The Reform of the UN and Cosmopolitan Democracy: A Critical Review

With the end of the Cold War has come a new generation of proposals aiming to reform the existing international organizations and even to create some new ones. This article critically assesses these proposals, subdividing them into: (i) projects to institute a UN Second Assembly with members elected by `world citizens' rather than nominated by national governments; (ii) prospective reforms of the International Court of Justice to extend its functions beyond the role of arbitration between states; and (iii) proposals to restrict the use of the veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council. These proposals are an attempt to upgrade international democracy and are here considered in the light of the systems of states theory. On the one hand, these proposals intend to go beyond the current confederal structure of the UN in aiming at direct participation of the peoples in world affairs. On the other hand, they reject the idea of developing a federal state on a world scale. They suggest a third and largely unexplored model of international organization which - to borrow a term employed by Immanuel Kant - is here named cosmopolitan democracy.