Democracy's Past Transformations, Present Challenges, and Future Prospects

The conceptual field for discussions of democracy has generally been territorially delimited. For ancient democracy, the territory was that of a city-state; for modern democracy, a nation-state. Although since the late eighteenth century modern democracy has been in many ways quite a different set of institutions and practices from ancient democracy and although modern democracy has continually undergone significant change, the notion of delimited territoriality has remained a central assumption. In the early twenty-first century, however, there are many reasons to anticipate a major conceptual shift. The web of transnational connection, the development of transnational structures of decision making (from the European Union to the International Monetary Fund), and the vast disparity of wealth and power among nation-states are calling into question the democracy in them. Although the multicontinental wave of democratizations of the late twentieth century brought about the most geographically extensive implantation of democratic national governments in history, public opinion research in many countries shows significant dissatisfaction with democracy as currently practiced, not just in recently democratized countries but in the more established democracies as well. Some are suggesting that what is needed is the democratization of transnational structures. But can democracy meaningfully exist on a scale beyond the nation-state? On the conceptual level, there are many reasons to be skeptical. Issues include whether the weakness of cross-border solidarities and identities precludes cross-border democracy; whether administrative structures of vast geographic scope can be made genuinely accountable to citizenry; and whether wealthy and powerful states will accede to larger structures constraining their autonomy.