Global democracy, or the idea of democratic governance that extends beyond sovereign borders, has received increased attention in recent years. Its proponents are interested, in particular, in how citizens of the world might collectively rule themselves and thus potentially check arbitrary power. However, many scholars have charged that global democrats neglect to address how such power might be legitimated. One important line of criticism suggests that merely including civil society in deliberation with formal sites for global decision-making fails to address the fact that power is already shared between nation-states and thus may be less susceptible to cooptation by non-state actors (Macdonald and Ronzoni 2012; Erman 2007).
The debate on global democracy is also framed by growing concerns about the state of global politics, as illustrated by this year’s Democracy Index, which marks an unprecedented level of decline in democratic performance. As US hegemony is challenged by China and the democratically elected leaders of developed countries seem increasingly less adept at managing domestic conflict, there are real fears that the global landscape may be shifting toward a new age of instability, violence, and authoritarian regimes.
The core idea behind the global democracy movement is that we need a broader set of institutional options for solving international problems, and that these problem-solving institutions should be governed democratically. Proponents have suggested various models for engendering democracy beyond the state, but these proposals are often dismissed on methodological grounds and for their difficulty in yielding concrete institutional moments. More recently, debates have shifted away from models and toward a focus on the values that global democracy entails. These intrinsic arguments, centered around notions such as equality, autonomy, and the dignity of persons, offer an alternative moral foundation – related to but distinct from cosmopolitanism – for pursuing democracy in the global realm.