Introduction

There is a view that democracy is increasingly seen as an “emerging right” 1 in

international law, a right of peoples to manage their own affairs, overcoming a
world history darkened by dictatorships and oppression.

The purpose of this essay is not to look at whether or not this “right” exists, but to
look more fundamentally at the intellectual underpinning of the concept of
democracy that forms the basis of this “right”. Generally speaking, what exactly is
being referred to when global – particularly Western – political leaders refer to
“democracy”?

This essay analyses the background to the suggestion that a right to democratic
governance exists, or is beginning to exist in international law. Then, in order to
establish what citizens are theoretically entitled to under this emerging right, it
looks at the value of democracy, the quality of democracy in key Western states,
and finally the very real problems that globalisation presents to the rights of
countries to manage their own affairs. Throughout the essay, the question is
asked, to what extent the “emerging right” is about narrow, electoral issues rather
than a fundamental right and ability of the demos to have a full participatory role
in their democracy?

Emerging Rights

The case for optimism appears, at first glance, to be bright. In the second half of
the 20th century, there was a surge of democratic governments overturning
various types of dictatorship, with over 110 governments 2 in 1991 committed to
democracy and “people almost everywhere now demanding that government be
validated by western-style parliamentary, democratic process”3, a demand that is
reinforced by an increasing need of governments for validation. Democracy is
almost universally seen as the way of producing this legitimacy.

This legitimacy is built on the cornerstones self-determination, freedom of

expression and electoral rights. Self-determination has a long pedigree in
international law, with US President Woodrow Wilson making this a central plank
of the post-war redrawing of the map of Europe and elsewhere. This principle
was further strengthened after the Second World War with Article 1.2 of the
United Nations Charter giving self-determination the status of a fundamental
right.

Freedom of expression, argues Franck4, has become a customary rule of state

obligation due to the overwhelming support and prestige that the Universal
1
Franck, Thomas M, “The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance”, The American Journal of
International Law, Vol 86, pp 46-91
2
Ibid, P 47
3
Ibid, P 48
4
Ibid, P 61

1
Declaration on Human Rights5 (article 19) has accrued and this customary law
has been underpinned by the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights6.

Building on these rights, Franck sees an emerging normative requirement for

participatory electoral processes, with over two thirds of states now bound by the
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A substantial new majority of states now
practice a “reasonably credible version of electoral democracy”7 and a variety of
international instruments underlining this right, including the Charter of the
Organization of American States8 and the European Convention on Human
Rights9. This legitimacy is further strengthened by the work of the United Nations
in election monitoring.

With self-determination, electoral monitoring and freedom of expression now

anchored in customary international law, as well as in a variety of international
legal instruments, the argument is that “international law now recognises only
one legitimate way to ensure that a people’s right to self-determination and free
expression have been respected: through genuine and periodic elections’10.
Indeed, the rights and obligations of democratic governance have become so
clear that Fox argues that “what constitutes a ‘free and fair’ election is now a
rather mundane question, one virtually devoid of serious interpretative
ambiguities”11.

Is the situation really that clear? Is democracy a commodity that one can either
have or not have? The UNDP explains that “no society is ever completely
democratic or fully developed”12, so what degree of imperfection is permitted
before the international community decides that the right to democratic
governance is not enjoyed by citizens of a particular country? International
lawyers and academics arguing the existence of a right to democratic
governance risk making a questionable assumption that the Western approach to
liberal democracy has “won” the battle of ideologies and that Western liberal
democracy is “democracy”. As McDonald13 suggests, “through the work in this
area of international law, one can detect a celebratory tone that posits a ‘we’,
who have reached our goal, and a ‘they’, who still have some distance to travel”.
5
Universal Declaration on Human Rights, General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10
December 1948
6
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, General Assembly resolution 2200A of 16
December 1966
7
Op cit, P 64
8
Charter of the Organization of American States, 9th International Conference of American States,
1948
9
European Convention on Human Rights, Council of Europe, 1950
10
Macdonald, Euan, “International Law, Democratic Governance and September the 11th”,
German Law Journal Vol. 3No 9, 1 September 2002. Section I. Online version available from
http://www.germanlawjournal.com/print.php?id=184 as at 05 January 2004 (no page numbers in
HTML version)
11
Ibid, quoting Fox, "The Right to Political Participation in International Law", in Fox and Roth
(eds.) Democratic Governance and International Law (2000), pp 48-49
12
United Nations Development Project, “Human Development Report 2002”, UNDP, 2002, P 61
13
Macdonald, Ewan, Op cit, Section IV

