Volume 20, 2004
World-System Analysis: Contemporary Research and Directions
Christopher Chase-Dunn, Terry Boswell
Pages 15-29
Global Democracy
A World-Systems Perspective
This essay is on the concept of global democracy. We discuss the historical development of the concept of democracy and the material bases for the possible emergence of a democratic and collectively rational global commonwealth in the future. We confront the problem of contested meanings of democracy, the roots of the modern concept in the European Enlightenment, the problem of Eurocentrism in the formulation of a global philosophy of democracy, the relationship between capitalist globalization and antisystemic movements and the need for globalization from below.