Diversity and cosmopolitan democracy: Avoiding global democratic relativism

Abstract

Many recent arguments for trans-state and global democracy would offer broad leeway on constitutionalized right standards to states, and few formal mechanisms for individuals to challenge domestic rights rejections beyond the state. Such a stance, it is shown here, tends to be rooted in implicit presumptions of domestic consensus. Challenges are offered to this and related presumptions in accounts of cosmopolitan democracy, as well as global variants of liberal nationalism and political liberalism. An alternative, primarily instrumental approach to trans-state and global democracy is detailed. It would give emphasis to ways in which formal suprastate participation, complemented by challenge mechanisms for individuals, could play a crucial role in helping to strengthen individual rights protections within states. The case for adopting such an approach is reinforced through attention to the efforts of a persistent domestic democratic minority – Dalits in India – to reach out to the global human rights regime for help in pressuring their own state to better protect rights against exclusion and subjugation.

“Gandhiji, I Have no Homeland”: Cosmopolitan Insights from BR Ambedkar, India’s Anti-Caste Campaigner and Constitutional Architect

“…They are one of a range of trans-national actors effectively highlighting a need for the kinds of suprastate institutions identified by Ambedkar, which would be both willing and able to reinforce domestic rights protections. 7 Held does advocate the creation of binding democratic institutions at the global level, and Archibugi more limited global institutions, but both would reject comprehensive universal rights protections in the name of respecting state diversity (see Cabrera, 2015). 8…”

“…He had suspended the effort, however, in hopes that the adoption of a rights-protective constitution would lead to improvements (Ambedkar, 1995(Ambedkar, [1951: 1317-1327). The United Nations would in fact be placed at the center of international Dalit outreach some 50 years later, when the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), a nationwide coalition inspired by Ambedkar's life and work, 8 sought external allies in pressing the Indian government to do more against ongoing caste discrimination (see Cabrera, 2015).…”

“… 7 Held does advocate the creation of binding democratic institutions at the global level, and Archibugi more limited global institutions, but both would reject comprehensive universal rights protections in the name of respecting state diversity (see Cabrera, 2015). …”

Suspending democratic (dis)belief: Nonliberal energy polities of solar power in Morocco and Tanzania

“…Drawing from both original and secondary cases from Morocco and Tanzania, this article examines Abbreviations: CE, credibility economies; CSP, concentrating solar power; LMICs, low-and middle-income countries; PERG, Program for Universal Rural Electrification (Morocco); SAP, Structural Adjustment Program; STIMs, sociotechnical imaginaries; STS, Science and Technology Studies; TDV, Tanzania Development Vision 2025; FYDP, five-year development plan. the challenges to energy democracy posed by 'bad behavior' in energy polities in the Global South-namely, corruption, authoritarianism, clientelistic patronage politics, and nonhuman beings-and argues for a vocabulary for collective governance (energy polity) that decenters the normativity of liberal democracy, without succumbing to "global democratic relativism," where marginalized groups within sovereign nations have no recourse for justice [11].…”