pursuit of justice or democracy athome. Indeed, it may no longer be possible to achieve our normativeideals at home without undertaking to do so transnationally aswell.
To claim, for example, that questions of distributive justice haveno standing in the making of foreign affairs represents at bestempirical naivete about economic globalization. At worst, itconstitutes a disingenuous refusal to grapple with the fact that thematerial existence of those fortunate enough to live in the richcountries is inextricably tied to the material status of the vastmajority of humanity residing in poor and underdeveloped regions.Growing material inequality spawned by economic globalization is linkedto growing domestic material inequality in the rich democracies (Falk,1999). Similarly, in the context of the ongoing destruction of theozone layer by privileged countries like Australia, Japan, and theUnited States, a dogmatic insistence on the sanctity of nationalsovereignty risks constituting a cynical fig leaf for irresponsibleactivities whose impact extends well beyond the borders of thepolluting countries. Ozone-depletion cries out for ambitious forms oftransnational cooperation and regulation, and the refusal by the richdemocracies to accept this necessity implies a failure to take theprocess of globalization seriously when doing so conflicts with theirmaterial interests. Although it might initially seem to be illustrativeof cleverRealpolitik on the part of the polluting nations toward off strict cross-border environmental regulation, theirstubbornness is probably short-sighted: ozone depletion will affect thechildren of Americans who drive gas-guzzling SUVs or useenvironmentally unsound air-conditioning as well as the futuregenerations of South Africa or Afghanistan. If we keep in mind thatenvironmental degradation probably impacts negatively on democraticpolitics (for example, by undermining its legitimacy and stability),the failure to pursue effective transnational environmental regulationpotentially undermines democracy at home as well as abroad.
In recent years, philosophers and political theorists have been busyaddressing the normative implications of our globalizing world. Alively debate about the possibility of achieving justice at the globallevel now pits representatives of cosmopolitanism againstcommunitarianism. Cosmopolitans underscore our universal moralobligations to those who reside faraway and with whom we share littlein the way of language, custom, or culture, arguing that claims to“justice at home” can and should be applied elsewhere aswell. In this way, cosmopolitanism builds directly on theuniversalistic impulses of modern moral and political thought. Incontrast, communitarians dispute the view that our moral obligations toforeigners possess the same status as those to members of particularcommunities (for example, the nation-state) of which we remain verymuch a part. Communitarians by no means deny the need to redress globalinequality, for example, but they often express skepticism in the faceof cosmopolitanism's tendency to defend significant legal and politicalreforms as necessary to address the inequities of a planet whereeighteen million people a year die of starvation (Jones, 1999; Pogge,2001: 9). Nor do communitarians necessarily deny that the process ofglobalization is real, though some of them believe its impact has beengrossly exaggerated (Kymlicka, 1999). Nonetheless, they doubt thathumanity has achieved a rich or sufficiently articulated sense of acommon fate such that far-reaching attempts to achieve greater globaljustice (for example, substantial redistribution from the rich to poor)could prove successful. Cosmopolitans not only typically counter with aflurry of universalist and egalitarian moral arguments, but they alsoaccuse communitarians of obscuring the threat posed by globalization tothe particular forms of community whose ethical primacy thecommunitarians endorse. From the cosmopolitan perspective, thecommunitarian tendency to favor moral obligations to fellow members ofthe nation-state represents a misguided and increasingly reactionarynostalgia for a rapidly decaying constellation of political practicesand institutions.
A similar intellectual divide characterizes the ongoing debate aboutthe prospects of democratic institutions at the global level. In acosmopolitan mode, David Held (1995) argues that globalization requiresthe extension of liberal democratic institutions (including the rule oflaw and elected representative institutions) to the transnationallevel. Nation state-based liberal democracy is poorly equipped to dealwith deleterious side effects of present-day globalization such asozone depletion or burgeoning material inequality. In addition, agrowing array of genuinely transnational forms of activity calls outfor no less intrinsically transnational modes of liberal democraticdecision-making. According to this model, “local” or“national” matters should remain under the auspices ofexisting liberal democratic institutions. But in those areas wheredeterritorialization and social interconnectedness across nationalborders are especially striking, new transnational institutions (forexample, cross-border referenda), along with a dramatic strengtheningand further democratization of existing forms of supranationalauthority (in particular, the United Nations), are necessary if we areto assure that popular sovereignty remains an effective principle. Inthe same spirit, Jürgen Habermas has tried to formulate a defenseof the European Union that conceives of it as a key steppingstonetowards supranational democracy. If the EU is to help succeed insalvaging the principle of popular sovereignty in a world where thedecay of nation state-based democracy makes democracy vulnerable, theEU will need to strengthen its elected representative organs and betterguarantee the civil, political, and social and economic rights of allEuropeans (Habermas, 2001: 58-113).
In opposition to Held, Habermas, and other defenders of globaldemocracy, communitarian-minded skeptics underscore the purportedlyutopian character of such proposals, arguing that democratic politicspresupposes deep feelings of trust, commitment, and belonging thatremain uncommon at the transnational level. Largely non-voluntarycommonalities of belief, history, and custom compose necessarypreconditions of any viable democracy, and since these commonalitiesare missing beyond the sphere of the nation-state, global orcosmopolitan democracy is doomed to fail (Archibugi, Held, and Koehler,1998). In an analogous vein, critics inspired by Realist theory arguethat cosmopolitanism obscures the fundamentally pluralistic, dynamic,and conflictual nature of political life on our divided planet.Notwithstanding its pacific self-understanding, cosmopolitan democracyinadvertently opens the door to new and even more horrible forms ofpolitical violence. Cosmpolitanism's universalistic moral discourse notonly ignores 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 than thetraditional nation state. For these critics, the fact that the recentAllied war against Iraq, conducted as a so-called “humanitarianintervention” with the blessings of the United Nations, probablyresulted in at least 220,000 civilian deaths, vividly underscores theprofound dangers intrinsic to the quest for novel forms of globaldemocracy (Zolo 1997, 24).
| William Scheuerman scheu005@tc.umn.edu |
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