Conceptualizing Politics

6.   Politics after modernity: another definition
All things considered, politics as defined in Chapter 1 – the allocation of shares 
of divisible goods among conflicting parties, performed by a legitimate power or 
authority – reveals itself as inadequate to a situation in which the resources in 

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144  World politics and the future of politics
critical condition are not divisible and physically unfit to be allocated in an adver-
sarial way – you cannot divide the atmosphere and give more to one than to 
another. On a second track, the classical definition was unaware of the responsibil-
ity we are now asked to face towards future generations since we are endangering 
their life conditions.
All this seems to require a second definition of politics or Democracy Two, as the 
activity aimed at saving and managing our global commons also on behalf of future generations.
Let us recapitulate and explain. Under the heading ‘global and lethal challenges’ 
we analysed two actual threats (others may come) to the survival of humankind as 
a species in need of civilisation in order to survive. At first glance, one could dub 
them Hobbesian in the sense that they endanger the life and limbs of human beings 
and drive them to seek an exit from this situation and to establish a superior pro-
tective power like Hobbes’s Leviathan – in this case a worldwide Super-Leviathan. 
Global challenges in a word may seem to provide a compelling motivation to make 
room for Democracy Two in the still classical way of creating a state. This is not 
exactly the case, because – as we shall see at the end of this section – the theoreti-
cally compelling motivation finds obstacles hindering its ability to change the real 
behaviour of individuals and states. Unlike life in Hobbes’s state of nature, which is 
‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’ (Hobbes 1651, I, 13), life under nuclear or 
climate threat can be agreeable (less in the second case), as long as no catastrophe 
occurs. Also, what is at stake is not so much the survival of self-centred individuals, 
but rather the survival of humankind in civilised conditions, and worrying about