Who should rule for cosmopolitans? Governance preferences of globalization winners

While much progress has been made to understand what “globalization losers” want from future democracy, much less is known is about respective preferences of “globalization winners”, or cosmopolitans (representing the other side of the "transnational cleavage"). Given cosmopolitans’ active engagement in politics and society, their democratic preferences are decisive for future democratic reform both at the national and global level. This article investigates the heterogeneous governance preferences of German cosmopolitans. Acknowledging theoretical conceptions, the article defines cosmopolitanism as a multidimensional concept, and first empirically determines these dimensions as moral, cultural, institutional and anti-nationalist cosmopolitanism. These dimensions are connected to preferences for representative, technocratic and participatory forms of democracy. This shows that each cosmopolitanism dimensions implies distinct preferences. While nearly all dimensions relate positively to governance by experts (except for the anti-nationalist dimension), only the institutional dimension of cosmopolitanism is connected to significant and consistent support for representative government. There is strong disagreement on participatory forms of democracy. Moral cosmopolitanism is associated with an endorsement referendums and citizen assemblies, whereas the anti-nationalist dimension connects with the rejection of both. These results are explained by different values connected with moral and cultural cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and institutional and anti-national cosmopolitanism on the other.