Addresses some of the fundamental questions surrounding the practice of democracy at the end of the 20th century and the difficulties of governance in the 21st century, including issues of globalization, nationalism, and direct democracy. Topics in this text range from a utopian-style foray into possible structures for democratic governance at the global level to a Hobbesian analysis of the ongoing challenges that democratic theory faces; from an assertion of the importance of social and economic history to a recognition of the limits of solidarity in the real world of pluralistic and divided societies in which we live; from identification with the cosmopolitan and the international to a defence of the national and the local.