Cosmo-Localism
Cosmo-localism describes a model of social and economic organization that combines bioregional horizontal solidarity (people doing different things in the same region cooperating with each other) with global vertical coordination (people doing the same things all over the world connecting across places). It is one of three geopolitical “attractor models” identified by Michel Bauwens as organizing the future world order.
Bauwens contrasts cosmo-localism with two other models:
- The Western WEF model — multi-stakeholder governance by expert classes and capital, without meaningful popular sovereignty
- The BRICS civilizational-state model — popular sovereignty asserted through authoritarian nation-states (Russia, China, and the broader “sovereignty-state” bloc)
The cosmo-local model — represented by an “archipelago of regenerative villages” — operates through networks of place-based communities that practice bioregional solidarity locally while connecting to global peer networks doing similar work. It is inherently translocal: rooted in place, but not parochial.
Cosmo-Local Financing
Bauwens proposes a “cosmo-local financing facility” to address the capital problem facing regenerative communities: most good work is underfunded because there are no appropriate capital markets for it. His historical analogy: the Roman Empire’s decline caused Roman elites to invest in monasteries as the stable institutions of the new era. Today, he argues, there is $3 trillion of “floating capital” from post-national wealthy people seeking an exit strategy — capital that could, under the right conditions, be attracted toward regenerative community investment through mechanisms like crowdfunding and crowdlending.
Relationship to Network Nations
Cosmo-localism describes the structural logic of what Network Nations are building: local nodes with genuine bioregional roots, linked by translocal networks into a global archipelago. The cosmo-local “defense mechanism” — combining local horizontal solidarity with global vertical coordination — is exactly what gives a Network Nation both resilience (local roots) and scale (global connections).
Related Concepts
- Translocalism — The spatial principle cosmo-localism embodies
- Commons — The resource model of the cosmo-local economy
- Mutualization — The social mechanism connecting local nodes
- Interdependence — The philosophical foundation
- Polycentrism — Multiple centers of governance rather than a single hierarchy
Appears in: Ep 3