Democracy: From City-states
to a Cosmopolitan Order?
The ‘Battle in Seattle’ 1999
David Held
 Some works:
 Held, David, Models of Democracy, 3rd
Edition (Polity Press, 2007).
 Held, David. Global covenant. Polity
Press, 2004.
 Held, David; Koenig-Archibugi, M (eds.).
Taming globalization: Frontiers of
Governance. Polity Press, 2003.
 Held, David; McGrew, A (eds.). The
Global Transformations Reader: An
Introduction to the globalization Debate.
Polity Press, 2003
Held’s Key Idea
 Increasing globalization means nation-states are
losing control in key policy areas.
 We are seeing the `unbundling’ of the relationship
between
 Sovereignty
 Territoriality
 Political power
 Thus, we need to consider moving toward some forms
of transnational democracy.
Key Questions for Held
 Can transnational democracy work?
 Is globalization really so severe a threat to democracy
as we know it?
 Does Held put forth an unsustainable conception of
state sovereignty as once absolute, now eroding?
Globalization and unbundling
 Specific types of `unbundling’ of sovereignty
 IGOs and the legalization (constitutionalization) of the
global system. WTO, IMF, World Bank, EU—all extend
aspects of the rule of law (political power) above the
state.
 Also, G8, G20, etc.
 International Networks of actors: central bankers,
environmental ministers, judges (Slaughter’s thesis)
Globalization and Unbundling cont.
 Other `unbundling’ actors
 MNCs and related actors, including international
chambers of commerce, establishing their own transstate regulatory mechanisms.
 NGOs and transnational advocacy networks. Oxfam, etc
influencing global policy making (MDGs), but also
social movements (Stand Up campaign for MDGs)
 Fallout from global economic crisis? Global rule of law
in banking?
IGO pressures
 WTO assumes increasing “effective” powers of
governance.
 The IMF, NAFTA, even NATO take decisions that limit
state decision-making power
 Not to mention the European Union
NGOs (or INGOs)
 Nongovernmental Organizations—NGOs.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch,
campaign to ban land mines, Greenpeace.
 To reinforce, they are citizens’ groups, rather than
groups of state governments working together.
 They can sometimes change state behavior.
 http://www.icbl.org/ Check the International
Campaign to Ban Land Mines
DH’s three steps
 The rise of the modern state as the backdrop for
modern democracy.
 The increasing intensity of globalization.
 A proposal for transnational democracy.
The Rise of the Nation-State
 The modern, “absolute” nation state only dates to
about 1648.
 1648: Treaty of Westphalia. Ended the Thirty Years
War, helped establish states’ control of affairs within
their own borders.
Pre-Westphalia
 Before Westphalia, political communities often
overlapped.
 You might owe allegiance to a local lord, a higher
noble, a king and the Holy Roman Emperor.
The Westphalian System
 The world is divided into sovereign states which
recognize no higher authority.
External sovereignty: states are formally equal
Internal sovereignty: states are the final judge over affairs
within their own borders
--de jure vs de facto sovereign power—a key distinction
Modern Democracy
 Modern democracy arose with the modern nation-
state
 Liberal representative democracy made democratic
rule possible in very large states.
 Liberal democracy:


Attempt to balance necessary power of the state to impose
order (Hobbes,)
With respect for the liberty and rights of the individual (Locke
especially)
Modern Democracy, cont.
 Leads to key presumption for Held:
 The liberal-democratic state assumes a monopoly on
coercive power within its borders
 But political equality helps to guard against abuses of
power
Symmetry and Congruence
 Two further presumptions for Held:
 Symmetry: those affected by public decisions, issues, or
processes have an equal opportunity to shape them
(political equality)
 Congruence: impacts of decisions are limited to those
formally within the political community
 In the current age, symmetry and congruence no longer
obtain, Held argues.
Symmetry and Congruence cont.
 Critics: does this presume a form of absolute state
sovereignty which has never actually existed?
 Don’t all decisions affect somebody, somewhere, at
some level? (butterfly’s wings, etc.)
Symm and Cong part 3
 Held’s response to the latter critique:
 There are three kinds of impacts on individuals:
 Strong: vital interests are affected, with consequences
for life expectancy (global warming?)
 Moderate: affects individuals’ abilities to participate in
their communities’ economic, cultural and political
activities (trade subsidies by rich states?)
 Weak: has impact on lifestyle or the range of available
consumption choices (US hegemony in film, music?)
Rethinking Democracy
 We no longer live in self-determining “communities of
fate.” We live in overlapping communities of fate.
 Thus, defenders of democracy have an obligation to
build a transnational democratic structure
Moving forward
 Held notes “disjunctures” between Westphalian
absolute sovereignty and the individual rights norms
implicit in the United Nations Charter.
 System is still primarily “Westphalian” in its
structure—
 UN Security Council
 Non-binding GA resolutions
A Democratic UN?
 The UN Charter could be a significant step in “the
cross-border regulation of world affairs” (30)
 Greater compliance with existing rights conventions
 At best, though, would only be a “thin” form of trans-
state democracy
Cosmopolitan Democracy
 1) Create or expand the role of regional parliaments
(like the EP)
 2) Some form of global parliament, possibly a
reformed UN: a second chamber
 3) Long-term: a full global parliament with some
revenue-raising capacity
 Interconnected global legal system
Utopian?
 “If such a settlement (between coercive power and
democratic accountability) seems like a fantasy, it
should be emphasized that it is a fantasy to imagine
that one can advocate democracy today without
confronting the range of issues elaborated here. If the
emerging international order is to be democratic,
these issues have to be considered, even though their
details are, of course, open to further
specification”(Held, 1992, 35).
Critiques
 Is this age of globalization really so different from the
first, 1866-1914?

Laying of the transatlanctic cable, 1866
Will Kymlicka
 Ordinary people will always want to debate in their
own common language: the “vernacular.”
 That’s why a truly transnational democracy won’t
work.
International, not Cosmopolitan,
Democ.
 Alexander Wendt’s key idea:
 Held is right to say that globalization will push
democracy beyond the state.
 However, it will be a democracy where states have the
votes (think a much stronger UN)
Actors, cont.
 States: They are integrating economically but are
jealously guarding their formal sovereignty.
 Thus, the world will be ever-more integrated, but
formal world government is a long way off (actually,
about 200 years: Wendt 2003)