Self‐Determination beyond Sovereignty: Relating Transnational Democracy to Local Autonomy

The practical context for the theoretical reflections in this article is set by two apparently conflicting tendencies: On one side, we have the progression of global economic, technological, and, to a degree, legal and political integration, where this entails a certain diminution of sovereignty. Sovereign nation-states of the so-called Westphalian paradigm, possessing ultimate authority within a terri- tory, are increasingly overwhelmed by the cross-border interconnections or net- works that escape their purview; or they are legitimately constrained by new human rights regimes across borders. On the other side, especially in view of the hegemonic activities of the United States, but also in the European Union, new calls for the reestablishment of the sovereignty of nation-states can be heard. This may take the form of a reassertion of a right of states against military interfer- ence and a retreat from ideas of humanitarian intervention; or again, it may take the form of an assertion of the priority of nation-states from the standpoint of the administration of welfare or that of the distinctiveness of particular cultures that they sometimes embody. Indeed, a third tendency can also be discerned in present practice: In the face of economic globalization of the first sort, diagnosed as U.S.- led and one-sidedly serving the interests of large industrial societies, but also with an understandable fear of the power of coercive and sometimes violent sovereign nation-states, some actors in the global justice movement seek what they call autonomy, as a self-organization of societies or communities in a diversity of more local forms. We can see here a complex assemblage of norms and a difficult situation for social and political philosophy: While it is clear that global economic integration is one-sided and cannot in its present form conduce to global justice or to meeting people's economic human rights worldwide, nonetheless the increased intercon- nections facilitated by communications technologies and the new forms of cul- tural creativity and cooperation that these interconnections may enable have a definite positive aspect. And while sovereignty is evidently problematic in per- mitting the disregard of human rights abroad as well as within nation-states, and by contributing to war, violence, and perhaps also empire through the exclusive pursuit of national interests, it seems that a right against intervention in a differ-