Debating Cosmopolitics

Cosmopolitics, the concept of a world politics based on shared democratic values, is in an increasingly fragile state. While Western democracies insist ever more vehemently upon a maintenance of their privileges—freedom of speech, security, wealth—an increasing number of the world’s inhabitants are under threat of poverty, famine and war.

What is needed, the writers suggest, is a deliberate decision to extend the principles and values of democracy to the sphere of international relations. Re...