| Chapter 1: | The Domestic Analogy |
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as well: one’s gaze become sharper when one regards institutions as an implementation of general principles. As Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson pointed out, this approach involves
a process in which deliberators move back and forth between general principles and considered judgments about particular circumstances, successively modifying each in light of an appraisal of the other. In our use of the method, the principles operate in the middle range of abstraction, between foundational principles and institutional rules; and the judgments apply as much to particular decisions and policies as to basic structures of society.17
My second purpose in this book is to critically examine various proposals for a democratic world order. The idea of the right of citizens to vote on an equal basis is seen by many political scientists today as an antiquated notion. In contemporary society, after all, people are influenced not by domestic conditions alone but also and as much by what happens in the rest of the world. The right to vote should accordingly match the extent to which one is affected by a given decision, and one ought to be able to vote not only in one’s country of residence but also in other countries that exert influence over one’s life. Furthermore, researchers must appreciate that not everyone is equally interested in politics. A second qualification for enjoying the right to vote, therefore, ought to be how intensively engaged one is in different questions. If these new principles of affectedness and intensity are combined, the argument goes, additional models for global governance can be devised—models that offer better prospects than the old idea of equal suffrage does.
In the second part of the book, I look at these various models more closely. I further ask whether global democracy, as I understand it, is a universal value or whether instead it amounts to just another cover for Western hegemony. And finally, I return to the phenomenon that prompted pragmatists to reconsider the question of accountability: corruption and the abuse of power in world politics.