Global governance, from sovereignty to responsibility

Contemporary political history shows that progress has indisputably been made in terms of shaping delimited democratic spaces, but very little advancement has taken place regarding the possible democratisation of globalised spaces, with the idea that democracy, justice and legality exists beyond the national state. The consternation that currently exists over the future of the European Union is one manifest example of this problem. And yet, these are the main challenges for global governance: whether we can speak of democracy when the decisive decisions cannot be taken either within states or as a result of a simple negotiation between states (in the case of the European Union), how to legitimise military interventions to protect threatened populations, and whether it makes sense to conceive of justice as something that is only measured within states. Basically, the solution to these three questions involves situating the idea of sovereignty in the context of the obligations that are raised by responsibility.