Power crosses borders. Democratic accountability must follow.

 

Globalization has separated the scale of power from the scale of democratic legitimacy. Parliaments, courts, taxation, and public accountability remain primarily national, while financial markets, multinational corporations, digital platforms, production chains, climate risks, and information systems operate across borders. Governments remain formally responsible to citizens, yet their effective control is unevenly constrained by mobile capital, transnational rules, infrastructural dependence, and cross-border externalities. This is not a uniform decline of the state: capacities differ by country, policy field, market size, monetary position, and degree of international cooperation[1].

Mobile capital and multinational firms can pressure states to lower taxes, weaken regulation, or compete for investment. Trade and investment regimes can restrict national policy choices, while transnational companies use differences between jurisdictions to avoid taxation and responsibility. Digital platforms exercise quasi-institutional power by organizing communication, information, markets, and public debate without being subject to equivalent democratic control.

The result is a structural mismatch. Citizens vote nationally, but many consequential decisions are shaped elsewhere. Governments may blame external obligations for unpopular outcomes, while supranational institutions point to the participation of national governments. Responsibility becomes diffuse, regulation may enter a race to the bottom, and public trust declines because democratic institutions appear unable to control the developments for which they remain accountable.

Reversing globalization is neither realistic nor desirable. Climate change, migration, financial instability, tax avoidance, pandemics, cyberthreats, artificial intelligence, and digital markets cannot be governed effectively by isolated states. The alternative is to extend democracy, legal protection, and correctability to the scales at which power actually operates.

Supranational institutions therefore require stronger democratic foundations. International organizations should provide greater representation, transparency, public participation, and accountability. Within regional systems such as the European Union, the powers of elected parliaments and the cooperation between national and supranational legislatures can be strengthened. Decision-making documents, negotiations, responsibilities, and legal consequences should be publicly understandable so that citizens can identify who decided what and how that decision can be challenged.

Democratic legitimacy[2]. at higher levels cannot be reduced to direct elections alone. It can arise through several connected sources: elected supranational representatives, national parliamentary control, judicial protection, participation by civil society, transparent procedures, effective problem-solving, and accessible corrective mechanisms. The central weakness of multilevel governance is often not a total absence of democracy, but the complexity and invisibility of its accountability chains.

Every multilevel decision should have a traceable chain of responsibility[3] Citizens should be able to identify the initiating authority, the participating representatives, the applicable legal standard, the body responsible for implementation, the forum for review, and the remedy available when harm occurs. Complexity becomes democratically problematic when any link in this chain is invisible or practically inaccessible.

Transnational capital and multinational corporations must be incorporated into binding public frameworks. International tax coordination and minimum corporate tax standards can limit profit shifting and destructive fiscal competition[4]. Transparency requirements and, where justified, controls on destabilizing capital flows can restore policy autonomy. Corporate due-diligence duties, supply-chain liability, reporting requirements, and enforceable labor, human-rights, and environmental standards can prevent companies from escaping responsibility by distributing activities across jurisdictions[5].

A transnational legal order is needed because rights that stop at national borders cannot adequately regulate cross-border power. International human-rights and labor standards establish a shared minimum, but their effectiveness depends on implementation[6]. International and regional courts require sufficiently clear jurisdiction, access, and compliance mechanisms. Companies should be accountable for harms throughout their production chains, including through national laws with appropriate extraterritorial effects and coordinated international standards.

Digital power requires a similarly transnational response. Large technology companies control search engines, social networks, cloud systems, advertising infrastructures, data, and algorithmic access to public attention. Regulation should address market dominance, interoperability, data use, algorithmic transparency, independent audits, systemic discrimination, and manipulation. Because platforms increasingly shape the public sphere, their governance affects not only competition and privacy but the epistemic conditions of democracy itself.

Protecting the information environment should not create an official truth. Independent science, free and pluralistic media, open data, public-interest journalism, transparent algorithms, and contestable moderation decisions should form a polycentric knowledge infrastructure. The objective is to prevent private concentration of epistemic power while preserving uncertainty, disagreement, and free criticism.

No single governmental level can perform all these functions. Polycentric and multilevel governance distributes authority among connected local, national, regional, and global institutions[7]. Local actors contribute contextual knowledge, participation, and experimentation. National governments remain central to redistribution, legal protection, taxation, and democratic solidarity. Regional institutions can regulate cross-border markets and infrastructures. Global bodies can establish minimum standards and coordinate genuinely planetary problems[8].

Subsidiarity and proportionality should determine the distribution of authority. Decisions should be made at the lowest level capable of addressing the problem effectively, while higher levels should intervene when causes or consequences exceed local or national capacity. Subsidiarity is not simply decentralization: it connects democratic proximity with functional adequacy and prevents unnecessary concentration of power. A transfer of authority to a higher level should satisfy six tests: necessity, demonstrable cross-border added value, representative input, transparent allocation of responsibility, accessible legal protection, and periodic review of whether the higher-level intervention remains justified.

Polycentric systems also enable institutional learning. Cities and regions can test approaches to climate policy, inclusion, and digital governance; successful practices can be adapted elsewhere or incorporated into higher-level standards. Multiple decision centers provide redundancy and mutual correction, reducing the danger that failure at one level becomes systemic.

New democratic forms can supplement traditional representation. Transnational citizens’ assemblies[9] may deliberate on climate, migration, taxation, or technology. Global or regional authorities could be created for narrowly defined domains requiring binding cross-border coordination, provided they are transparent, accountable, and legally constrained. Global commons such as climate, data, oceans, and natural resources require governance involving states, citizens, civil society, and affected communities. Cooperative ownership and stakeholder governance can also democratize economic power within firms.

