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Cosmopolitanism is said by many critics to be arrogant. In emphasizing universal moral principles and granting no fundamental significance to national or other group belonging, it is held to wrongly treat those making non-universalist claims as not authorized to speak, while at the same time implicitly treating those in non-Western societies as not qualified. This text works to address such objections. It does so in part by engaging the work of B.R. Ambedkar, architect of India's 1950 Constitution and revered champion of the country's Dalits (formerly 'untouchables').

This volume brings together prominent political theorists and international relations scholars - including some skeptics of cosmopolitanism - in a far-ranging dialogue about the institutional implications of the approach. The contributors offer penetrating analyses of both continuing and emerging issues around state sovereignty, democratic autonomy and accountability, and the promotion and protection of human rights. They also debate potential reforms of the current global system, from the transformation of cities and states to the creation of some encompassing world government capable of effectively promoting cosmopolitan aims

Intro -- Global Governance,Global Government -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: Global Institutional Visions -- 2. Why a World State Is Inevitable -- 3. How Far Will International Economic Integration Go? -- 4. Why World Government Failed after World War II: A Historical Lesson for Contemporary Efforts -- 5. Is a Global Ethic Possible? -- 6. A Global, Community-Building Language? -- 7. Global Democracy, Self-Determination,and the Possibility of Exit -- 8. Toward Humane Global Governance:Rhetoric, Desire, and Imaginaries -- 9. World State and Global Democracy -- 10. A Madisonian Argument for Strengthening International Human Rights Institutions:Lessons from Europe -- 11. Domination in Global Politics:Reflections on Freedom and An Argument for Incremental Global Change -- 12. Women's Organizations and Global Governance: The Need for Diversity in Global Civil Society -- Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.

Introduction: The Jericho Road 1. - 1. Priorities 7. - 2. Consequences 28. - 3. Moral Reciprocity and Self-Development Rights 47. - 4. The Cosmopolitan Imperative 71. - 5. Democratic Distance 90. - 6. Citizenship, Armed Tyranny and the Democratic Peace 105. - 7. Possibilities 121

This book offers a moral argument for world government, claiming that not only do we have strong obligations to people elsewhere, but that accountable integration among nation-states will help ensure all persons can lead a decent life.

AbstractThis article works to show that machine translation and interpretation technologies can play significant roles in addressing language barriers in democratic polities, including beyond the state. Numerous shared‐language or interpretation models have been proposed to address such barriers, while possible machine models have largely been dismissed in the literature. Yet, online translation is now ubiquitous globally, and governments and international organizations increasingly use machine translation and some interpretation applications. Such technologies, it is shown, can greatly expand information uptake and participation by ordinary citizens in linguistically diverse polities. They also can avoid key fairness and cost concerns faced by other models, or help address them in hybrid configurations, especially in online settings. While speech‐to‐speech applications may never achieve the seamless vernacular "Babel fish" interpretations implied as necessary for some deliberative modes, machine models can be seen as valuable for addressing language barriers within a range of approaches to democracy.

This article engages contributions from Cricket Keating, Natasha Behl, Fred Lee and Jaby Mathew, and Brooke Ackerly's introduction, in a symposium on The Humble Cosmopolitan. It first notes insights taken for the development of a democratic cosmopolitanism oriented to political humility from the work of Indian Dalit-rights champion and constitutional architect B.R. Ambedkar, and from interviews conducted with globally oriented Dalit activists. It then considers Mathew's concerns about accommodation of the moral importance of local democratic practices, and Keating's about the book's emphasis on advancing institutional over attitudinal changes. It addresses issues Behl raises around attention to alternate conceptions of citizenship, e.g., ones which would center Dalit women's voices; and Lee's concerns about whether the model can recognize the importance of subaltern nationalisms. Responses focus on ways in which the model seeks to enable individuals to challenge political arrogance from a position of co-equal citizenship in regional and global institutions.

AbstractCan a concept such as dignity, with roots in hierarchy and exclusion, serve as the constitutional basis for advancing egalitarian justice within a democratic political community? This article highlights some concerns, via engagement with the work of Indian constitutional architect and anti-caste champion B.R. Ambedkar. Ambedkar strongly associates dignity with upper-caste status in Hinduism, and with dispositions to haughtiness or arrogance toward lower-status persons. His analysis has implications for recent treatments which frame dignity as a property which is possessed equally by all persons and is suitable for grounding egalitarian justice within political communities. In such accounts, dignity is shown to entail a defensive disposition and indignation against others as potential rights violators. This introduces tensions between the dignitarian foundation and in some cases very expansive social justice aims. Ambedkar offers an alternative conception of innate worth or worthiness, entailing dispositions to openness and inclusiveness, rendered as fraternity, Deweyan social endosmosis, and ultimately the Buddhist maitri. Such an approach avoids some tensions between dignity/indignation and egalitarian aims, while also offering a way to conceptualize human and non-human animal relations that avoids simply reinscribing status hierarchies.

While the domestic political and legal thought of BR Ambedkar—champion of India's Dalits, shaper of its constitution and frequent critic of Mohandas Gandhi—has gained increasing notoriety, the international dimensions of his work have received relatively little attention. Ambedkar, in fact, staked out a distinctively universalistic approach to democratic citizenship and legitimacy which has important connections to and can inform current cosmopolitan dialogue. He rejected uncritical loyalty to the state, and he criticized presumptions of unity within states, arguing that foreigners' support for the self-determination of an "Indian people" would merely perpetuate caste oppression within the country. The latter argument provides a significant challenge to some recent nationalist and moderate cosmopolitan accounts, which reject some comprehensive universal rights claims, or suprastate political structures to support them, in the name of respecting a state's domestic culture. Furthermore, Ambedkar's thought on promoting democratic unity across linguistically and culturally diverse political units, as well as on pursuing domestic rights protections through suprastate institutions, offer valuable insights for the development of participation and accountability practices beyond the state.