Globalization and Popular Sovereignty: Democracy's Transnational Dilemma by Adam Lupel

Author:Adam Lupel [Lupel, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Political Ideologies, Democracy, International Relations, General, Globalization
ISBN: 9780415777445
Google: TO0WnKvROtQC
Goodreads: 7141094
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-01-15T09:39:20+00:00

6

Responses to globalization I

Habermas’s postnational constellation

The last three chapters have examined the challenges posed by globalization to the theory and practice of popular sovereignty with respect to the liberal, republican, and deliberative models. We have seen how the concept of popular sovereignty is challenged from both sides. The notion of the people as the agent of democracy and the concept of sovereignty as the form of final authority are both put into question by the phenomena of globalization. The decentering and proliferation of authority structures challenge the very notion of sovereignty as historically understood, while the accelerated mobility and diversity of citizen bodies and the transnationalization of interest groups have called into question the traditional image of a unified national people. Thus globalization, as we have seen, presents extraordinary challenges for each of the primary dimensions of popular sovereignty discussed: constitutive authority, collective self-determination,and protective capacity. This chapter and the next will examine two possible responses to these challenges: Habermas’s “postnational constellation” and David Held’s “cosmopolitan democracy.”

In recent years, the transformations associated with the processes of globalization have stimulated a reconsideration of traditional political forms. In particular, approaches to the concept of democratic governance beyond the nation-state have gained wide attention. David Held and Daniele Archibugi have systematically advocated for a form of cosmopolitan democracy at the global level.1 And of course Habermas and even the late John Rawls have presented extended thoughts on the prospects of transnational governance and cosmopolitan law.2 For some, the proper political response to globalization is the consolidation of democracy at the national level – a strengthening of the nation-state in the face of pressures from abroad.3 But for many the opposite is needed: while strong democratic procedures at the domestic level remain important, it is argued that, in the current context, democratic government can be maintained only by extending its borders outward, beyond the nation-state. For example, as we will see in Chapter 7, David Held envisions the consolidation of a system of cosmopolitan law that would one day cover the globe, providing the legal structure for a truly transnational democratic politics.4 Still others see the future of global governance as taking form in a process of decentralization, or “disaggregation.” Processes of rulemaking are increasingly dispersed along a multiplicity of networks on a variety of levels of political, economic, and cultural organization; thus, according to this view, political systems must come to transverse the boundaries of the local and the global, the public, and the private.5

For Habermas, however, the challenges of globalization call for the reaggregation of political authority at a level that goes beyond the national frame but pulls up short of the global. In “the Postnational Constellation and the Future of Democracy” Habermas argues that a democratic regionalism represented by the continuing project of the European Union could provide the necessary infrastructure for the democratic coordination of processes of globalization in the absence of a global government.6 This chapter will interrogate both dimensions of Habermas’s formulation. What is the status of the

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