Why democracy must be global: self-founding and democratic intervention

Abstract

Globalization, foreign intervention, and failed states have drawn new attention to theoretical issues of how political orders and communities can be legitimately founded, and what it means for a people to be self-governing. In this article, I will challenge an argument in this debate saying that the founding of new political orders is always in some sense illegitimate insofar as it cannot be decided democratically. In opposition to this view, I will suggest that the founding of political orders is legitimate even from a democratic point of view when decided together by people within as well as beyond the boundaries inherent in the foundation. In case of persisting disagreement over boundary issues, political decisions can still derive democratic legitimacy from global procedures that are equally inclusive of everyone capable of contesting those decisions. Elaborating on the implications of this argument, I will also reject the notion that foreign interventions for establishing democracy are themselves necessarily illegitimate or undemocratic.

The great trilemma: are globalization, democracy, and sovereignty compatible?

“…Some argue that a democracy should empower everyone affected by a state. Given the externalities of state policy, this would include the preferences of those outside the boundaries of a state (Agné 2010). of people and most classes of goods, though less so of capital), globalization depends on the policies adopted by sovereign states.…”

Why does global democracy not inspire explanatory research? Removing conceptual obstacles toward a new research agenda

“…Moreover, and in contrast to what is commonly assumed, a definition of democracy as rule by the largest group subsumes standard ideals of democracy, such as freedom and political equality among individuals in political processes, and it escapes the democratic founding paradoxes that emerge when scholars define democracy by referring to a people which did not exist at democracy’s founding moment (e.g. Agné, 2010; Näsström, 2003). For these reasons, defining democracy as rule by the largest group allows DBS to be observed across a wider range of international processes, structures, and institutions than have been available for empirical study based on the conceptions of democracy that dominate in both empirical and normative literatures today.…”

Symposium‘The politics of international recognition’

“…3 In any case, the politics of international recognition may in practice privilege the authority of, for example, humanity as a whole (cf. Bartelson 2008;Agné 2010); individuals who in historically unique moments happen to be part of capable political institutions, whether national or international (cf. Elster 1984, 93-4); or some person or people who at any time is strong enough to act independently of all internal and external norms, that is entities demonstrating sovereignty in practice (cf.…”

“…On the need to specify acts of recognition in IPS (see alsoWolf 2011, 106, fn).3 In democratic theory views differ on whether the paradox of legitimate procedures implies that particular constitutional limitations should be placed on politics(Whelan 1983), or that ongoing contestation about who should decide is inherent in legitimate politics (Nä sströ m 2007), and whether the paradox could be resolved in theory(Agné 2010). For the paradox of founding in law, seeLoughlin and Walker (2008).…”