2
This suggests both worrying intellectual flaws in the understanding of the putative
“right” to democratic governance and a lack of the self awareness needed for any
system to evolve.

As the etymology suggests, democracy is about the people (demos) having

power (kratos) to choose how they are governed. Choice cannot exist effectively
without voters knowing what their choices are and for the rights of all parts of the
demos to be adequately assured. When we contemplate that the West views as
democratic, regimes that have no requirement, for example for decisions to be
taken at the closest possible level to the citizen14, no minimum level of voter
awareness, no minimum level of press independence, no minimum level of
welfare or representation of the poorest or weakest in society, no minimum level
of voter turnout nor indeed any requirement that the winning party be the one that
gets the most votes, the case can be made that the real-world practice of
“democracy” diverges considerably from the black and white world of
“democratic” and “undemocratic”. This, in turn, raises absolutely fundamental
questions about the foundations on which the concept of a right to “democratic”
governance could possibly be built.

The value of real democracy

The management benefits of democracy are beyond doubt. In any organisation,

individuals lower-down the management structure are closer to day-to-day
management issues, have more experience of them, and consequently are more
likely to have more detailed and relevant experience. Decentralising some power
to lower levels of management can produce not just more efficient management,
but the increased power and responsibility of individuals can increase their
motivation and loyalty.

However, in governance, as indeed in business, Robert Michels’ “iron law of

oligarchy”15 is an ever-present but rarely considered threat. Essentially, the iron
law argues that political parties and other membership organisations inevitably
tend towards increasing bureaucracy and oligarchy – a theory developed by
Michels through watching the grass-roots democratic ideals of the Social
Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany evaporate as the party grew in the early
1900s. Ultimately, the greater the level of centralisation in government, the
further the distance between the citizen and the elected representative and the
less significant each voter is to the elected representative (i.e. a decreasing voice
in shaping increasingly complex and remote policy decisions). This inevitably
leads to a corresponding loss in the ability of the citizen to have a significant
voice, undermining the very essence of democracy. When we consider that the
most significant level at which democracy is administered in the western world is
14
The European Union’s Maastricht Treaty establishes subsidiarity as a principle, although no
serious effort has been made to enforce this at a sub-state level.
15
Michels, Robert, “Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie.
Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens” Kröner (reprint) 1985 –
original 1911)

3
at the level of the “imagined community”16 of the nation, rather than automatically
at the lowest level, we can see the roots of some of the problems of the western
concept of democracy.

Decentralisation is fundamental to true democracy, as this enables more

informed decisions to be taken by voters – as more decisions are taken locally on
local issues that the citizen knows best. It also enables minorities more rights to
control their own destiny, the Croatian national and local government protection
safeguards for minorities being an interesting example17. If decentralisation is
undertaken properly, it can also have significant benefits to citizens, as shown by
the 20% increase in literacy rates in two Indian states after reform of the
panchayati raj18 in the early 1990s in India and the reduction in administrative
costs and improved economic well-being of Denmark19, (contrasting strongly with
Ireland, which had a similar starting point but no decentralisation) through its
decentralisation process in the 1970s.

Numerous European countries have seen a move towards more sub-national

democratic structures in countries such as Denmark, the United Kingdom and
even in France, a country that had previously been heavily centralised for its
entire history as a nation state. Strikingly, such positive steps towards the
creation of local democracy are hardly mentioned by lawyers or academics
discussing the alleged right to democratic governance. As important as free and
fair elections are to democracy, the administrative system must lend itself to real
empowerment for individuals for the system to be democratic.

