Human Rights as Global Participatory Entitlements

Taking freedom of choice and political participation as the central values of political institutions, this chapter offers a normative foundation for reconstructing the notion of democracy and human rights in a global context. I argue that individual entitlements to take part in decision-making processes at all levels of political deliberation are a fundamental requirement for re-imagining a legitimate institutional framework in a global age. Accordingly, this chapter elaborates and defends an all-inclusive political model, serving two main aims. On the one hand, it intends to offer a consistent stance from which to criticize the current degree of exclusion of international decision-making processes. On the other hand, the suggested consequentialist cosmopolitan model also draws a clear alternative to the phenomenon of international political exclusion through a system that is universalistic and yet multilayered. This vision stems for the most part from a normative exercise of international ideal theory. In this vein, it is critically different from current political reality, it is ‘unrealistic’. And yet, it claims to grasp a certain – still minoritarian – tendency toward progressive democratization of political life which is under way through differing social struggles. In sum, the chapter maintains that human participatory rights within global democracy are no more unrealistic today than national democracy was two hundred years ago, or indeed women’s enfranchisement fifty years ago, if we assume a normative perspective.