Shared authority can increase effective democratic capacity when unilateral action is structurally inadequate, but it can also create distance and diffuse responsibility. Sovereignty should therefore be evaluated by both problem-solving capacity and the continued ability of affected publics to authorize, contest, and revise the exercise of power.

This multilevel order faces major limitations. Supranational institutions may become technocratic, distant, and difficult to understand. Complex accountability chains can obscure responsibility[10]. States may resist implementation, international courts possess limited mandates, and enforcement remains dependent on political cooperation[11]. Rules may be applied selectively, with powerful states and firms receiving more favorable treatment than weaker actors.

Global markets also constrain democratic policy space. Strong regulation may cause capital relocation, while unilateral taxation or labor standards can be undermined by jurisdictional competition. Cooperation is therefore necessary, but difficult to achieve because states differ in economic interests, institutional capacity, and development levels.

Transnational tax and corporate-responsibility rules illustrate both the necessity and instability of multilevel regulation. Their legal scope, application dates, and enforcement mechanisms are repeatedly revised through political negotiation and implementation. The durable principle is therefore not that one current instrument supplies a complete solution, but that mobile capital and cross-border production require binding cooperation, transparent allocation of responsibility, effective remedies, and periodic democratic review. Time-sensitive legal details should be stated in dated source notes rather than built into the normative core.

Digital regulation[12] presents additional problems. Technology changes faster than legislation, regulators may lack expertise, and excessive intervention may threaten innovation or expression. Platforms can influence the very information through which regulation is debated. Effective oversight therefore requires continuing technical capacity, international coordination, independent scrutiny, and periodically revised rules.

Global inequality between states further complicates legitimacy. Wealthy states possess more capital, diplomatic expertise, technological infrastructure, and influence within institutions such as international financial organizations. Historical inequalities arising from colonialism, debt, unequal trade, industrialization, and technological concentration continue to shape current bargaining power. Climate change intensifies this injustice because countries that contributed least often face the greatest damage and possess the fewest resources for adaptation.

A more just global order requires stronger representation for low- and middle-income countries, greater technical support in negotiations, fairer voting arrangements, sustainable trade and investment, climate finance, knowledge transfer, public digital infrastructure, and investment in global public goods such as health and education. Complete equality among states is impossible, but differences in power should not become permanent domination or dependency.

Implementation remains the greatest weakness of international law. Without a central enforcement authority, compliance often relies on voluntary cooperation, diplomacy, economic pressure, and reputation. More predictable sanctions, conditional access to markets or financing, independent monitoring, public reporting, stronger regional courts, and participation by civil society can improve enforcement. Positive incentives may sometimes be more effective than punishment. Nevertheless, international correctability will always remain less complete than enforcement within a state.

Political resistance must also be treated as a legitimate democratic phenomenon rather than dismissed as ignorance. Supranational cooperation can generate real feelings of lost control, especially when its benefits and responsibilities are unclear or when globalization produces insecurity and inequality. Nationalist and populist reactions draw strength from this legitimacy gap. Greater transparency, identifiable responsibility, transnational participation, and protection against the unequal social effects of globalization are therefore essential to sustainable cooperation.

Globalization also creates opportunities. A large regional market can project environmental, privacy, product, and safety standards beyond its borders because multinational firms often apply common standards across their operations. Cooperation can increase states’ collective capacity to regulate corporations and protect public goods. Investments in education, health, social protection, infrastructure, and the rule of law can strengthen both human development and long-term economic productivity.

A future democratic constitutional order should therefore be polycentric, multilevel, and adaptive. Local, national, regional, and global institutions should perform complementary functions while being connected through parliaments, courts, regulators, civil society, science, media, and citizen participation. Power at every level must be democratically justified, legally limited, transparent, and open to correction.

Complete democratic control over global processes is unattainable. The appropriate ambition is not perfect control but a continual realignment of power, legitimacy, responsibility, and correction. Globalization becomes compatible with democracy when institutions evolve alongside it—placing transnational power within a system capable of public justification, legal restraint, mutual oversight, and institutional learning.

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[1] Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011); Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

[2] Robert O. Keohane, Stephen Macedo, and Andrew Moravcsik, “Democracy-Enhancing Multilateralism,” International Organization 63, no. 1 (2009): 1–31, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818309090018

[3] Mark Bovens, Thomas Schillemans, and Paul ’t Hart, “Does Public Accountability Work?” Public Administration 86, no. 1 (2008): 225–242, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2008.00716.x.

[4] OECD, Global Anti-Base Erosion Model Rules (Pillar Two), updated 5 January 2026, https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/global-minimum-tax/global-anti-base-erosion-model-rules-pillar-two.html; OECD, Pillar Two Side-by-Side Package, January 2026.

[5] European Union, Directive (EU) 2024/1760 on corporate sustainability due diligence, consolidated version of 18 March 2026, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/1760/2026-03-18/eng.

[6] International Labour Organization, Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, amended 2022; United Nations, Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, HR/PUB/11/04 (2011).

[7] Ostrom, “Beyond Markets and States”; Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

[8] Anu Bradford, The Brussels Effect (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190088583.001.0001. Regulatory diffusion varies by market structure and sector.

[9] OECD, Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions.

[10] United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1771 UNTS 107; Paris Agreement, 3156 UNTS 79; IPCC, Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report.

[11] Nico Krisch, Beyond Constitutionalism; Zürn, A Theory of Global Governance. Avoid implying that more centralized enforcement is always either feasible or democratically superior.

[12] OECD, Regulatory Sandboxes in Artificial Intelligence (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2023); Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, provisions on AI regulatory sandboxes. Experimentation must remain bounded by rights and independent oversight.