PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

With reference to a global (democratic) imaginary, the paper studies how the issue of inequalities is discussed in empirical global and international inequality debates. While the established social inequality literature assumes a positive relationship between national democracy and equality, this relation cannot easily be transferred to the global realm. That makes a study about global inequality interesting for the idea of a global democratic imaginary. In order to show how (or if at all) questions of democracy have entered inequality analyses the paper explores the ideas put forward in experts’ accounts and global development programmes. The concepts raised there include definitions of what constitutes inequalities, the specifics of a global context, the strategies envisioned to overcome inequalities and, at least implicitly, the normative framework that allows for a definition of inequality as a relevant object of international politics.