Assess the concept of cosmopolitan democracy Essay

Assess the concept of cosmopolitan democracy - Essay Example Later on, other important issues such as global environmental problems, global justice system, crimes against humanity and economic and cultural globalisation added to the global peace concern. The concept of cosmopolitan democracy was supposed to resolve or at least alleviate these global problems. The main idea of cosmopolitan democracy is to design and implement "a system of governance arising from and adapting to the diverse conditions and interconnections between different peoples and nations" (Held, 1998: 25). David Held and Daniele Archibugi, the most renowned European theorists of cosmopolitan democracy, argue that although democracy has gained universal acclaim as the best form of political establishment after fall of the Iron Curtail and end of the Cold War, it influences only domestic level, while the realm of international relations remains practically unaffected by democratic processes. International institutions, including the United Nations organization and European Union do not care much about democratisation of their activities which results in lack of accountability and restricted public access to information. The risk is that if this tendency remains, democratic forms of governance will give up to authoritarianism (McGrew, 2002). Cosmopolitanism offers an alternative that helps effectively fi... Democracy is to be conceptualized as a process, rather than as a set of norms and procedures. A feuding system of states hampers democracy within states. Democracy within states favours peace, but does not necessarily produce a virtuous foreign policy. Global democracy is not just the achievement of democracy within each state. Globalization erodes states' political autonomy and thereby curtails the efficacy of state-based democracy. The stakeholders' communities in a relevant and growing number of specific issues do not necessarily coincide with states' territorial borders. Globalization engenders new social movements engaged with issues that affect other individuals and communities, even when these are geographically and culturally very distant from their own political community (Archibugi, 2004: 439). These assumptions suggest that contemporary form of national democracy must be seriously transformed in order to survive. Firstly, the sovereignty of the nation states must be restricted by increasing numbers of international treaties and conventions. Secondly, the existing international governing structures must be reformed to provide a better opportunity for international dialogue and democratic decision-making. Thus, Derk Bienen, another known theorist of cosmopolitan democracy, claims that in order to achieve these goals the UN must establish a second chamber consisting of members elected directly by people, the veto-right of the Security Council should be limited, and the system of international courts has to be strengthened and reformed in a way to provide better protection for individuals. Initially, the UN was founded not as an assembly of democratic states: the primary purpose of this organization was to prevent military conflicts similar to WWII.