ABSTRACT
To schedule a roundtable on “democracy and globalization” at a conference on new challenges to democracy is to run the risk of succumbing to what I call the “domestic analogy.” This analogy involves the assumption that democracy flourishes best – or perhaps only in the context of a national state that has procedures for reflecting the will of its people and protecting their rights. Some might argue that the domestic analogy is a measuring stick, a framework for judging practices whereby communities govern themselves, but here I want to elaborate on the conclusion that it is a highly misleading analogy, that it is deceptive as a measuring stick and is best avoided if the dynamics of globalization are as powerful and pervasive as they seem to be at this moment in history. Put more strongly, the domestic analogy inhibits our imaginations and subverts our inquiries if globalizing processes serve as our analytic framework. It blinds us, undermines our creativity, and confounds our dialogues by preventing us from seeing virtues in political mechanisms and processes that do not conform to the domestic procedures of democratic governments. In short, democracy in a globalizing world is sharply different from democracy in a national or local world, and it is a mistake to assess the former from the perspective of the latter.
