A "League of Democracies," according to Mahbubani, will divide the world at the very time that a new global consensus needs to be created to address pressing global challenges.
A caucus of democracies and liberal states within the UN could aim to crosscut the UN's deeply entrenched hegemonic voting patterns and support and celebrate the purposes and claims of democracy.
Davenport argues for a federation of democracies to replace the United Nations Security Council. This new level of government, he says, is necessary to achieve the international cooperation needed to manage a global economy and address global problems.
The populism that is sweeping Latin America seeks, like democracy, to enact the sovereign rule of the people. Nevertheless, democrats and populists diverge over how to establish a just and enduring political order.
Although the term "torture lite" is frequently used to distinguish between physically mutilating torture and certain interrogation methods that are supposedly less severe, the distinction is not recognized in international law.
A morally significant distinction between full torture and torture lite, says Sussman, would attend to the role that fear and hope play in the experience. Full torture would thus be treatment that aims to make its victim feel absolutely vulnerable and utterly powerless.
Kymlicka extends his well known and widely respected defense of a liberal conception of multiculturalism to all states of the world, and asks causal questions about why liberal multiculturalism is spreading internationally.
Jung offers a normatively informed and empirically grounded critique of approaches that justify minority rights on the basis of the need to protect culture.
Bohman notes the extensive interdependence that characterizes the new circumstances of global politics, and argues that states have reacted either by strengthening state boundaries and increasing centralized authority or by delegating political authority.
Barry and Reddy challenge us to envision a world where workers everywhere can make a living wage in safe conditions and globalization does not drive us to compete in a desperate "race to the bottom."