Democracy beyond the nation-state - What is there ?

Prologue

In the last few weeks I kept wondering quite a bit about on the possibilty of democratic governance beyond nation-states. In the current environment your passport tells you where you can vote. But what if the decisions that shape your life—your climate, your data, your economic future—are made by governments you can't vote for? This is a paradox of modern governance approaches and in this blog post I decide to dive into different models, federations, conferations and cosmopolitan democracy that attempt to solve it.

Three people, one common issue

We are in the ferry's lounge on the ferry from Barcelona to Tunis. It is 2 am in the morning, so the lounge is nearly empty — just Amara, the humming coffee machine, and two other insomniacs she hasn't noticed yet.

Amara spreads her research across two tables: water level charts from the Medjerda basin, extraction data from three countries, meeting notes from Barcelona that led nowhere. European agricultural policies, Libyan water extraction, and Algerian dam construction all determine whether her region has sustainable water—yet she can vote in none of these jurisdictions.

Two tables away its Sofia, a seasoned member of the EU commision. She tries to focus on her own Tunisia briefing notes. But she keeps glancing at Amara's charts—the basin maps, the extraction data, the obvious frustration. She recognizes that frustration.

Near the window, Adam curses quietly at his laptop. Three different regulatory frameworks, three incompatible requirements, one AI model. He reaches for coffee and notices the two women surrounded by governance documents. He's not the only one having jurisdiction problems tonight.

Amara's confederal trap

Amara has spent years studying transboundary water governance, trying to understand why the system fails her region. From those studies she learns that shared water resources are governed through a confederation — a loose association of sovereign states that cooperate voluntarily. The United Nations water conventions, Mediterranean water partnerships, bilateral treaties: all confederations.

In a confederation, member states keep their independence but sign treaties to act together on specific topics. The key institutional feature is that states retain full sovereignty—decisions require consensus, there are no binding enforcement mechanisms, and citizens participate only through their national governments.

Water governance conferences illustrate this: neighboring countries produce agreements with no binding enforcement mechanisms. Summits produce commitments, countries pursue national interests, aquifers continue depleting—and communities like Amara's keep losing water. The Mediterranean water framework set cooperative targets, but when countries exceed extraction limits, there are no penalties beyond diplomatic complaints.

Amara reviews here notes. Confederations preserve sovereignty above all—unanimous voting, withdrawal rights, no binding authority. They're functionally minimal, doing only what treaties explicitly allow. States remain equal sovereigns with no hierarchy above them. And citizens like her? They participate only through national governments, never directly.

Worse from a democratic perspective, confederate treaties lack binding normative foundations. They define narrow goals—mutual defense, trade coordination—without establishing universal rights. When principles appear, like the UN Declaration of Human Rights, they're aspirational, weakly enforced. Sovereignty always trumps shared values—or survival.

Weak enforcement, minimal democratic participation, fragmented governance. This is why she watches the ocean rise while having no democratic recourse.

Amara sighs, reorganizing her charts for the third time. She's stuck, and she knows it.

The federal model—and Sofia's experience

Sofia has been sitting two tables away, trying to work on her own briefing notes for the Tunisia meetings. But she keeps glancing at Amara's charts—the basin maps, the extraction data, the obvious frustration in how Amara reorganizes the same papers repeatedly.

She recognizes that frustration. She's felt it in every EU climate negotiation.

"Transboundary water governance?" Sofia asks, moving to the adjacent table.

Amara looks up, surprised someone knows what she's looking at. "The kind that doesn't work. You're familiar with it?"

"Different domain, same problem," Sofia says. "Twenty-seven countries, climate policy, unanimous consent required. I work for the EU."

What is a federation?

What Sofia knows from Brussels is that the EU represents the world's most ambitious attempt at federal governance beyond the nation-state. A federation differs fundamentally from confederation: it creates binding supranational authority. Germany, the United States, and the EU all share this structure — multiple levels of government with the higher level having enforcement power.

In a federation, federal law supersedes member state law. There's a shared constitution, binding courts, and citizens vote in both national and federal elections. The EU demonstrates this: European regulations become law across all member states, the European Court of Justice can overrule national courts, and citizens elect the European Parliament directly.

Sofia's daily work operates within this federal structure: EU climate regulations have legal force, the Emissions Trading System binds all members, and enforcement mechanisms exist that confederations lack. Unlike climate conferences where Amara watches countries make voluntary pledges, Sofia works in a system where decisions become binding law.

"The difference is hierarchy," Sofia explains. "Federal law supersedes member state law. We have territorial subsidiarity—decisions at appropriate levels, but within nested territories. Dual legitimacy—citizens vote at both national and EU levels. And constitutional unity: shared legal framework, binding courts."

