inXuenced by Habermas in numerous ways, can be placed under this rubric as
well. 4 Held argues that ‘‘deliberative and decision-making centers beyond
national territories are [to be] appropriately situated when those signiWcantly
aVected by a public matter constitute a cross-border or transnational group-
ing, when ‘lower’ [local or national] levels of decision-making cannot manage
and discharge satisfactorily transnational... policy questions, or when the
principle of democratic legitimacy can only be properly redeemed in a
transnational context’’ (Held 1998 , 22 – 3 ). He immediately links the call for
novel modes of formal global government to the necessity of far-reaching
social democratic social and economic reforms (Held 1995 , 239 – 66 ). Last but
by no means least, Habermas himself has recently taken on the role of an
outspoken defender of relatively powerful forms of supranational European
governance, and he has struggled to show why his discourse theory of dem-
ocracy can help overcome the tired divisions between skeptics and defenders
of the European Union. Only a refurbished European Union committed to the
ideals of deliberative democracy, the argument goes, oVers Europeans a way to
preserve democracy and the welfare state. Habermas conveniently downplays
some of the distinctive features of European regionalization (Lupel 2004 ), in
part because he tends to interpret the European Union as part of a more
general institutional trend towards more ambitious forms of transnational
deliberative democracy (Habemas 2001 a, 2001 b, 2004 ).
Yet critical theorists also oVer models of transnational deliberative dem-
ocracy which mirror Habermas’ more cautious considerations about delib-
erative democracy. Although John Dryzek considers himself a left critic of
many strands of Habermasian theory, 5 his work reproduces Habermas’ own
occasional suggestion that the ‘‘commanding heights’’ (e.g. existing centers of
decision-making, as well as novel sites as conceived by ambitious models of
transnational democracy) of power are unlikely to be rendered eVectively
subordinated to communicative power. Dryzek oVers aXattering account
of transnational civil society as a site for spontaneous unconstrained
4 The inXuence is reciprocal, since Habermas refers favorably to Held’s ideas on occasion. There
are, however, normative and programmatic diVerences between the two approaches.
5 He worries that Habermasian critical theory has made too many concessions to liberal constitu-
tionalism (Dryzek 2000 , 8 – 20 , 115 – 16 ). Dryzek is right to emphasize the many ways in which
capitalism potentially restrains global institutional decision-making. He is also right to worry that
some critical theorists tend to downplay those restraints. However, he seems unduly skeptical of the
‘‘reformist’’ possibility that far-reaching institutional reforms at the global level (for example, a
dramatically strengthened UN) might threaten the social and economic status quo and thereby
contribute to its radical transformation.
92 william e. scheuerman