Cosmopolitanism, Populism, and Democracy

Abstract

The topic of my paper is the attack on cosmopolitanism ever since the Great Recession. Since 2008, populist reactions to the ill effects of globalisation have sprung up in many Western countries. Their target is the post-WW II political consensus—at least as far as Europe is concerned—of an ‘ever closer union,’ a policy based on 20th century history and a new cosmopolitan sensibility. This sensibility is now under attack—Brexit being only the most visible sign—and calls for a new nationalism have returned to both sides of the Atlantic. For a West-German citizen born after the war, such a focus on the nation was out of the question for all the well-known reasons. In this paper I engage with the critics of cosmopolitanism, exploring both populist and liberal objections to it. As a result, I arrive at a more nuanced position that takes stock of the negative effects of globalization. I suggest that the road forward—at least for the foreseeable future—might well be a division of labour between the European nation states and a cosmopolitan sensibility.