A world order without a world state?

The three stages of political justice appear to be universally valid. Whether as individuals, groups, institutions or individual states: wherever human beings encounter each other, violent force and arbitrariness are to be replaced by rules (‘the universal precept of the rule of law’); responsibility for rules is to be transferred to public powers; and these powers are to be constituted as a qualified democracy (‘universal precept of democracy’). The individual state already assumes this threefold responsibility for individuals, groups and institutions. Yet, because the state exists in plural and is eroded from outside (see ch. 6.2), an extrapolation is required. A democratically constituted world order, a global democracy or world republic, is needed as a supplement, or possibly substitute, for individual democracies.