communication, sharply contrasting it with the profound limitations on
deliberation found in the formal political institutions of the capitalist state,
where the dictates of globalizing capitalism truncate meaningful possibilities
for deliberation (Dryzek 2000 , 13 ). This contrast leads Dryzek to favor global
civil society as the central and perhaps exclusive site for transnational dem-
ocratization. In contrast to other theorists of deliberative civil society who
have emphasized the necessity of a ‘‘dualistic’’ strategy linking the democra-
tization of civil society to democratic reforms of the formal apparatus of
government, 6 Dryzek tends to emphasize the threat of cooptation posed by
attempts to directly exercise, rather than merely inXuence, formal institutions
(Dryzek 2000 , 107 – 14 ). In a similar vein, Jim Bohman asserts that ‘‘globaliza-
tion processes are too large and complex, escaping not only the boundaries of
the nation-state, but ofallstate-like institutions and their mode of exercising
power’’ (Bohman 1999 a, 508 ; emphasis added). In light of the necessary
limitations ofanystate-centered strategy for democracy at the global level,
Bohman tends to emphasize the virtues of a democratization strategy that
extends the inXuence of emerging global deliberative public spheres to the
existing potpourri of power holders presently operating at the global level.
Although much can be said in favor of this approach, the question of the
relationship between such inXuence and the actual exercise of power by the
commanding heights of global authority still remains somewhat unclear.
Bohman, in some contrast to Dryzek, appears to hold out the possibility of
establishing more ambitious modes ofWrmly institutionalized transnational
democracy; some of his observations suggest more far-reaching institutional
aims. Yet his skepticism about conventional forms of state authority—in-
cluding, it seems, conceivable postnational varieties—leaves unresolved the
question of how conXicts between competing global publics ultimately might
be mediated and given a binding legal form.
In these more cautious accounts of transnational deliberative democracy,
understandable skepticism about the prospects of centralized global govern-
ment, in conjunction with a realistic assessment of the pathologies of the
contemporary capitalist state, risks generating a truncated vision of democ-
racy. After all,inXuenceis not, per se, equivalent to an eVectiveexerciseof power
6 Jean L. Cohen, for example, argues that transnational citizenship ‘‘involves the exercise of power
and not only of inXuence,’’ and she suggests a relationship of codependence between a vibrant civil
society and eVective formal channels of political power at the transnational level ( 1999 , 263 ). Her
recent work, in contrast to that of some critical theory writers who have endorsed her ideas about civil
society, has focused on the diYcult question of institutional and legal reform (Cohen 2003 ).
critical theory 93