Justifying Principles of Multilateral Democracy

Abstract

The principles of multilateral democracy have to be basic; they have to apply to the normative framework of the multilateral order as such. They have to be freestanding, meaning that they should not be directly deduced from a particular national or cosmopolitan model of democracy without being filtered through the original position of multilateral democracy representing the fundamental interests of citizens and statespeoples.¹ These principles form the specific basis for the general institutional arrangement and the most basic rules governing the multilateral democratic order.² Many fundamental principles are thus missing in the following analysis (a) because they apply to the general normative framework of the national democratic order, (b) they are presupposed as accepted by the democratic statespeoples independently of their entering into the multilateral order, (c) they are not basic principles of the multilateral order as such, (d) they form a part of the international order recognized by democratic and nondemocratic (decent) societies.³