Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T11:18:19.746Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pragmatism and democracy in a global world

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2017

Roberto Frega
Roberto Frega*
Affiliation:
Senior Researcher, French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)
*
*Correspondence to: Roberto Frega, CEMS-EHESS, 54 Boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris, France. Author’s email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article discusses the advantages of a pragmatist theory of global democracy for understanding the political relevance of new phenomena such as the emergence of forms of private authority and transnational movements in tackling with global issues. The article shows in particular that the pragmatist notion of ‘publics’ offers promising insights and proves particularly promising for completing the transition from methodological nationalism to methodological cosmopolitanism that is required to understand new normative practices developing at the global level and to inquire into their conditions of validity. After having presented a basic outline of the pragmatist theory of democracy, I discuss the contribution of pragmatism to the critique of methodological nationalism and proceed then to examine and reject two alternative approaches to global politics – transnational public sphere theory and global representation theory – showing why they fail to overcome methodological nationalism. The last two sections explore private entrepreneurial authority in contexts of global governance and shows that pragmatism succeeds in explaining their political role, while the other two approaches fail.

Keywords

Global DemocracyPragmatismPrivate AuthorityPublic SphereJohn Dewey
Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 720 - 741
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cochran, M., ‘A democratic critique of cosmopolitan democracy: Pragmatism from the bottom-up’, European Journal of International Relations, 8:4 (2002), pp. 517–548 Google Scholar; Bray, D., Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism: Representation and Leadership in Transnational Democracy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Isacoff, J., ‘Why IR needs Deweyan pragmatism’, Perspectives on Political Science, 44:1 (2015), pp. 26–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brunkhorst, H., ‘Globalising democracy without a state: Weak public, strong public, global constitutionalism’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 31:3 (2002), pp. 675–690 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hellmann, G., ‘Beliefs as rules for action: Pragmatism as a theory of thought and action’, International Studies Review, 11:3 (2009), pp. 638–662 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Friedrichs, J. and Kratochwil, F., ‘On acting and knowing: How pragmatism can advance International Relations research and methodology’, International Organization, 63:4 (2009), pp. 701–731 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; H. Bauer and E. Brighi, Pragmatism in International Relations (London: Routledge, 2009); J. Abraham and Y. Abramson, ‘A pragmatist vocation for international relations: the (global) public and its problems’, European Journal of International Relations 23:1 (2015), 26–48; Chandler, D., ‘Democracy unbound? Non-linear politics and the politicization of everyday life’, European Journal of Social Theory, 17:1 (2014), pp. 42–59 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 U. Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), p. 10.

3 Abraham and Abramson, ‘A pragmatist vocation for international relations’.

4 R. Frega, ‘The normativity of democracy’, European Journal of Political Theory (forthcoming 2017); I. Testa, ‘Dewey’s social ontology: a pragmatist alternative to Searle’s approach to social reality’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 25:1 (2016), pp. 40–62.

5 I offer a fuller account of political pragmatism in R. Frega, The Democratic Project, unpublished manuscript.

6 For a justification of this claim, see Frega, ‘The normativity of democracy’.

7 J. Dewey, The Public and its Problems: The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume II (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1927).

8 Bohman takes pragmatism to task to explore the normative consequences of a pluralisation of publics in contemporary politics. See Bohman, J., Democracy across Borders: From Dêmos to Dêmoi (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007)Google Scholar. See also Bohman, J., Participation through publics: Did Dewey answer Lippmann?’, Contemporary Pragmatism, 7:1 (2010)Google Scholar, pp. 49–68 for a discussion of Dewey’s notion of public in the context of post-Westphalian politics.

9 U. Beck and E. Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007).

10 Connolly, W., ‘Democracy and territoriality’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 20:3 (1991), pp. 463–484 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 463).

11 For a recent restatement of this claim, see J. Narayan, The Global Public and its Problems: a Deweyan Examination of Global Democratic Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016).

12 Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision, p. 27.

13 Koskenniemi, M., The Gentle Civilizer of Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Connolly, ‘Democracy and territoriality’, pp. 464–4.

15 For a similar list of features, see Connolly, ‘Democracy and territoriality’.

16 M. Saward, The Representative Claim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Bray, Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism.

17 Bayat, A., Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

18 Hall, R. B. and Biersteker, T. J., The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, Volume XXXV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Fraser, N., ‘Who counts? Dilemmas of justice in a post-Westphalian world’, Antipode, 41 (2010), pp. 281–297 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schaffer, J. K., ‘The boundaries of transnational democracy: Alternatives to the all-affected principle’, Review of International Studies, 38:2 (2012), pp. 321–342 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Abraham and Abramson, ‘A pragmatist vocation for international relations’.

21 Beck and Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe.

22 Brunkhorst, ‘Globalising democracy without a state’.

23 J. Dewey and A. Bentley, Knowing and the Known: The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume XVI (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1949).

