In defense of democratic proceduralism

My discussion here addresses one key question: has Alessandro Ferrara succeeded in outlining a cogent account of democracy beyond the nation state'? Despite the volume's many strengths, his The Democratic Horizon suffers from some underlying conceptual and programmatic ambiguities. The nexus between democracy's ethos or spirit and its institutional and procedural components might have been more clearly elucidated. The author's tendency to privilege democratic ethos' or spirit' over so-called proceduralism' ultimately risks discounting the significance of some democratic institutional and procedural essentials. Like many others with similarly praiseworthy cosmopolitan normative instincts, Ferrara seems overly reluctant to acknowledge how stateness and self-government are likely to remain intermeshed.