The Government of the Peoples On the Idea and Principles of Multilateral Democracy

by Cheneval, Francis

• ISBN13: 9780230116993
• ISBN10: 023011699X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-10-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

An exploration of the idea of government of peoples who freely accept liberal democracy and try to realize democracy in their common institutions, the author proposes an integrated "original position" consisting in a hypothetical agreement of liberal democratic peoples and potentially mobile citizens. Following this modified Rawlsian method, the author formulates basic principles of multilateral democracy regarding institutional design, transnational rights, linguistic as well as distributive justice. The book presents a theory of intermediary and incremental spheres of justice. It thus overcomes two false dichotomies haunting the debates on justice: one allowing for a rigidly national or global scope of theory and the other for exclusively people-based or person-based justifications.

Author Biography

Francis Cheneval is the chair in Political Philosophy at the University of Zurich. He studied philosophy, political science, and corporate finance at the Universities of Fribourg, Georgetown, and Zurich. He holds a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Fribourg. Francis Cheneval has been a lecturer and professor in Paris (cole pratique des hautes tudes), Bogot (Universidad de los Andes), Bruxelles (Universit Libre de Bruxelles), and at several Swiss universities. He was a senior associate member of St. Antony's College (University of Oxford) and a lecturer at the European Institute of the University of Geneva. For the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (UNDP, New York) he served as Rapporteur for property rights. He is the author of La Cit des peuples (2005), a history of modern cosmopolitan thought. Francis Cheneval has written numerous publications on democracy, justice, international integration, and the history of political thought.

Table of Contents

Part I. The Idea of Multilateral Democracy * Approaching the Concept of Multilateral Democracy * The Transnational Dimension of Liberal Democracy * Multilateral Democracy from a Republican Point of View * The Conception of the People in Multilateral Democracy * The Rational Case for Multilateralism * Part II. Principles of Multilateral Democracy * Multilateral Democracy: The ‘Original Position’ * Principles of Multilateral Democracy * Final Remarks * Literature