The World Social Forum
is the first serious attempt to organise the political forces of global
civil society into a unified space of positive agenda-making and planning
of collective transformative actions. Apart from being a forum within which
different democratic projects can come together, the World Social Forum
should also be considered an example of the possibilities and dilemmas
of constructing a democratic global organisation.
All the global democracy
initiatives analysed in this report have been, one way or another, discussed
also in the WSF. As the most important future-oriented civil society gathering
of our time, the WSF can play an important role in the emergence and diffusion
of many different democratisation processes. The future developments of
the WSF depend crucially on whether it will be able to build the necessary
infrastructure also outside Porto Alegre and Rio Grande de Sul; and whether
the WSF will be able to address and resolve satisfactorily the problems
of creating a democratic global organisation. If these preconditions are
met, the difficulty of moving from the currently prevalent negative agenda
of opposition and reaction towards a positive agenda of transformative
action is likely to remain temporary only. Civic associations and movements
have already been decisive in taking new issues on the global political
agenda. The WSF can facilitate this further.
As the most important future-oriented
civil society gathering of our time, where the other initiatives analysed
here have also been present, the World Social Forum can play an key role
in the emergence and diffusion of democratisation processes.
One of the new initiatives
is that of setting up a global truth commission. Truth commission initiatives
are mostly very recent, yet they have become quite popular. However, none
of the proposals for a global truth commission seems to have been particularly
rich in detail. Therefore it is still quite difficult to assess them. A
global truth commission could focus on human rights atrocities, just like
most of the national truth commissions. In this sense, it could either
support or substitute the functions of traditionally defined national truth
commissions. One possible focus could be the role of foreign governments
in covert, transnationally organised military operations and related human
rights atrocities. Should a global truth commission focus on human rights
atrocities, its importance could perhaps be something complementary to
that of the International Criminal Court.
A global truth commission
could also be designed to deal with a wider set of issues of history and
justice, in some proposals explicitly related to South-North relations.
If the point is just to provide a space for wide-ranging discussions, however,
it might well turn out to be a relatively irrelevant discussion forum (unless
a proper purpose for these discussions is explicated). Who would pay for
this forum and who would select the participants on what grounds? On the
other hand, if the point is to re-establish the conclusions of the NIEO,
based on an authoritative version of the modern world history as a whole
and thus designate guilt and huge claims of compensation in the contemporary
world, the exercise may not only lack political possibilities and feasibility.
It may also be anti-pluralistic and therefore regressive in terms of an
open-ended global democratisation. More far-reaching proposals for a global
truth commission may thus turn out to be ambiguous. It all depends of course
on how the idea is specified.
Many conceptions such as
truth commissions have emerged first within countries and have subsequently
found also global manifestations. Indeed, one possible way of thinking
about global democracy is to project - perhaps idealised - domestic institutions
to the world as whole. A basic straightforward projection of the traditional
models of representative and direct democracy tends to result in proposals
for a world parliament and a global referendum. Not surprisingly, many
defenders as well as opponents of the idea of global democracy have considered
them part and parcel of the idea. The familiarity of the ideas of parliament
and referendum make them a plausible way to expand democratic imagination
beyond the confines of modern nation-states.
One way of thinking about global democracy is to project - perhaps idealised
and problematic - domestic institutions to the world as a whole.
However, there are three problems with the idea of a global parliament with real scope and law-making powers. The first is that a global political community - in the universalistic and centralised sense - would constitute an amalgamated security community, i.e. something akin to a world federation. The historical experiences of states and federations tell that they are difficult to establish and easily susceptible to break-up and violent conflicts. The social conditions for a global federation do not seem to exist in the early 2000s. Hence, global democracy proposals consistent with a less demanding idea of a pluralist security community appear politically much more prudent, at least for the time being.
The second related problem is that the assumptions behind most world parliament proposals may not move us very far beyond the statist and exclusive notions of political space and community. On the contrary, the models based on the domestic analogy might be anti-pluralistic by creating others to be converted, excommunicated or treated as external enemies, instead of building a plurality of partially overlapping and mutually recognised transnational public spheres for democratic will-formation.
