A Study on Change in the Working Principle of National Democracy and Search for the Alternative Principle of Global Democracy

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore how democracy in global scope as well as in national scope can be alternatively developed in relation to globalization. Here I focus on the alternative principle or direction of new reconstruction of democracy rather than a concrete institutional configuration in relation to global democracy. Based on the perception that the current national democracy is confronted with a new challenge of whether it will be dis-empowered by the current neo-liberal globalization process or it will be extended to be able to regulate it by a new principle of global democracy, I firstly discuss over the concept of democracy and underline three types of limit as well as discord of representative democracy, the modern system of nation state. These limits and discords are also what intensify national democracy. Thereafter I examine how the discord surrounding the limit has evolved in the process of socio-political change in modern time, and how, as a result, composition of contents of democracy has progressed. I then proceed to analyze what kinds of challenge the internal composition of national democracy would face in the process of globalization and democratization. Lastly, based on the points raised earlier, I suggest new tasks of democracy in relation to globalization, and I shall do so in accordance with both global and local aspect.