There is no fundamental logic that suggests that the comparatively new structure
of nation state is an efficient level for management of communities within that
state – as shown by the high level of decentralisation in countries such as
Denmark. Furthermore, the “nation-state” concept of democracy is coming under
increasing strain, as globalisation means that ever-more decisions are taken at
an international level, whether in quasi-democratic forums such at the European
Union, or in international bodies such as the United Nations, the World Trade
Organisation, the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. The UNDP
points out the decreasing strength of the nation state very clearly: “In an era of
rapid globalization, markets and political liberalisation – not government planning
– are often the main drivers of economic and social change”20. This leaves
national governments increasingly having to “square the circle” of blaming
problems on international issues such as the world economy, while taking credit
for positive developments and insisting on the power of the national government.
However, this insistence on the power and supremacy of national government
16
Anderson, Benedict, “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism”, Verso, 1991
17
Regional Herald for the promotion of culture of minority rights and interethnic intolerance,
“Political Representation of National Minorities, Issue 8, 25 November, 2004
18
UNDP Op cit, P 54
19
Kearney, R (ed), “Across the Frontiers”, Dublin, 1988 PP 39-40
20
UNDP, Op cit, P 54

4
continues to stand in the way of effective discussion on adapting democracy to a
new global environment.

Democratic Peace

The proponents of the right to democratic governance point towards further

benefits of the western version of democracy, such as the fact that no two liberal
democracies have ever gone to war with each other21. Even without looking at
the question marks over the methodology22 used to make this assertion, it is also
worth pointing out that at least 83% of global exports of conventional weapons in
the period 1996-2001 came from liberal democracies and that 53 major armed
conflicts in the 1990s resulted in 3.6 million, mainly civilian, deaths23. The value of
the conventional weapons trade to the economies of liberal democracies was at
least $101 billion – a statistic which casts the notion of “democratic peace” in a
new light. Furthermore, one study even suggests that more acts of terrorism are
committed in stable democracies than anywhere else24. These points undermine,
but do not fully negate the argument that, domestically and often internationally,
democratic accountability is likely to limit violent action by states.

How Democratic is “democratic”

The Western conception of the value of their own “democracy” is such that the
United States and Great Britain feel empowered to unashamedly proselytise on a
global level for their version of “people power”. It is, however, informative to look
at the basic building blocks of democratic governance in order to get a view of
the quality of democracy in these unquestioned liberal democracies. It is
particularly important in this context to consider the limitations of the view that
free and fair elections and the freedom of expression (meaning free speech and
lack of state media control) is enough to constitute “democracy”.

Voter Awareness

It can be argued that the most fundamental aspect of democracy is not the right
to choose, but rather the right to know what the choices are. This means that the
press has a hugely significant role in supporting a healthy democracy.

Media in the USA

In the United States, detailed opinion polls by PIPA/Knowledge Network25

established that “a very strong majority” (70%) of those Americans polled had at
least one “key misperception” (i.e. a significant lack of understanding of a major

21
UNDP, Op cit P 85
22
See Mcdonald, Euan, Op cit
23
UNDP, Op cit P 85
24
See Mcdonald, Euan, Op cit
25
PIPA / Knowledge Networks Poll, “Misconceptions, the Media and the Iraq War”

5
point26) regarding the facts of the war on Iraq. Furthermore, 60% had two major
misconceptions.

A clear correlation between the TV news media watched by voters and the level
of misperceptions was also demonstrated – with the average rate of
misperception of Fox and CBS (representing over 25% of viewers using only one
source of news) running at over 400% and 300% respectively of misperceptions
among listeners/viewers of public radio and public television (representing only
3% of viewers/listeners of only one source of news). While this lack of awareness
appears to strike at the very core of American voters’ ability to cast an informed
vote, the situation is rendered even more alarming when we consider that
support for the Iraq war was directly related to the level of misperceptions (voters
with no misperceptions had only 23% support for the war compared with 86%
support among voters with all three misperceptions that were polled 27). With just
six groups controlling most of the media in the US28, options for access to
independent media (not owned by international conglomerates) for ordinary
voters are more theoretical than real.