Federations also embody strong normative foundations, she notes. Federal constitutions establish universal rights for all citizens—Germany's Basic Law, the US Bill of Rights. They create redistribution mechanisms ensuring minimum standards across regions. They distinguish sharply between insiders with full rights and outsiders.

This federal structure gives Sofia tools Amara lacks: binding regulations, enforcement mechanisms, supranational courts, and democratic participation in institutions that wield real power.

Sofia's reality: federal power and federal gridlock

The EU might have binding power, but that doesn't mean it works smoothly.

Twenty-seven countries, twenty-seven veto points. Even among democracies with similar values and roughly comparable economic systems, consensus proves extraordinarily difficult. Climate policy requires balancing Polish coal interests, German industrial concerns, French nuclear preferences, and Nordic renewable ambitions—all within a single legal framework.

The federal model works within relatively bounded cultural and political contexts. The EU, operating among twenty-seven relatively similar states, already faces severe difficulties achieving consensus and maintaining democratic legitimacy. Sofia sees this daily: the formal power exists, but practical politics create gridlock.

The scale problem

After Sofia's explanations, Amara understands the challenge: scaling federal governance to 198 countries with fundamentally incompatible political systems presents a different magnitude of problem. The world includes liberal democracies, authoritarian states, theocracies, and hybrid regimes. Could China and the US share a constitution? Would Russia and the EU accept the same legal framework? Could India and Pakistan agree on a federal judiciary?

Multiplying the EU's complexity by seven—and adding nuclear weapons and fundamental ideological conflicts—suggests the obstacles to world federalism are not merely practical but structural. The federal model works within culturally relatively homogeneous boundaries. But the world exceeds those boundaries substantially.

"So we're stuck choosing between systems that both fail," Amara says bitterly.

"Three jurisdictions, one AI model, zero coordination." Adam's voice carries from the window table. The conversation between Sofia and Amara has grown increasingly animated. Adam has been listening from the window table—he can't help it. The problems they're describing feel painfully familiar. Finally, he has to join in. "I know exactly how stuck you are."

Sofia and Amara exchange glances, then Sofia calls over: "You work in IT?"

"Try to." Adam walks over with his laptop. "Adam. Malta-based, perpetually confused about which rules to listen to. You're water and climate?"

"And EU gridlock," Sofia adds. "Apparently we're all having the same terrible night."

Over yet another coffee, Adam joins their conversation. He's been facing similar frustrations with digital governance—but from a different angle.

Cosmopolitan democracy: Overlapping networks

"Your models assume governance happens in territorial boxes," Adam says. "But consider my work on AI models: European regulators want to audit it. American platforms host it. Yet other authorities monitor it. Meanwhile, the open-source community that actually built the underlying framework has its own governance processes—completely separate from any government."

He continues: "Then there's the data. It flows across jurisdictions instantly. Some is governed by GDPR in Europe, some by different rules in California, some by Chinese data sovereignty laws, and some exists in regulatory grey zones. Multiple authorities, overlapping jurisdictions, no clear hierarchy."

Amara recognizes the pattern: "That's exactly what I experience with climate. Emissions come from everywhere, impacts hit everywhere, and governance is fragmented across states, corporations, NGOs, cities—all with different authorities that overlap and intersect."

Sofia nods: "And in the EU, we see this even within our federal structure. Climate policy involves the Commission, member states, regional governments, cities, private companies, and civil society organizations—all with different roles and authorities that don't fit neatly into a hierarchy."

Amara leans back, exhausted. "So we're stuck. Voluntary cooperation that fails, or binding authority that can't scale. Is there even a third option?"

Sofia stares at her cold coffee, thinking. "I was in a seminar by some political theorist in Brussels once ...David Held. Now that I think about it, he wrote about exactly this problem back in the 90s. The whole argument was that neither confederation nor federation works for genuinely transnational challenges."

"And his solution?" Adam asks.

"Cosmopolitan democracy. Multiple overlapping networks of authority instead of territorial hierarchies."

Adam directly googles the terms on his laptop and finds a relevant source: a 1995 book chapter on democratic governance beyond the nation-state. "Here. He argues for democratic institutions that match how power actually works— across borders, in networks, at multiple levels simultaneously...That's exactly what we've been describing."

"Let me send you both the reference," Adam says, sharing the document. "Doesn't look like we are going to sleep tonight anyways..." They huddle around Adam's laptop and start to dig. Sofia translates the academic jargon, Adam googles unfamiliar terms, Amara scribble notes on her water charts. Over the next few hours, they work through Held's framework together.

The Institutional Design: How do you govern overlapping networks?