24 See, in particular, A. Bentley, The Process of Government, a Study of Social Pressures (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1908), ch. 2. On the connection between Bentley and pragmatism with reference to political theory, see M. LaVaque-Manty, ‘Bentley, Truman, and the study of groups’, Annual Review of Political Science, 9 (2006), pp. 1–18. It is remarkable that referring to his 1908 book, Bentley named Dewey as one of the ‘real writers of this book’, cited in ibid., p. 5.

25 P. Hirst, The Pluralist Theory of the State: Selected Writings of G. D. H. Cole, J. N. Figgis and H. J. Laski (London: Routledge, 2005); S. Ehrlich, Pluralism On and Off Course (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982).

26 Campbell, J., The Community Reconstructs: The Meaning of Pragmatic Social Thought (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992)Google Scholar; J. B. Quandt, From the Small Town to the Great Community: The Social Thought of Progressive Intellectuals (New Brusnwick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970).

27 Lippmann, W., Public Opinion, 1st Free Press paperbacks edn (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1922)Google Scholar.

28 Dewey, The Public and its Problems.

29 The political implications of pragmatist social theory have been clearly examined by H.-J. Schubert, ‘Jenseits von gemeinschaft and gesellschaft: Prozesse der differenzierung und individuierung an sicht der Chicago School of Sociology’, in Hollstein, B. E. A. (ed.), Handlung und Erfahrung (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2011), pp. 131–149 Google Scholar. See also D. Shalin, Pragmatism and Democracy: Studies in History, Social Theory, and Progressive Politics (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2011).

30 See in particular Dewey, J., ‘Lectures in social and political philosophy’, European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 7:2 (2015)Google Scholar. I have provided a lengthy examination of Dewey’s idea of basic goods in R. Frega, ‘John Dewey’s social philosophy: a restatement’, European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 7:1 (2015).

31 See, for example Keck, M. and Sikkink, K., Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

32 Habermas, J., Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

33 Brunkhorst, ‘Globalising democracy without a state’.

34 Brunkhorst, ‘Globalising democracy without a state’, p. 676.

35 Ibid., p. 677.

36 Ibid., p. 687.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid., p. 689.

39 Connolly, , ‘Democracy and territoriality’; P. Taylor, ‘The state as container: Territoriality in the modern world-system’, Progress in Human Geography, 18:2 (1994), pp. 151–162 Google Scholar.

40 F. W. Scharpf, Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); V. A. Schmidt, ‘Democracy and legitimacy in the European Union revisited: Input, output and “throughput”’, Political Studies, 61:1 (2013), pp. 2–22.

41 Schaffer, ‘The boundaries of transnational democracy’.

42 Cutler, A. C., Private Power and Global Authority: Transnational Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy, Volume XC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hall and Biersteker, The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance.

43 Held, D., Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

44 Saward, The Representative Claim; Bray, Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism.

45 Fraser, N., Transnationalizing the Public Sphere (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

46 Fraser, N., ‘Transnationalizing the public sphere: On the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion in a post-Westphalian world’, Theory, Culture & Society, 24:4 (2007), pp. 7–30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Fraser, Transnationalizing the Public Sphere, p. 14.

48 Ibid., p. 18.

49 Ibid., p. 31.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid., p. 33.

52 Ibid., p. 153.

53 Saward, The Representative Claim.

54 Bray, Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism.

55 Saward, The Representative Claim, p. 4.

56 Ibid., p. 8.

57 Zürn, M., Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaates: Globalisierung und Denationalisierung als Chance (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998)Google Scholar.

58 Krisch, N., Beyond Constitutionalism: The Pluralist Structure of Postnational Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Abbott, K. and Snidal, D., ‘Hard and soft law in international governance’, International Organization, 54:3 (2000), pp. 421–456 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Hall and Biersteker, The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance.

61 See, for example, Vogel, D., ‘The private regulation of global corporate conduct achievements and limitations’, Business and Society, 49:1 (2010), pp. 68–87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Green, J., Rethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in Global Environmental Governance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014)Google Scholar. For a more positive assessment of achievements, see Bernstein, S. and Cashore, B., ‘Can non-state global governance be legitimate? An analytical framework’, Regulation & Governance, 1:4 (2007), pp. 347–371 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Russell, A., Open Standards and the Digital Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Ibid., p. 27.

64 I’m grateful to an anonymous reviewer for reminding me of the national origin of standard setting bodies.

65 Berstein and Cashore, ‘Can non-state global governance be legitimate?’, p. 349.

66 Berstein and Cashore, ‘Can non-state global governance be legitimate?’.

67 See Cashore, B. W., Auld, G., Newsom, and D., Governing through Markets: Forest Certification and the Emergence of Non-State Authority (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

68 For an overview, see Biersteker, Hall and, The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance and W. Mattli and N. Woods, The Politics of Global Regulation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)Google Scholar. See also Vogel, D., ‘Private global business regulation’, Annual Review of Political Science, 11 (2008), pp. 261–282 CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a very informative review of the field.

69 Green, Rethinking Private Authority.

70 Krisch, Beyond Constitutionalism.

71 On this point, see Bernstein and Cashore, ‘Can non-state global governance be legitimate?’.