(Maus 2002 , 249 ). To be sure, extending the inXuence of civil society to existing
sources of authority at the global level is an admirable political goal. Yet vassals
also ‘‘inXuenced’’ feudal lords; children and wives inXuence patriarchal hus-
bands and fathers. By neglecting the question of how the commanding heights
of global power could be directly subjected to popular self-legislation, these
models risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In contrast, the core idea
of modern democracy requires the exercise of political power in accordance
with rules and laws freely consented to by those aVected by them. In this
classical view, democracy requires autonomous self-legislation. In the context
of deliberative democracy, this traditional democratic idea can be fruitfully
reformulated as requiring that there can be ‘‘no rule of [deliberative] reasons
apart from the self-rule of citizens by justiWed reasons’’ (Forst 2001 , 374 ). 7
Models of transnational democracy which reduce the unfulWlled quest for self-
rule by deliberative citizens to the popular inXuence (or, in Habermas’ appro-
priation of systems-theory jargon, counter-steering) of seemingly imperme-
able global power blocs fail to pay proper Wdelity to core democratic
aspirations. To put the point more bluntly: deliberative inXuence does not a
democracy make. Only the exercise of the commanding heights of decision-
making by deliberative citizens can achieve democracy. At the transnational
level, this requires us to think even harder about how both existing and
hitherto unrealized forms of transnational authority can be clearly subordin-
ated to the preferences of deliberative self-legislating citizens.
2 Popular Sovereignty, Deliberation,
and Transnational Democracy
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
To what do critical theory analyses of deliberative democracy owe this
peculiar oscillation between ‘‘radicalism and resignation’’ (Scheuerman
7 To be sure, the question of the relationship between the concepts ofdeliberationanddemocracy
raises profound philosophical questions. Unfortunately, I cannot address those questions here. But
I think it pivotal that we underscore their mutual dependence: democratic self-legislation without
(rational) deliberation is normatively unattractive and probably impossible; deliberation without
democracy (that is, without the approval of those impacted by resulting binding decisions) may
produce more or less interesting and insightful epistemic results, but it cannot legitimately claim to
justify binding decisions on those aVected by them.
94 william e. scheuerman