International Institutions, Globalisation and Democracy: Assessing the Challenges

In: Global society: journal of interdisciplinary international relations, Volume 14, Issue 3, p. 377-398

Abstract

The theoretical work on supranational authority & democracy tends to treat supranational sites as institutionally similar, but it is argued here that there is wide variation across these sites & such variation poses challenges to democracy. The variation is due not only to the different degrees by which globalization has infiltrated issues areas, but from the relative importance of four challenges to democracy: the poor fit of economic & cultural boundaries with political ones; the increased presence of private authority; the increased importance of technical authority; & the unequal distribution of power across states. David Held's (1995) path-breaking book on cosmopolitan democracy, Democracy and the Global Order, is critiqued for not addressing these challenges to democracy in narrow issue areas. Six alternative criteria for democracy that can be applied to different supranational institutions (transparency, openness to direct participation, quality of discourse, representation, effectiveness, & fairness) are developed & applied to the issue areas of global finance & agriculture. These issue areas exhibit the four challenges to democracy in different ways, but the criteria for assessing democracy are applicable to both. M. Pflum