Overview of Democracy as Human Rights

In Democracy as Human Rights, Michael Goodhart compellingly argues that the process of globalization undermines contemporary understandings of democracy and presents an original reinterpretation of democracy for the current age. Examining democratic theory and practice from early modern Europe through the present, Goodhart exposes certain problematic assumptions about sovereignty, assumptions which have been uncritically preserved in most theories of global or cosmopolitan democracy. Arguing for a bold new interpretation of democracy informed by the challenges of globalization and animated by the emancipatory spirit of human rights, Democracy as Human Rights rejects the familiar alternatives, transforming the terms of the debate.

Advance Praise for Democracy as Human Rights

"Michael Goodhart has written a powerful critique of contemporary theories of democracy....His alternative, based on the universal value of fundamental human rights, is developed with great energy and ingenuity. This book will be controversial, but all concerned with democracy and human rights under conditions of globalization will be challenged by it to rethink what 'democracy' can mean in our time."

—Michael Freeman, Research Professor of Government, University of Essex

“Michael Goodhart seeks to replace the paradoxical conception of sovereign democracy – which both precludes and requires supranational governance – with the concept of democracy as human rights. Democracy as Human Rights is a major rethinking of democratic theory for an age of globalization.”

—Robert O. Keohane, Professor of International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University