So what would a political community based on the cosmopolitan rationale look like? A cosmopolitan political community must be a Rechtsstaat (a state ruled by law) in the full sense of the word. This means that the state declares its law transparently and publicly, so as to enable people to plan and guide their lives; that all are equal before the law, so as to protect
individuals from invidious discrimination; and that the power of the state is limited, so as to create room for and respect the universal right to individual autonomy. (For a fuller discussion of the concept of Rechtsstaat see the German case study.) This means that a cosmopolitan political community cannot be a pure democracy, as no power can override individuals’ universal right to autonomy. That said, a cosmopolitan political community must be democratic. A person does not have the right to have a say over all things that affect her. An attractive potential partner’s decision to turn down a marriage proposal will affect the snubbed person, but the latter has no right to partake in the other person’s decision. She does, however, have the right to participate in all collective decisions that affect her ability to exercise her autonomy.
Thus, a cosmopolitan political community must allow all individuals who are affected by its decisions to have an equal say over these collective decisions, i.e. the right to participate in the political process derives from the fact that collective decisions affect individuals’ right to self-determination (Caney 2005: 158). Democracy hence rests, in the cosmopolitan perspective, on the notion of universal individual autonomy and equality, not on the notion that a nation has the right to express its collective will (Held 1995: 71, 145-158). This also means that democracy, to the extent that we live in ‘overlapping communities of fate’, to use Held’s famous phrase, should be transnational (Held 2000: 424; compare Kant above). This follows from the fact that a democratic process must be delineated by those whom the decisions affect - not by any particular community.
Communal borders and/or memberships are morally arbitrary from the cosmopolitan perspective, as it is individuals’ ability to exercise autonomy that forms the basis for rights (Barry 1999: 53; Pogge 1994: 107). The fact that all individuals are entitled to equal concern on this basis, moreover, has very important and wide-ranging implications for the concept of national sovereignty. A cosmopolitan political community cannot invoke the notion of national sovereignty to disadvantage certain (equally entitled) individuals due to their nationality, as this would violate the impartiality criterion and thereby the idea that all individuals have a right to equal concern qua persons. This means that national sovereignty must be in line with the equal concern allocated to citizens and non-citizens alike (Cole 2000: 184-185; Habermas 1994: 22-25; Beitz 1991; McCarthy 1999; Fine 2002: 144-145). A national populace can neither ignore the individual rights of minorities within the nation, nor the individual rights of non-citizens. Or to put it in more philosophical terms: to discriminate
against individuals on the grounds of membership violates the impartiality criterion, and thereby non-citizens’ equal universal right to individual autonomy. This means that individuals’ rights trump nations’ rights in a cosmopolitan political community (Cole 2000: 184-185; Habermas 1994: 22-25; Beitz 1991; McCarthy 1999).
The notion of a cosmopolitan political community, where universal individual rights trump the right to communal sovereignty, only becomes fully comprehensible in light of the cosmopolitan position on culture. Culture is seen as important in that it constitutes a necessary background, or context, from which individuals exercise their autonomy; human beings are cultural beings and cannot make sense of the world outside some social or cultural context. This does not mean, however, that individuals are dependent on a particular culture. Individuals’ intrinsic identities vary within nations, and some key elements of certain members’ identities can stretch over national borders and connect them to people with whom they share very little else.
Culture, from the cosmopolitan perspective, is like the air we breathe: we cannot live without it, but it is all round us. This means that there is no such thing as a particular German culture that people in Germany depend on for their ability to exercise autonomy (Hall 2002: 26-27; Held 2002c: 52-53). No more than there is such a thing as German oxygen that Germans need to survive. Germans need both oxygen and culture, but both, the culture and oxygen that Germans breathe are simply floating all around them, and cannot be classified as German in any meaningful sense. This perception of culture is perhaps best captured by Waldron:
W e are m ade by our lan gu ages, our literature, our cultures, our sc ien ce, our religion s, our civ iliza tio n - and these are human en tities that g o far b eyond national boundaries and e x is t, i f they e x ist anyw here, sim p ly in th e w o rld . (W aldron 1995: 103 em phasis in original)
This means that culture is recognised as essential to human beings, but culture is not a cohesive or all-encompassing entity. It follows from this that it is not necessary, and indeed impossible, to protect particular cultures, or particular communities based on a shared culture.
The ability and key to moral and social co-operation is instead to be found in all individuals’ ability for autonomy and the mutual recognition of the same; it is a defining feature of
cosmopolitanism that the ability to co-operate morally, socially and politically does not depend on particular cultures or communities (Heater 1990). As Williams puts it:
Kant regards liberty as constraint under external la w that perm its us to pursue happiness in our o w n w a y w ithout fear for our liv e s and arbitrary arrest. T he civil con d ition s under w hich this occurs are tied neither to any particular national state nor to any particular cultural conditions. (W illia m s 2003: 9 9 )
This means that both the notion of culture and the notion of justice transcend specific communities, i.e. Moralitat transcends Sittlichkeit (Habermas 1996a: 513, see below for a further discussion of these concepts). This specific perception of culture is pivotal, since it explains both how universal moral deliberation is possible and why communal sovereignty cannot be defended on the grounds that individuals depend on the existence of particular cultures.
In sum, the basic structure of the cosmopolitan community is embodied in the democratic
Rechtsstaat. A democratic Rechtsstaat embodies the cosmopolitan rationale in three related ways. One, it provides all individuals with the right to equality before the law; two, it entitles all individuals to an individual sphere that the state or other individuals cannot encroach upon; and three, it gives all individuals an equal say in the collective decisions that affect their ability to govern their lives. These features must, moreover, be applied universally from a cosmopolitan perspective and thus cover citizens as well as non-citizens (Linklater 1998: 189-193; Held 1995: 145-156). Only a democratic Rechtsstaat that respects the equal rights of all individuals would pass the impartiality criterion or be a community based on principles that all individuals could agree to (Held 1995: 147-148, 160).