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Struggling for Democracy and Human Rights – Cosmopolitanism in Transitional Democracies

Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, global society has been characterized by a transition from international law, based on treaties among states, to cosmopolitan law, which endows individuals with rights in a way that challenges established forms of sovereignty. Most debates on the challenges posed by cosmopolitanism have presupposed a stable institutional framework in which the principles of sovereignty and democracy coincide, thus obscuring the role played by the state. In this paper, I analyze these challenges from the point of view of weak, transitional democracies in which sovereignty remains in tension with the demands of both democracy and human rights. I then attempt to reformulate Seyla Benhabib’s notion of the “democratic paradox”, based on the tension between universal rights and sovereign self-determination, and focus on the democratic decision made by transitional regimes of whether or not to prosecute past human rights abuses. I argue that the most promising way to mitigate such tensions, as Benhabib suggests for consolidated regimes, is the principle she develops of “democratic iteration,” which is a deliberative, open-ended process, even if, in transitional regimes, it cannot ultimately guarantee either the respect for human rights nor democratic stability. No outcome can be determined in advance.In consolidated democracies, the state has to confront the undemocratic demands of rights that do not have their basis in the state. In transitional democracies, it also has to confront the undemocratic demands of those that do. In consolidated regimes, these demands might lead to discussions about the redefinition of sovereignty; in transitional regimes, these demands might bring about their demise. Deliberation and iteration shed light on the limits to sovereign democracy posed by cosmopolitan norms. Transitional democracies, which cannot take for granted a stable framework, shed light on the limits of deliberation and iteration, that is, the limits of cosmopolitanism itself.