Global Democracy: In the Beginning

Talk about global democracy seems to be fixated on a Reform-Act model of democracy, with 'one person one vote for all affected by the decisions' as for example in a second popularly-apportioned chamber of UN. Politically, that seems wildly unrealistic. But remember that the Reform Acts came very late in process of democratization domestically. The first steps in the beginning that eventually led to full democratization of that sort were: a) limiting the arbitrary rule on the part of the sovereign; and (b) making the sovereign accountable to others (initially a limited set of others, which then expanded). Globally, there are moves afoot globally in both those directions. And once those pieces are in place, there are good reasons for expecting the circle of accountability basically only to expand and virtually never to contract.