Law of States, Right of Peoples: Three Models of Sovereignty

Abstract

After reviewing the main characteristics from the traditional state sovereignty system and from the liberal international sovereignty one, the article describes what is called the “cosmopolitan sovereignty”. Starting from its democratic principles (also needed for the recognition of the ongoing process of globalization), this concept could make a cosmopolitan democracy possible. In this type of democracy, people could be agents of universal rights and would be able to self-determine the conditions of their own existence through different mechanisms of democratic participation.