The North-South Divide: Comopolitanism Reversed? Lessons from the Latin American Experience.

The literature on cosmopolitan democracy has suggested that processes of globalization, although initially triggered by private economic forces, create the conditions for new forms of transnational democracy and citizenship. Much of this scholarship is focused on the experience of European integration, but elsewhere the validity of this correlation has not been proved. This paper reviews the recent experience of Latin America with neo-liberal reforms to suggest that the prospects for deepening democracy and popular participation are obscured by such consequences as increased levels of social exclusion, income inequality and the retrenchment of welfare provision by public authorities. I propose that the role of the state be reconsidered in debates about “de-territorialization”, particularly when evaluating the consequences of globalization for the perdurability of social and economic rights. . ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]