These misperceptions are likely to have had a clear effect on the result of the
2004 Presidential election, with Bush voters having almost three times the level
of misperceptions than his opponent. With the UNDP describing the existence of
informed debate as “the lifeblood of democracies”, this statistic is of major
significance to any analysis of the health of the US democracy. A recent poll 29 by
Cornell University showing that high proportions of Americans supporting severe
restrictions on civil liberties for Muslims – as well as the correlation between such
support and reliance on television as a source of news – further underlines this.

Media in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the situation in the broadcast media is less likely to
produce such situations, due to the comparatively high viewing/listening figures
of public broadcasters. However, Rupert Murdock, the owner of Fox – whose
viewers were by far the most likely to have misperceptions of the facts
surrounding the Iraq war - is also the owner of two of the biggest newspapers in
the United Kingdom, The Times and The Sun. This puts the boast of The Sun in
the 1992 and 1997 general elections that it was the “Sun wot won it”30 into a
worrying context. It represents the unashamed admission of the power without
responsibility of foreign-owned media in the UK and its ability to skew the
democratic process.

26
These misperceptions were that there was generally worldwide support for the war against Iraq,
that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq and that a credible link had been made
between Iraq and Al Qa’ida
27
Ibid P 11
28
AOL Time Warner, General Electric, Viacom, Disney, Bertelsmann and News Corporation
29
Media and Research Group of Cornell University, “Restrictions on Civil Liberties, Views of
Islam, & Muslim Americans”, December, 2004.
30
The Sun, 10 April 1992, for example

6
The Labour government in the United Kingdom has created a science of media
management. “Citizens in Britain’s media democracy have become politically
attuned to phrases such as agenda setting, news management, soundbites,
image promotion and ‘staying on message’, and incorporated some of these
processes into their political decision-making”31. This news management has
taken the form not just of employing large numbers of media managers, double
the numbers under the previous government32 (paid for from the public purse),
but also in a new and more aggressive approach to dealing with journalists.
“Journalists are bullied, harangued, isolated from government news sources and
told that their editors will be contacted and advised to sack them”33.

Even where attempts at opening government are made, such as the Freedom of
Information Act (2000), the instinct of the UK government for news management
is too strong to stop abuses. Not alone did the amount of official documents
being shredded by the Department of Defence increase by almost 200% in
2003/2004 (in advance of the entry into force of the Act) compared with
1999/2000, and by 100% in the Department of Trade and Industry in the same
period34, but the government acted to minimise the amount of press investigation
under the Act by insisting on publishing immediately any information uncovered
by newspaper investigations – thereby acting as a disincentive for newspapers to
undertake time-consuming and expensive research35. Such efforts to restrict
voter awareness appear perfectly acceptable in the Western approach to
democracy despite striking at the heart of voters’ ability to make an informed
choice.

Electoral integrity

Both in the United States and in the United Kingdom, the electoral system does
not ensure that the party or individual that wins the most votes actually wins the
election. Indeed, the electoral college system in the United States does not even
place a legal requirement for there to be any relationship at all between the
number of votes cast and who actually becomes president. It has happened
once, in 2000, that a President was elected after “losing” the election. The
electoral system in the United Kingdom can produce similar results. It has
happened twice in the United Kingdom that a party that gained the most votes
did not win the most seats36.
31
Franklin, B, “Tough on Soundbites, Tough on the Causes of Soundbites: New Labour and News
Management”, Catalyst, 1998.
32
United Kingdom Hansard, 25 November 1997, Line 14806
33
Franklin, B, Op cit, P 6 (of online version)
34
Woolf, M, “Shredded: Tens of Thousands of Government Documents” The Independent, 23
December, 2004.
35
Travis, A and Evans, R, “Falconer rejects risk to information act”, The Guardian, 1 January,
2005
36
In Britain, in 1951, Labour polled the most votes and won 26 fewer seats than the
Conservatives, while in 1974, the Conservatives won 4 fewer seats than Labour with 140,000
more votes. In 2000, according to the US Federal Election Commission, George W. Bush

7
Real Choice

Democracy is fundamentally about the right of peoples to have a real choice in

the way that they are governed. However, even in the most developed and
apparently irreproachably democratic countries, there is considerable evidence
that choices are more restricted than would be optimal.

