Per una sfera pubblica del mondo

After the terrorist attack against the Twin Towers in New York, it is still more urgent to think of the problems globalization poses in terms of a «world domestic politics», using Habermas’ definition Bonanate has taken up. Proved illusory the idea that any state can take care of itself by itself, the separation between domestic and foreign policy has become useless and out-of-date the democratic state paradigm, beside the idea that a war may be a remedy for violence and the breaking of rules. Moving from these assumptions, the author puts forward two complementary approaches to the present crisis. From a domestic point of view, the crisis of the state is due to an overdose of lawmaking and to the collapse of the classical hierarchy of the principles of law. From an international point of view, on the contrary, what is striking is rather the lack of public law rules, in the long run unbearable in a world more and more interdependent and vulnerable. The creation of a «public sphere of the world», conceived as a set of institutions with the task to take care of general interests like peace, a healthy environment and so on, could fill this gap and represent the only alternative to a future of war and fundamentalism.

Luigi Ferrajoli, Per una sfera pubblica del mondo in "TEORIA POLITICA" 3/2001, pp , DOI: