'Lean citizenship': The fading away of the political in transnational democracy

This article critically examines scenarios of global democracy which aim at a political 'catching up' with globalization by shifting the political arena away from the nation-state to the multiple networks of a global civil society. It will refer to the controversies between advocates of cosmopolitan democracy and their communitarian critics. The deficit of this debate will be identified in its concentration on the status of universal moral principles and its neglect of the practical ('Praxis') character of politics. More specifically, a discussion of proposals that try to solve the identity problem of democracy by substituting transnational and global civil associations for particular political communities will show how they tend to reduce political citizenship to its moral and legal dimensions. The specific political rationality of democracy as expressed in plurality, judgement and participation falls by the wayside. The author will conclude that political democracy may do without a clearly defined sovereign 'we' but not without a distinct common world as a necessary basis for political action.