The UNDP37 stresses that democracy requires a legislature that represents the
people and a judiciary that upholds the rule of law. The United Kingdom
Parliament is dominated by a very centralised Labour Party, which commands
62% of the seats in the lower house of Parliament after winning the votes of
24.1% of the electorate and 40.68% of voters. This means that, in the absence of
a democratically credible upper house of Parliament, the Labour Party can rule
with little concern for Parliament.

However, the way in which Labour formulates policy is even more problematic
from a democratic perspective. As a traditionally left-wing party, Labour has
repeatedly been able to outmanoeuvre their right-wing opponents by adopting
conservative policies. “The Blair doctrine has been to leave no room on his right:
if the Tories propose tightening up or cracking down, new Labour has been right
behind them”38. With no room on the right and no credible electoral challenge on
the left (the Independent newspaper calculated that an approximate three-way tie
at the upcoming UK elections would leave the Liberal Democrats with only 11.6%
of the seats in Parliament, with Labour as by far the biggest party in a hung
parliament39), the choices of British electors are more theoretical than real.

Practical choice in the US is restricted in different ways. The UNDP40 makes the
observation that the spiralling costs of effective participation in election
campaigns makes it “almost impossible” for an under-funded candidate to enter
an election. This increases the risks of the sources of such funding having a
negative impact on the ability of “democratic” governments to rule independently
of the influence of special interest groups – particularly corporate interests. The
gravity of the problem is illustrated by a study quoted by the UNDP 41 showed that
candidates challenging incumbent members of Congress won, on average, one
percentage point of votes for every extra $10,000 spent, and that corporations in
the US contributed $1.2 billion in donations during the 2000 elections. With two
main parties holding generally similar views in the US and huge funding from
corporations making a challenge almost impossible, to what extent can it be said
that the choices facing US electors are real rather than simply theoretical? The

received 50,456,002 votes compared with 50,999,897 votes for Al Gore, with Bush being
declared the winner.
37
UNDP Op cit P 54
38
Freedland, J, “Hovering in mid air”, The Guardian, 15 December, 2004
39
Grice, A, “Even without Tory revival, Blair can lose out”, The Independent, 08 November, 2004
40
UNDP Op cit P 67
41
Ibid, P 67

8
situation is further worsened by the perceived need to vote for the “lesser of two
evils”, which led to the campaign to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot in as many
US states as possible in 2004.

Contradictions in Western practice

Perhaps due to lack of awareness of the faults of Western democracy, or

perhaps due to expediency, there are significant gaps in the way in which
“democracy” is installed in other countries, such as Iraq.

The electoral system being imposed in Iraq, despite the ethnic tensions in the
country, treats the whole country as one constituency, meaning that the areas
with the greatest unrest will have the least representation, a situation unlikely to
improve tensions in those communities. As moderate Sunni politician Adnan
Pachachi said, the risk is “a non-inclusive election that leaves parts of the
country unrepresented and millions of Iraqis disenfranchised”42.

Furthermore, numerous decisions were taken prior to the nominal handover of

sovereignty in 2004 which could have been left to the democratic will of the Iraqi
people, but were instead made by the US authorities. For example, the
privatisation of Iraqi state businesses and the introduction of a new copyright
law43 were undertaken without the democratic consent of the Iraqi people.

Further examples of the lack of coherence in the Western approach to

democracy can be seen in the lack of effective criticism of Israel’s wilful
restrictions on the Palestinian elections where one hundred thousand
Palestinians will have to leave their home city of Jerusalem to vote. The chief
electoral officer in the Palestinian elections stated that only five thousand voters
were allowed to register in East Jerusalem, out of a total estimated electorate of
120,00044.

