53
European Identity as the Horizon of Belarusian Imagination
guarantee cosmopolitan legal relation between the states and citizens of different coun-
tries? Various structures of identification start to compete. The way out is the formation
through struggle and compromises of a cosmopolitan model: the center of the analysis
should be occupied by an individual. Another requirement is to establish direct relations
between individuals, interstate and nongovernmental organizations. “It is not an intercul-
tural consensus on fundamental laws but the process of cooperation and arising inter-
dependences that gives a key to the transnational guarantees of fundamental law. They
are partially codified, partially non-codified procedures which are used to found, settle
and build transnational relations. These relations are a dense multivariate fabric made of
mutual interweaving and obligations expressing the idea of cosmopolitan democracy and
making its realization possible”
28
.
G. Delanty offers a model of civil cosmopolitanism. The substantiation of the idea of
cosmopolitan public sphere as the result of interaction between transnational, national
and local public spheres is significant. Civil cosmopolitanism is the policy of autonomy
that protects civil society from new fragmentation.
29
In Delanty’s opinion it is necessary
by following Habermas to rethink the relation between cosmos and polis. If nationalism is
the expression of the order of polis and postnationalism is the
expression of cosmos of a
higher order then how can we find a point of mediation? In connection with this Delanty
does not accept extreme measures of communitarism and postnationalism. The way out
from the contradiction is “civil cosmopolitanism” because if cosmopolitanism does not
include the general recognition, then it is inefficient. Nationalism monopolizes the idea
of solidarity. The purpose of cosmopolitanism is to reconcile community and globaliza-
tion. Unlike Habermas, we find it necessary to emphasize the cultural measurement of
cosmopolitanism
30
.
The form of expression of such citizenship is the cosmopolitan public sphere. With-
out it legal and political forms of global society will not be implanted in the civil measure-
ment as it is necessary to resist the homogenization caused by globalization. The public
sphere is a more fundamental form of global community than political and legal spheres
of civil society. It is the sphere of communications and cultural disputes. The cosmo-
politan public sphere is not the necessity of the global public sphere as such though it
can be one of its measurements; it is placed in national and subnational public spheres
transformed as a result of interaction. In short, it is necessary to distinguish subnational,
national and transnational public spheres from the point of view of expression in them of
degrees of cosmopolitanism. When such civil cosmopolitan public spheres become obvi-
ous, it is possible to address a special question of legal and political forms of cosmopolitan
civil
society
31
.
Obviously, there are opponents of such views. Beck identifies three positions hostile
to cosmopolitanism: nationalism, globalism and democratic authoritarianism. The third
position is especially interesting to us
32
. Beck believes that even when the nation-state
is getting weaker we should not underestimate the possibility of its maneuvering and