The people and the globe: Popular sovereignty between globalizing present and cosmopolitan future

In the context of globalization the central categories of democratic theory need to be reexamined. This dissertation analyzes the impact of globalization on one such category, namely, the concept of popular sovereignty. After an introduction, Chapter One traces the historical trajectories of the concept from its origins to the present day. The body of the dissertation then examines the challenges of globalization to three models of popular sovereignty: Chapter Three analyzes the republican model of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Chapter Four discusses the deliberative model of Jurgen Habermas.;I argue that while states remain important actors in the context of globalization, the historical image of the sovereign state as independent from external authority is increasingly difficult to maintain. Structures of transnational authority and influence have emerged, giving rise to questions of democratic legitimacy. I argue the concept of popular sovereignty must be rethought beyond the scope of the nation-state if processes of globalization are to continue without a corresponding loss of the capacity for legitimate self-government.;Toward that end, the dissertation examines two contemporary responses to the challenges of globalization: Chapter Five engages with Jurgen Habermas's democratic regionalism; and Chapter Six presents a critique of David Held's cosmopolitan democracy. I argue that both theorists encounter a tension between the particular contexts of democratic legitimacy and the universalism demanded of a transnational or even global political culture. I call this tension the problem of cosmopolitan founding, and I argue it represents a significant conceptual obstacle to the legitimate constitution of a cosmopolitan order that remains under-theorized. Thus, the dissertation argues transnational constitutive processes must become central to the project of cosmopolitan theorizing, and Chapter Seven concludes by offering a notion of transnational popular sovereignty as a conceptual tool for theorizing the constitution of democratic global governance. The concept of transnational popular sovereignty thus represents the constitutive politics between globalizing present and cosmopolitan future.