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The New Raison d'État as a Problem for Democracy in World Society

Darmstadt University of Technology

What are the consequences of internationalization for the democratic legitimacy of governance? The argument developed in this article claims that de-democratization will take place as long as intergovernmental cooperation mechanisms offer national governments the opportunity to reassert state autonomy vis-a-vis increasingly assertive domestic and transnational societal pressures. Applied to the context of an emerging world society, the concept of raison d'état is employed in order to classify the concurrence of mutual self-commitment and dedemocratization as a predictable result of strategic interaction among national governments. The article argues that in order to overcome this serious, yet surmountable, obstacle to democratic governance beyond the state, the future architecture of global public policy will have to transcend the traditional frame of intergovernmentalism. Reflecting upon institutional designs to overcome the shortcomings of international governance, the author postulates that solutions cannot be based on the territorial-state majority-democracy model. Instead, a de-governmentalized polity for governance beyond the state is suggested which would be composed of functionally differentiated political arenas with different roles, participants and forms of representation.

European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 5, No. 3, 333-363 (1999)
DOI: 10.1177/1354066199005003003


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