Helds network perspective differs fundamentally from both confederation and federation. Confederations assume states are the primary actors, cooperating voluntarily. Federations assume nested territorial hierarchies with clear authority levels. But reality—as Amara, Sofia, and Adam all experience—operates through overlapping functional networks that don't respect these boundaries.

As our three night owls work through Held's framework together two core institutional mechanisms emerge...

Institutional Principle 1 - Multi-level democratic law-making

The first principle breaks the assumption that only national governments make binding laws. Instead, democratic law-making happens at every level where power operates—local, national, regional, and global. Courts exist at each level, and higher courts can check lower ones when rights are violated.

Think of it as governance that matches reality: when a water basin crosses three borders, there's a basin-level authority with democratic accountability. When AI systems operate globally, there's a global-level framework with enforceable rights. Power is shared across multiple scales, not trapped in territorial boxes.

For Adam, this solves his regulatory gap problem directly—rules would exist at every level where his AI systems operate, preventing the jurisdiction shopping that currently plagues digital governance.

Institutional Principle 2 - Nested citizenship

"The second principle is even more radical," Sofia says, scrolling down. "Citizenship isn't limited to your nation-state. You can be a citizen in multiple overlapping communities—city, region, country, and also transnational bodies that affect your life."

Adam looks up. "So I'd have democratic rights wherever my AI systems are governed? Not just Malta, but also in the EU digital authority, the global AI standards body?"

"And I'd be a citizen of the climate system itself," Amara adds, seeing it. "Not just voting in Tunisia, but having democratic standing in the institutions that govern the emissions drowning my region."

"Your political voice follows the actual sources of power that shape your world," Sofia summarizes. "Not just where you were born."

For Adam, this means recognized political standing in the digital governance networks that currently treat him as either a passive subject or an ungoverned actor.

"But wait," Adam says, looking up from the screen. "These mechanisms—multi-level law-making, nested citizenship—they're just procedures. Who decides what these institutions actually do? What stops a cosmopolitan climate authority from imposing European environmental standards on Tunisia's development? Or global AI regulations that serve Silicon Valley interests?"

Amara nods sharply. "True. The UN has mechanisms. The problem isn't structure alone but also whose values get encoded in the system."

Sofia pauses. "Held anticipated this. The framework rests on normative foundations. Look—five principles."

They lean over Adam's laptop, reading in silence. As the night wears on, each gravitates to different parts.

The Normative Foundation: Rights, not just rules

Amara focuses on global civic commitment: Climate finance for vulnerable populations isn't charity—it's democratic obligation ensuring equal political agency. High emitters don't choose to help; they're constitutionally required to ensure she has standing.

"This changes everything," she says. "I'm not asking permission. I have standing."

Adam zeroes in on universal constitutional principles: No mass surveillance. No algorithmic manipulation. No discriminatory systems. These aren't policy preferences—they're red lines no actor can cross.

"Boundaries," he murmurs. "Actual boundaries on power."

Sofia sees the bigger architecture. Cosmopolitan law establishes universal rights everywhere—health, welfare, civic participation, climate stability. Not diplomatic aspirations but legally enforceable across all jurisdictions.

Cosmopolitan social justice demands economic activity support democratic equality. High emitters bear greater climate responsibilities; digital monopolies that concentrate power violate the principle directly.

Non-coercive relations govern disputes through courts and mediation, collective force only as last resort.

"Both of you gain what you lacked," Sofia observes. "Democratic voice that follows actual power, not just territory."

They sit in silence for a while moment, absorbing the implications. Adam closes his laptop. Amara stacks her charts. Sofia checks the time—almost dawn. Without discussion, they gather their things and head to the deck.

Epilogue

Dawn breaks over the Mediterranean as the ferry approaches Tunis harbor. At the railing, exhausted, they watch the city emerge from darkness.

"So," Adam says quietly. "Did we just solve global governance, or have we been talking in circles for six hours?"

Amara laughs tiredly. "Held's framework is elegant. But implementing it?" She gestures at the harbor—container ships, border controls, national flags. "The world still runs on sovereignty and power. Cosmopolitan democracy assumes actors will accept constitutional limits. Will they?"

"The EU took fifty years to build what we have," Sofia says. "And we're still gridlocked. Scaling this globally..." She doesn't finish.

They exchange phone numbers and emails anyway. Adam promises to send his digital governance notes. Amara mentions a water governance conference in three months. Sofia says she'll look for Held's book in Brussels.

"Feverdream or framework?" Adam asks as they gather their bags.

"Maybe both," Amara says. "But at least now we have language for what's broken. And maybe—" she glances at her water charts, then at them— "maybe that's where change starts."

The ferry docks. They walk off into separate directions, carrying the same questions.

References

• Held, David. "Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance." Stanford University Press, 1995.