In 2012 I published Notes Towards a Theory of the Democratic Limit on the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe for a special edition of Cultural Theory. Written in the aftermath of 2011 when when scholars saw in cosmopolitanism as proper response to the attacks, the question it raises seems relevant in the context of the Coronavirus too. The gross failure of many national responses to the global epidemic force is to confront again the scale of politics and, especially, the appropriate scale of democratic politics.
The Democratizing Work campaign is a very welcome initiative and I support it. I wonder, though, if adequate thought has been given to the unit or scale of democracy, region, nation, globe, world.
I make the paper available here in the context of the www.democratizingwork.org initiative, which I strongly support.