The most revealing comment in this provocative defense of global or cosmopolitan democracy occurs in the volume's final paragraph, where the author declares that “it will not be necessary to employ evil means” in order to achieve desirable steps towards a novel democratic world order (p. 287).

On the one hand, the remark is illustrative of Daniele Archibugi's deep commitment to some of the most admirable moral and political ideals of Western modernity. Archibugi proposes nothing less than a novel universal political order in which ambitious modes of democratic decision making are extended to the hitherto pretty much undemocratic sphere of interstate relations, along with the development of new forms of democratic governance at the global or cosmopolitan level. Much of the book is devoted to laying out the theoretical basis for the author's proposals, responding to criticisms of earlier versions of the argument as explicated in previous publications (oftentimes in alliance with an intellectual comrade-in-arms, David Held), and sketching out its implications for a broad range of complicated practical matters, such as United Nations reform, humanitarian intervention, and recent attempts to export democracy militarily (e.g., the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Archibugi criticizes). His grand vision of a democratic system of global governance builds, as he correctly notes, on a venerable intellectual legacy whose most notable representative was probably Immanuel Kant. It taps into a deeply rooted humanitarian impulse according to which interstate relations and so-called power politics represent little more than an atavistic leftover from more primitive times, as well as an unfortunate compromise of many of modernity's most noble aspirations. Although the mainstream of Western political thought typically considered dreams of a universal polity—and certainly global democracy—utopian, the author makes a powerful case that myriad real-life political and legal trends now suggest the possibility of its realization.

On the other hand, Archibugi's closing remark illuminates the book's Achilles' heel. Probably since Machiavelli and at the latest Max Weber, modern political thought has been alerted to the fundamentally paradoxical character of political action: Morally good intentions and acts can generate counterproductive and even evil political results, while otherwise immoral acts (e.g., the employment of violence) are sometimes necessary if normatively admirable political goals are to be secured. For early realist international relations thinkers like Reinhold Niebuhr or Hans Morgenthau, a proper recognition of such paradoxes should encourage us not to abandon the worthy dream of a global or cosmopolitan order (which they emphatically endorsed), but instead to develop a richer sense of its dilemmas and dangers. Unfortunately, Archibugi's morally and legally attractive ideas pay insufficient attention to such political complexities.

So like many others on the Left today defending far-reaching models of democratic global governance (e.g., Jürgen Habermas), Archibugi repeatedly claims that cosmopolitan democracy requires no construction of a global or world state. In fact, he favorably contrasts his model to competing conceptions of a global confederation or global federal republic by asserting that his can prevent the centralization of violence at the planetary level (pp. 109–10, 122). Final coercive power instead would be “distributed among … several actors and subjected to the judicial control of existing and suitably reformed international institutions” (p. 129). This is deemed realistic because cosmopolitan democracy entails entrusting only a “minimal list” of regulatory tasks to global institutions (pp. 88–89). Sovereignty, the conceptual backbone of the modern state, is repeatedly criticized and ultimately discarded (p. 98). Cosmopolitan democracy jettisons the historically anachronistic concept of sovereignty because it now apparently figures as little more than an ideological cloak for petty tyrants and unilateralist great powers blind to the virtues of global governance.

A closer look at Archibugi's “minimal list” immediately complicates matters, however. Global institutions would be outfitted with legitimate authority to regulate the use of force, strengthen the self-determinations of peoples, secure cultural diversity, and monitor the internal affairs of states in order to ensure fidelity to democracy and human rights, as well as promote the “participatory management of global problems” (pp. 88–89). The author seeks a massive augmentation of global decision-making authority but no corresponding increase in conventional state or statelike enforcement powers at the global level. So what happens when a reformed cosmopolitan UN, for example, seeks to enforce the universal prohibition on torture against the United States or others states that have recently ignored it? How the dispersion of coercive instruments, along with a world court (minus an effective global executive), could ever get the job done remains pretty much unexplained. Global government may or may not be normatively desirable, but to pretend that far-reaching global democracy along the lines drawn here can thrive without substantial elements of modern statehood still seems far-fetched.

The author's hostility to traditional ideas of sovereignty evinces a similar insensitivity to the paradoxes at hand. To be sure, many elements of sovereignty, as conventionally interpreted, are normatively problematic and increasingly unsuited to the dictates of our globalizing planet. The legal doctrine of the equal sovereignty of all states indeed protects tyrants and thugs who terrorize their populations. But it also helps bring about some measure of legal predictability and, indeed, equality in a world riven by power inequalities and injustices, and it provides some minimal checks on great powers that otherwise might run roughshod over weaker states. Even in a reformed and vastly more democratic global order, a properly reformulated notion of sovereignty might conceivably serve to protect weak political communities from strong ones and secure a modicum of legal equality in a world still likely to be plagued by rampant inequality.

Similarly, there are good reasons for being skeptical of the author's attempt to disconnect democracy from state sovereignty. So will cosmopolitan democracy have no need of effective shared enforcement powers to guarantee that privileged as well as vulnerable power interests will be obliged to follow the law? In contrast to what we witness every day at the level of the nation-state, will powerful political and social constituencies always voluntarily heed the will of political majorities whose views and interests may be inconsonant with their own? Albeit attractive, the author's expectations seem to obscure fundamental attributes of our political and social universe.

Archibugi offers a morally appealing vision of cosmopolitan democracy, and thus anyone who has yet to give up on modernity's humanitarian impulses should read this book. At the same time, his ultimately remains a surprisingly apolitical intervention.