Federalism and Global Democracy

Abstract

The global justice literature is now developed to such an extent that its theorists have started to incorporate the institutional requirements of justice into their analyses. Although it is – in principle – possible to argue for a generous theory of global responsibility while continuing to consider the traditional territorial state as the primary (or only) context within which global justice ideals are to be implemented, several political theorists have advocated forms of transnational and global democracy. Given that most of them do not want to abolish the nation-state, analyzing the international dimension of democracy would seem to involve investigating the possibility of some form of transnational or global federalism. Federalism, after all, has traditionally been defended for different reasons, ranging from promoting political stability, securing individual freedom, and enhancing self-government, to the protection of minority rights. All these features seem to make federalism a very promising candidate to deal with globalization-related problems in the fields of justice and democracy. Scholarship on federalism, however, is still very much on the verge of emerging. Although the idea of federalism has a long history and has been discussed by a wide range of philosophers – going from Althusius and Montesquieu to Rousseau and the authors of The Federalist – contemporary political philosophers have, until quite recently, not devoted much attention to this topic. This panel analyzes the normative reasons for and against instituting forms of democracy at the global level. It welcomes papers situated within international political theory and dealing with the institutional dimensions of global justice, in particular with global democracy and federalism. Two research questions stand out in this workshop: 1) Can federalism be adapted to the supranational level? Is global federalism a feasible option? 2) What normative framework should guide the idea of global federalism?

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