The third problem is that most proposals for a world parliament are not particularly imaginative. They hesitate between two traditional options. If they do not treat a world parliament as a mere symbolic body - in which case it could easily be rather irrelevant as far as global democratisation is concerned - they fashion the world parliament in accordance with the national parliaments of sovereign states.
A better starting point could be to think of global democracy in terms of a combination of only partially overlapping functional (based on the functional separation of modern societies) and territorial (from local and national to regional and global, with any part of the world having the right to remain outside from any particular arrangement) systems of democratic governance. In this kind of model, a global parla-mentum could be "a place to talk" about the co-ordination of different systems of authority and, also, to take initiatives to improve upon the global system of governance as a whole. A world parliament would not be a new "sovereign" body, neither would it have supreme law-making powers. It would rather be given more selective powers to prepare and put forward motions in various other forums. Some organisations might be willing to give it also powers to act as an arbitrator or as an authoritative opinion-giver on some important issues. At any rate, instead of rushing to put support proposals based on an unreflective domestic analogy, it is better to start by submitting different possible specification to a test global referendum - based at first on a statistically representative sample of citizens - and also to develop further politically possible and feasible notions of world parliament.
Mechanisms of foreign debt constitute a major obstacle for democratisation in various contexts. The supremacy of the BWIs over the economic policies of such a large number of countries stems basically from debt-dependency. Systematic debt arbitration in accordance with the standard rules of law would lead to diminished debt dependence and therefore more autonomous possibilities for third world (and other) countries to pursue the kinds of reforms and economic policies that might be good for them. At the same time, mechanisms of debt arbitration, including insolvency courts, could become examples of democratic and rule-of-law based international negotiations.
From the perspective of many conceptions of globalisation, few ideas should be more obvious than a global tax. Should there be a global integrated economy, there should also be taxes. There have been numerous proposals. A currency transactions tax, for instance, would curb the volume of foreign exchange transactions and thus reduce the power of short-term capital movements. Thereby it would tackle one of the central global mechanisms of power that sustain the hegemony of neoliberalism. Moreover, a CTT would also yield substantial revenues that can be allocated to a global fund, controlled by a democratically devised organisation, the CTTO. Subject to the decisions of the CTTO, the tax revenues could thus be used to debt servicing and creating alternative sources of financing for development. A CTTO could thus further reduce states' dependence on the BWIs (or help to abolish it for good). Similarly, a small part of the available funds could help to facilitate democratic reforms of the UN, at least within the confines of the existing UN Charter. Last but not least, the CTTO could also become a model of democratic agenda-setting and decision-making in world politics. The two-phase proposal of implementation of the CTT is technically and economically feasible and also politically possible. The basis for making the CTT real in the short run exists.
There exists a two-phase proposal of a currency transactions tax that is technically and economically feasible and politically also possible.
A greenhouse gas tax holds in principle the same promise as a CTT. It also could create a huge global fund. The organisation controlling this fund could, in principle, be organised the same way as the CTTO. The difference is that the rationale behind the GGT has hardly anything to do with tackling global power mechanisms or furthering democratisation. Ultimately, the GGT is only a partial technocratic solution to a very serious global climatic problem; and it is articulated in terms of neoclassical economics. Given the nature of interests supporting the GGT, it might be more difficult to build the momentum for making the GGT a central element in a strategy of global democratisation. On the other hand, the fact that US decided to opt out from the Kyoto Agreement has opened the possibility of re-opening negotiations about the basic terms of the Agreement.
Many of the proposals for new institutional arrangements have come from global civil society. Moreover, the rise of a global civil society has been the condition for opening up real political possibilities for global democratic reforms. Attempts to empower global civil society and to make other institutional reforms real are intimately connected. This is the basic building bloc of our strategy for global democratisation in the early 2000s. This is the topic of Part III.
Attempts to empower global civil society and to make other institutional reforms real are intimately connected. This is the basic building bloc of our strategy for global democratisation in the early 2000s. This is the topic of Part III.