The attitude of the West towards patently undemocratic regimes also does not
serve to strengthen the argument of a right to democracy anchored in
international law. Even before the terrorist attacks of September, 2001, Saudi
Arabia was one of the biggest US allies in the Middle East, despite the fact that it
is not alone undemocratic but has a “criminal justice system that is shrouded in
secrecy and systematically violates the rights of all those trapped in its web”45 –
an alliance which is incomprehensible when compared with the demands for
democracy and human rights frequently made by the United States as part of its
Middle East policy. Similarly, the US welcomed the undemocratic Musharaff
regime in Pakistan into the international coalition against terrorism. As Ewan
McDonald points out, “such active support of plainly illiberal regimes must have

42
Allard, T, “Iraq a candidate for civil war”, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 December, 2004
43
Coalition Provisional Order Number 83, 29 April 2003.
44
Urquhart, C, “Israel stops Palestinians voting in Jerusalem”, The Guardian, 30 December, 2005
45
Amnesty International, “Saudi Arabia: A system without justice”, 10 May, 2000

9
serious consequences for the legitimacy of any such ‘right’ [of democratic
governance]”.

It appears entirely conceivable that future generations will look back on these
clear limitations on the current understanding of “democracy” with the same
critical eye that current thinkers look back on the “democracies” of the nineteenth
century.

Transnational Democracy?

International forces, both formal and informal, have a significant impact on the
ability of national governments to have control over their economies and,
therefore, the welfare of their citizens. For example, it is hardly the fault of
governments, elected or otherwise, in developing countries that industrial country
tariffs on imports are four times higher that those on imports from other
industrialised countries, or that the agricultural sector in developing countries has
to compete with farmers in developing countries receiving subsidies from their
governments six times higher than those countries’ global aid budget. These
external forces are completely outside the democratic reach of the voters in
these countries.

Sandel’s argument46 that “governments have lost the capacity to manage

transnational forces in accordance with the expressed wishes of their citizens”,
thereby losing “the very essence of democracy”, is compelling and poses the
obvious question as to what, if anything, can be done to democratise these
forces. Choice being the very essence of democracy, instances such as the IMF
requesting both candidates in the 1997 South Korean election to sign a
confidential declaration to abide by the conditions of a proposed rescue package,
shows the level of the problems posed.

From the perspective of a developing country, real choice for citizens seems like
a remote possibility indeed. Developing countries rely heavily on bodies such as
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Seven countries (USA,
Japan, France, UK, Saudi Arabia, Germany and the Russian Federation) control
48% of the voting power in the IMF and 46% in the World Bank. In the case of
both bodies, the heads are chosen by the United States and Europe – a clearly
undemocratic practice propagated by the two leading “democratic” blocs in the
world. Both the IMF and World Bank impose an ever-increasing (up from 6-10 in
the eighties to 26 in the nineties) range of performance criteria on indebted
nations – criteria which are imposed on the strong by the weak, by democracies
on countries where the demos has no opportunity to influence these policies. An
emerging right to democratic governance would give the voters in such countries
the right to vote (supported by Western powers) but not the right to choose
(removed, in practice, by these same Western powers).

46
As described in McGrew, A, “From Global Governance to good governance” in Ougaard, M, and
Higgott, R, “Towards a Global Polity”, Warwick Studies in Globalisation, Routledge, 2002, P 209

10
Democracy without a demos?

The basic problem in a transnational environment is that there is no coherent

demos with shared experience of democracy, shared needs, shared levels of
education or any other basis on which democratic rights could be based.
Furthermore, the global scale of the issues dealt with by organisations at the
level of transnational institutions makes it very difficult for ordinary individuals to
be able to make informed decisions regarding the activities of such
organisations. Indeed, the habit of governments of EU Member States of blaming
unpopular policies on “Europe”, shows just how difficult democratic accountability
would be to create in even more remote bodies like the IMF, World Bank and the
UN.

