Democracy and Global Governance

Global Governance, 2010

The participation of transnational actors in global policymaking is increasingly seen as a means to democratize global governance. Drawing on alternative theories of democracy and existing empirical evidence, we assess the promises and pitfalls of this vision. We explore how the structuring and operation of international institutions, public-private partnerships, and transnational actors themselves may facilitate expanded participation and enhanced accountability in global governance. We find considerable support for an optimistic verdict on the democratizing potential of transnational actor involvement, but also identify hurdles in democratic theory and the practice of global governance that motivate a more cautious outlook. In conclusion, we call for research that explores the conditions for democracy in global governance through a combination of normative political theory and positive empirical research.

Journal of Social Philosophy, 2006

This paper is concerned with the best way to conceptualize democracy for supranational and transnational institutions. In this paper, I assume, without examining the evidence, the veracity of the often-repeated argument that there is an increasing need for transnational and supranational institutions in the new global context; and consider, in that context, the type of democratic legitimacy that might attach to such institutions. 2 This latter focus represents a departure from some current cosmopolitan theorizing about such global institutions, which offer a justice-based account of their legitimacy, viz., where global institutions are justified if they bring about a fairer world 3 . I then attempt to sketch the sort of account that would be necessary to create democratic and accountable global institutions.

The paper explores the methods to introduce democratic devices in global governance. The first part makes an attempt to define what a democratic deficit is. The second part provides some benchmark to identify when and how international organizations, the most important and visible part of global governance, correspond to the values of democracy. The third part presents the internal and the external levers. The internal lever is defined as the ways in which democratization within countries helps to foster more transparent, accountable and participatory forms of global governance. The external lever is defined as the ways in which international organizations contribute to promote democratic transition and consolidation in their members. Neither the internal nor the external levers work effectively if they are left to inter-governmental bargaining only. An active participation of non-governmental actors is needed in order to make them effective. The paper finally discuss a list of proposals to democratize global governance.

Like multiple other actors, national governments are increasingly submitted to the economic tides of globalization. As a single economic model imposes itself across the planet, with corporations accounting for 40 per cent of the world's 100 largest economic entities in 2012, global financial markets and transnational groups are influencing a growing array of state-and local-level public policy decisions. 1 A March 2016 Foreign Policy article, headlined "These 25 Companies Are More Powerful Than Many Countries", argues that some multinationals are "vying with governments for global power". 2

Global democracy is now widely recognized as an important field of academic study and political activism -and democracy itself has increasingly become an empirical standard against which the performance of international institutions is evaluated by different audiences. Yet what is empirically called for in the name of global democracy often deviates from what a reasonable normative standard would demand. While scholarship and activism mainly stresses the need for institutional reforms of existing organizations -for instance the abolishment of the veto power for the permanent members of the UN Security Council -a reasonable normative standard would require us to focus on the structural preconditions that make democratic governance possible in the first place. To be sure, many of these preconditions are valuable on their own terms. The argument put forth in this paper is, however, that their realization is also an essential element of democratic governance on a global scale. Taking global democracy seriously thus requires us to refocus the debate on issues such as access to education and health and the guarantee of minimal levels of subsistence. In short, it requires us to rethink the link between global democracy and global justice.

For many people throughout the world, the ideal of democracy is now accepted – at least in principle – as the pre-eminent source of political authority and legitimacy. Accordingly, as global-level systems of power, interconnection and organized political governance have expanded in recent years, the challenge of holding the exercise of power in global politics to democratic account has attracted increasing attention. Most commentators concur that increasing the democratic accountability of those wielding power in the global domain is in principle a desirable goal, and agree with proponents of ‘global democracy’ that the exercise of power at a global level – beyond the jurisdictional boundaries of democratic states – frequently suffers from significant and problematic ‘democratic deficits’. Despite this widespread recognition of the need for further strengthening of democratic governance in global politics, the paucity of workable ‘blueprints’ for instituting democratic arrangements within the existing global order remains a key obstacle. History demonstrates that such ‘blueprints’ have often played a key role in interpreting, justifying and in some cases steering processes of institutional and ideational evolution. However, such abstractly devised reform programs have often emerged in response to institutional developments driven in the first instance by the pragmatic experiments of ‘practical men’, searching for solutions to local problems of immediate importance to them.

Ethics and International Affairs, 2010

Global Governance and Democracy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Book, Chapter 3, Edward Elgar, 2015

The paper constructs a conceptual framework for understanding the democratic ideal in a global context. Two normative refinements of the democratic ideal are set out, as well as two institutional orderings. These are then combined into four paths to global democracy, while each is critically ascertained.

year: 2008, 2008

Even if we could find an agreement concerning the appropriate degree of centralization, however, the question would remain: what constitutional goals such an international order should pursue? Should it primarily oversee the enforcement of basic human rights and perhaps the 'juridification' of international relations? Or should it also attempt to "govern"-in a democratic way-over economic and environmental affairs, and perhaps even over social and cultural issues? That is, should the final aim be to mirror the classical nation-state, or not? Looking at the fierceness with which the democratic deficit of WTO law, IMF governance or the Security Council's use of force has recently been discussed, this is a highly relevant question. Independent of the lack of institutional advances, the de facto political integration of the world seems unstoppable. Many people, moreover, are dedicated to making the global setup more 'legitimate', mostly by making it mirror more closely the political institutions of the classical nation-state. But can the same type of legitimacy really be recreated at levels beyond the nation-state? Are we able to export "democratic principles and practices […] from the domestic to the regional or global level" (Cabrera 2008, 223)? In short: is some form of democracy across and beyond national borders possible at all? Some authors are fairly pessimistic in this regard. Robert Dahl, for instance, famously argued that global institutions "are not and are not likely to be democratic" (1999, 32). Others, such as Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss (2000; 2001), are more optimistic and propose a series of institutional reforms to democratize our world order. For them the idea of 'democracy beyond borders' 3 is a litmus test for our basic ideas about democracy. In this special issue, a number of renowned political philosophers and social scientists critically examine the assumptions behind the democratization of global politics and offer different models of global democracy. In this introductory contribution, we will briefly indicate why global democracy has become such a hotly debated issue within political theory, and survey some of the theoretical challenges and objections that proponents of global democracy often encounter.

This paper will answer the question of whether there is a democratic deficit in global governance, using models of democracy, post-colonial theory notions, as well as case studies to explain it. There is a democratic deficit (deficit) in global governance. This deficit is seen through various spheres in theory and practice. The voting disparity in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and the veto powers that the P-5 possess in the United Nations Security Council clearly demonstrates the need for a more democratic approach. Transnational civil society's (TCS) western centrism and imperial-like practices also affects democratic decision-making. To show the deficit is important to present an overview of two notions which will frame the grounding of the arguments put forward. The first is an overview of the models of democracy, and the second is imperialism, which stems from post-colonial theory.