Postnationalist Democratization: Rethinking Nationality, Trust, and Accountability

Abstract

If nationalists are right to argue that there is a special link between national identity and democratic politics, then schemes for transnational, cosmopolitan democracy must be misconceived. I cannot defend a detailed blueprint of cosmopolitan democracy in this chapter for the simple reason that I do not possess such a blueprint. What I hope to do, however, is to refocus the debate about nationality and democracy away from the idea that democratic accountability requires a unified national identity and on to the idea that all democratic politics, domestic and transnational, should approach this issue with a view of the demos as plural and decentred. Far from strengthening democratic accountability and fostering civic trust, I argue that a concern with national identity embodies a misunderstanding of collective self-determination and has the potential to expose citizens to elite manipulation.