Cosmopolitan democracy

In 2021, a global citizen's assembly was organised to coincide with COP26 in Glasgow in October–November 2021. This is the first body that can claim to democratically represent the wishes of the global population.

Origin and development

The victory of Western liberal states ending the Cold War inspired the hope that international relations could be guided by the ideals of democracy and the rule of law. In the early 1990s, a group of thinkers developed the political project of cosmopolitan democracy with the aim of providing intellectual arguments in favour of an expansion of democracy, both within states and at the global level. While some significant successes have been achieved in terms of democratization within states, much less has been attained in democratizing the global system.

In different forms, the necessity to expand democratic procedures beyond the nation-state has been supported by political philosopher Jürgen Habermas, and sociologist Ulrich Beck.

Criticisms of cosmopolitan democracy have come from realist, marxist, communitarian and multicultural perspectives. Democratic theorist Robert Dahl has expressed his doubts about the possibility of expanding democracy in international organizations to any significant degree, as he believes that democracy diminishes with size. Opponents of Dahl's approach point to the fact that bigger countries are not necessarily less democratic. For example, there is no correlation between voters' turnout and population size; in fact it is smallest in countries with fewer than 100,000 citizens.