The Politics of Cosmopolitical Democracy

Abstract

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, if we stop to ask ourselves which political institutions are the depositories of power, we are forced to give the same answer a seasoned observer would have given in 1815: namely, states. In the course of the last two centuries, in fact, states have asserted themselves increasingly as veritable oligarchies of world politics. You only have to look at a political map of the world to grasp the fact. With the exception of Antarctica, the entire surface land mass of the planet is delimited by states. To make this pre-eminence all the more evident, geographers use bright colours to show who the owners of the world’s surface are. Inside states, the colours are homogeneous. If the surface of the United States is green, that of Canada is red. It may be a formality, but it does testify to the pre-eminence of states over individuals. The attributes of individuals become secondary inside states. Whether their skin is white or black, whether they originate from Europe or America, whether they are Christian or Muslim, they are considered, first and foremost, from the political point of view, Americans or Canadians.