ABSTRACT
In order to contribute to the understanding of the possible futures of democracy in globalization, we analyze less institutional changes than changes in the subjectivities of citizens in liberal globalization characterized, among other things, by the emergence of “citizen-consumers” (Habermas) on one side and on the other side of an incessant demand for democracy. In the globalized world we have to consider not only different and connected political levels (from global to local) but also the importance of traditions and continuities that link the contemporary situation to the past dominated by the national. The experience that the globalized world is not democratic as it pretends to be leaves the future of democracies open. Often hybrid forms of democracy emerge (global-local, governance-democracy). We also observe multiple and very different political forms of reappropriation of political life at the local level, i.e., at the antipodes of (world) governance and against it, focusing on citizenship, proximity, and the power to decide for oneself the fate of the city: the foundations of democracy.
