Towards a Democratic Theory of the World-System: Democracy, Territoriality, and Transnationalization

Abstract

A concern for the possible futures of the modern world-system has been a recurrent theme of world-systems analysis. There has, however, been relatively little effort to think about these futures in terms of democratic theory. In this article, I will explore some of the issues that need to be tackled to take radical and cosmopolitan questions of democracy better into account in world-systems analysis. In particular, I will point out some problems that need to be confronted in the collective process of locating and making visible the politics of “nonpolitical” spaces, such as the ones constituted by transnational business communities and their corporate bureaucracies.