Is Democracy Possible, Part II: Cosmopolitan Ideas and the Problem of Global Political Community

All communities are imagined. The ‘global community’ is no exception to that rule. But imagination turns into a tangible, potent, effective integrating force when aided by socially produced and socially sustained institutions of collective self-identification and self-government, as it was in the case of modern nations wedded for better or worse and till death-dothem-part to modern sovereign states. As far as the imagined global community is concerned, such an institutional network (woven from global agencies of democratic control, a globally binding legal system and globally upheld ethical principles) is largely absent... Our consolation, though (the only consolation available, but also– let me add – the only one humankind needs when falling on dark times), is the fact ‘history is still with us and can be made’ (Bauman 2002).