The increasing proliferation of “non governmental organisations” (NGOs) that

have frequently acted as a brake on the excesses of globalisation is seen by
some as a cause for hope for the creation of quasi-democratic checks and
balances on the activities of inter-governmental agencies and corporations. The
UNDP for example argues NGOs are developing “new and collaborative forms of
decision-making”47. This is indeed true and their role cannot be underestimated,
as can be seen in the fight for access to cheaper HIV/AIDS drugs in South Africa.
However, the fact that the successful campaign in South Africa was morally just
does not mean that it must have been democratic. The UNDP, which devotes
considerable amounts of text48 to the Jubilee 2000, landmines and HIV/AIDs
campaigns as examples of transnational democracy in action, makes no effort
whatsoever to explain why they can be considered as such – except the
assumption that, because what they are doing is “good” means that it must be
democratic. At best, one can hope that NGOs honestly endeavour to represent
what appears to be democratic, as neither we nor they have any way of knowing
for sure.

NGOs rely for significant portions of their funds on national aid budgets and the
realisation is emerging in Western governments that this aid can be used to
further national interests. On 21st May, 2003, the head of the USAID, the
government agency for distribution of the US government aid funds as reported
as having threatened to “personally tear up” the contracts of NGOs that did not
make it clear that they were an “arm of the US government”49, undermining the
possibilities for a “vibrant civil society”50 that the UNDP and the European
Parliament51 describe as “required” by a healthy democracy.

47
UNDP, Op cit, P 5
48
UNDP, Op cit, PP 102-106
49
Klein, N, “Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers”, The Guardian, 23 June, 2003.
50
UNDP Op cit P55
51
European Parliament resolution on Turkey's application for membership of the European Union
(COM(2002) 700)

11
It is also worth pointing out that NGOs have had significant power without
significant responsibility, as shown by the Greenpeace campaign against the
dumping of the Shell Brent Spar oil rig, which was based on seriously flawed
analysis. Such incidents also raise significant doubts as to the viability of NGOs
being able to play the role of democratic “watchdogs”.

Less developed countries have their opportunities for the introduction of

democracy restricted much more severely by international organisations than
more developed countries. On the one hand, they are much more at the mercy of
organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank
and, on the other, they are much less well represented in such organisations than
developed countries. There are considerable question marks over the extent to
which democratisation of transnational organisations is either possible or, even,
desirable. Economic globalisation, together with a growth in the practices of
western “democracy” at the nation-state level, create a logic pointing towards
democratisation in a system that seems to render it impossible.

At the most basic level, it is clear that “might trumps right” in the international
environment52. Consequently, it seems unlikely that countries like the USA,
whose antipathy to international obligations of any sort, ranging from the
International Criminal Court to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, are
well known, would be likely to pool sovereignty to create greater democracy in
the global environment – despite its proclaimed support for democracy in the
Middle East and beyond.

Conclusions

It seems clear that a right in international law to democratic governance exists to

the extent that “democratic governance” is considered to be procedurally “free
and fair” elections and freedom of expression. However, it appears clear that this
analysis is focussed far too much on these two factors, on the concept of the
nation state and on theoretical opportunities for voters rather than realities.

Local communities and regions are better able to manage their own affairs than
remote bureaucrats in national capitals. On the other extreme, globalisation is
causing power to be ceded by national governments to formal and informal
international forces – a fact often ignored or even denied by national politicians,
making democracy in the globalised world even more difficult to create.

Citizens in countries such as the USA have a theoretically free press, but the fact
is that the media, and particularly the broadcast media, are dominated by a small
number of international corporations. The fact that diligent voters could find
independent news sources does not negate the fact that most do not. Similarly,
US politics is dominated by two very similar political parties heavily funded by
generally the same corporate donors. The fact that an independent candidate
52
McGrew, A, Op cit P 207

12
could in theory enter the race does not negate the fact that it is highly unlikely
that one would be able in practice – certainly not without the blessing of the same
corporate donors.

In the absence of a feasible definition of what constitutes a properly functioning

“democracy”, the concept of an emerging right to democratic governance can
only be seen as a very basic framework within which democracy may be built.

Finally, on an international level, the world’s leading democracies’ attitudes

towards democracy within organisations such as the IMF and World Bank and
their alliances with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan hardly suggests
that the depth of belief of the West in democracy is as strong as often
proclaimed.

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