Cosmopolitan Democracy: Paths and Agents

When, at the end of the cold war and at the beginning of a new wave of democratization, we suggested the idea of a cosmopolitan democracy, we were aware that we were pouring old wine into new bottles.? The attempt to make world politics more transparent, more accountable,more participatory, and more respectful of the rule of law had pioneers spanning from Immanuel Kant to Richard Falk. Still, the idea that "democracy" as a concept and a practice could and should be applied beyond nation-states was somehow innovative. If we read the international relations textbooks prior to ????, wemay be surprised to note that many of them do not even contain the word "democracy." When the word appears, it is generally in reference to the internal political regime of states, and certainly not in relation to the possibility of reordering world politics according to democratic rules. Even international organizations were seen mostly as purely intergovernmental bodies, and the prospect of making them more democratic was not contemplated.