The strategies of action which global risks open up overthrow the order of power, which has formed in the neo-liberal capital-state coalition: global risks empower states and civil society movements, because they reveal new sources of legitimation and options for action for these groups of actors; they disempower
globalized capital on the other hand, because the consequences of investment decisions contribute to creating global risks, destabilizing markets and activating the power of that sleeping giant the consumer. Conversely, the goal of global civil society and its actors is to achieve a connection between civil society and the state, that is, to bring about what I call a cosmopolitan form of statehood. The forms of alliances entered into by the neo-liberal state instrumentalize the state (and state-theory) in order to optimize and legitimize the interests of capital world wide. Conversely the idea of a cosmopolitan state in civil society form aims at imagining and realizing a robust diversity and a post-national order. The neo-liberal agenda surrounds itself with an aura of self-regulation and self-legitimation. Civil society’s agenda, on the other hand, surrounds itself with the aura of human rights, global justice and struggles for a new grand narrative of radical-democratic globalization.