A cosmopolitan approach to the explanation of social change: social mechanisms, processes, modernity Gerard Delanty Abstract In recent years social science has been characterized by a cosmopolitan turn. Of the many questions that arise from this the most important are those that concern the implications for explaining social change. While cosmopolitanism is centrally about social change, much cosmopolitan theory due to its normative orientation lacks a capacity for explanation. The problem of explanation is also a problem that besets all ‘big question’ approaches in social science. In this paper a broad definition of cosmo- politanism is given and elucidated by an outline of its epistemological, ontological and methodological frameworks. Emphasizing the latter two, a relational conception of cosmopolitanism is developed as an alternative to dispositional/agency based and systemic accounts. First I argue that there are four main kinds of cosmopolitan rela- tionships, which together constitute the social ontology of cosmopolitanism.These are the relativization of identity, the positive recognition of the other, the mutual evalua- tion of cultures, and the creation of a normative world culture. A methodological framework is advanced that distinguishes between the preconditions of cosmopolitan- ism, its social mechanisms and processes (of which three are specified: generative, transformational and institutionalizing) and trajectories of historical change.The argu- ment is made that cosmopolitan phenomena can be accounted for in terms of this ontological and methodological framework. The advantage of this approach is that it offers cosmopolitan analysis a macro level account of social change that is broadly explanatory and which can also account for both the diachronic and synchronic levels of the emergence of cosmopolitanism as both a counter-factual normative cultural model and as a part of social and political practices and institutional arrangements. Keywords: Cosmopolitanism, explanation, methodology, ontology, social mechanisms, processes, social change, modernity Introduction A challenge for social and political analysis today is to account for and explain major transformations in the moral and political horizons of contemporary society. Sadly, current theorizing is not best equipped for this task.The reasons are various and include a certain retreat in social science from long-term The Sociological Review, 60:2 (2012) DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2012.02076.x © 2012 The Author. The Sociological Review © 2012 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review. Published by Blackwell Publishing Inc., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, 02148, USA.