Introduction: three dilemmas of democratic order

In the democratic order, in principle, citizens make political decisions under conditions of freedom and equality. Procedures and rhythms of this decision-making follow from a historically specific spatio-temporal regime constituted in a long-lasting process since the beginnings of the “age of liberalism.” The spatial boundaries of sovereign nation states define a limited territory within the “pluriverse” (Schmitt 1963: 54) of nation states. The territory endows citizens with rights (and duties) of participation in decision-making procedures. But because citizens also are involved in economic activities, they are construing an economic space which transcends the limited political territory. The contradiction between economic boundlessness and political limitedness with regard to time and space of action has already been conceptualized by Adam Smith (Rosanvallon 1988). Today the contradiction between political territoriality and economic (global) space has become a common argument in the discourse on “globalization.”

In addition to formal and procedural dimensions of participation, the equality of citizens is material and substantial. After World War II the substance of material citizens' rights emanated from the collective welfare state in the form of individual claims which within the United Nations system are considered social, economic, and cultural rights (“human rights of second generation”). In the postwar period, they have become prerequisites of the modern democratic discourse and in some cases they claim the dignity of constitutional principles. But recently globalization processes, including the dissolution of political sovereignty on the one hand and the ecological crisis on the other, have undermined claims to substantial rights.