The author understands solidarity primarily as a legal concept of co-operative projects of forming an ever further expanded democratic legal community (Rechtsgenossenschaft). Solidarity is complementary to justice, and principle of democracy that is self-legislated includes both sides. Self-legislation, solidarity and justice are equally universal concepts. The first section of the chapter is a brief diagnosis of modern society under conditions of global crisis. Democratic solidarity must stand up to two crucial experimental checks, one is normative and the other factual. The second section of the chapter draws some political conclusions related to the most fundamental problems of the present world society. The final section tries to specify four changes political agencies need to adopt to save democratic solidarities under stress from globalisation.

“Globalization has transformed the inner workings of societies, and produced a new emerging cleavage between cosmopolitans and communitarians, affecting the working of our party system and democracy as a whole. The chapter summarizes the most crucial empirical findings of the book, moving from descriptive to more normative issues and asks: What does the struggle over borders mean for the quality of democracy? What understandings of democracy do the cosmopolitan and communitarian positions draw on? What are their flaws and virtues from a democratic point of view? Our core answer is the following: Both normative positions have become politically more prominent during the last decades of globalization, but both provide answers that exhibit considerable weaknesses when measured against the criteria of democratic quality. Nevertheless, both concepts have more room to forge compromises than the cosmopolitan and communitarian theoreticians themselves often assume. Cosmopolitan communitarianism or communitarian cosmopolitanism appear to represent the most promising compromises to overcome the democratic shortcomings of both pure narratives.”

“Globalization has transformed the inner workings of societies, and produced a new emerging cleavage between cosmopolitans and communitarians, affecting the working of our party system and democracy as a whole. The chapter summarizes the most crucial empirical findings of the book, moving from descriptive to more normative issues and asks: What does the struggle over borders mean for the quality of democracy? What understandings of democracy do the cosmopolitan and communitarian positions draw on? What are their flaws and virtues from a democratic point of view? Our core answer is the following: Both normative positions have become politically more prominent during the last decades of globalization, but both provide answers that exhibit considerable weaknesses when measured against the criteria of democratic quality. Nevertheless, both concepts have more room to forge compromises than the cosmopolitan and communitarian theoreticians themselves often assume. Cosmopolitan communitarianism or communitarian cosmopolitanism appear to represent the most promising compromises to overcome the democratic shortcomings of both pure narratives.”