PR 1450

Introduction to Globalization
Lecture 9

Globalization and democracy

Chris Rumford

Which country
is the most
democratic in
the world?

Answer: Sweden

Which country is
the least
democratic?
Answer: North
Korea

Source: EIUs index

of democracy
www.economist.com/media/pdf/DEMOCRACY_INDEX_2007_v3.pdf

This is according to the Economist Intelligence

Unit
Other highly democratic counties include:
Iceland
Netherlands
Norway
Denmark
Countries are measured according to the
following criteria:
electoral process
functioning of government
political participation
political culture
civil liberties

Britain and the USA did

not score as highly
Britain was ranked 23rd
and the USA 17th
In both countries there
was a marked decline in
civil liberties, and a lack
of political participation
The war on terror has
been responsible for the
curtailment of some
freedoms

Democracy and globalization

Is globalization a threat to democracy?
On the one hand, globalization may mean that
democratically elected governments no longer
have total control over their own affairs
On the other, globalization has seen the worldwide spread of the democratic nation-state
Since the end of the communism democracy
has become the universally acceptable form of
government

The relationship between

globalization and
democracy provokes
some important
questions
Under conditions of
globalization is
democracy tied to the
nation-state?
Or can democracy be
trans-national or global?

Big
questions

Big issues

Democracy now enjoys

universal support politicians,
leaders and citizens in all
parts of the world profess
respect for democracy
But globalization makes
democracy difficult to realize:

calling into question its natural

grounding in the nation-state
can we imagine non-national
sources of democracy?

Globalization as a threat
Benjamin Barber (2001) says that we
have globalized the marketplace but not
democracy
As a result we have a highly organized
system of global capital but an anarchic
global political climate (p.301)
We are destroying the national
institutions, including the nation-state
itself, which have been the seedbed for
democratic institutions (P. 301-2)

Internationalization of
democracy
The League of Nations (1919) wanted to protect
minority rights within nation-states and saw
sovereignty as less important than new
international norms as the basis for legitimate
government (Hirst, 2001: 256)
In the post-WWII period the United Nations has
promoted the idea of human rights that
people have rights independently of those
granted to them (or not) by their nation-state
The UNs Universal Declaration of Human
Rights dates from 1948
www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

David Held and

cosmopolitan
democracy
Democracy is not always threatened by
globalization
Held et al argue for trans-national governance to
ensure that the democratic state will be the global
norm
It is a conception of democracy which recognises
the continuing significance of the nation-state
while arguing for a layer of governance to limit
national sovereignty (Held, 1998)

The affairs of nation-states

are interrelated and many
contemporary issues
require cooperative
responses (pollution,
diminishing resources,
terrorist threats, migration)
Cosmopolitan democracy
looks to the creation of a
democratic community
which both involves and
cuts across democratic
states (Archibugi and
Held, 1995)

Daniele Archibugi
on cosmopolitan
democracy
cosmopolitan democracy aims at a parallel
development of democracy both within and among
states (Archibugi and Held, 1995)
Read Daniele Archibugis article on Cosmopolitan
democracy at:
http://newleftreview.org/?page= article&view=2261

Read an interview with David

Held

Globalization, cosmopolitanism and

democracy

www.polity.co.uk/global/globalization-cosmopolitanism

Global democracy
Cosmopolitan democracy looks towards a
global institutional framework which
works with existing system of nationstates
But reserves the right for cosmopolitan
institutions to intervene in cases where:
peoples are being oppressed
actions of states have transnational consequences
(migration)
global initiatives are required (transnational crime,
epidemics)

The role of citizens

Cosmopolitan democracy is possible
because citizens have been empowered (by
UN) and through INGOs
Human rights give citizens rights
independent of membership of nation-state
human rights have posited and sustained
the duties of individuals to a legal order
beyond that of nation-states (Goldblatt,
1997)

Is the world ready for cosmopolitan

democracy?
Archibugi (1998) says that two important
things are lacking:

existing forms of global governance lack

sufficient legal competence
agencies of existing global governance are not
necessarily guided by principles of democracy

However, there is one very good example of

actually existing cosmopolitan democracy

Real cosmopolitan
democracy?
the first
international
organization which
begins to resemble
the cosmopolitan
model is the
European Union
(Archibugi, 1998)

Iraq and cosmopolitan

democracy
The USA and Britain have tried to bring about
democracy in post-Saddam Iraq, and the rudiments
of parliamentary democracy now exist
Archibugi (1998) is sceptical about the possibility of
genuine democracy developing under these
conditions
Democracy will only take hold when society is willing
and able to embrace democratic principles
The development of democracy is endogenous not
exogenous

Concluding comments
It is not necessarily the case that
globalization is a threat to democracy
Globalization has also helped spread
democracy round the world
It is possible that in the future
globalization will also provide the means
and the incentive to create a truly
democratic world order

References
Archibugi, D. and Held, D. 1995: Editors introduction in D.
Archibugi and D. Held (eds) Cosmopolitan Democracy: An
Agenda for a New World Order (Polity Press)
Barber, B. 2001: Challenges to democracy in an age of
globalization in R. Axtmann (ed) Balancing Democracy
(Continuum)
Goldblatt, D. 1997: At the limits of political possibility: the
cosmopolitan democractic project New Left Review 225
Held, D. 1998: Democracy and globalization in D.
Archibugi, D. Held, and M. Kohler (eds) Re-Imagining
Political Community (Polity Press)
Hirst, P. 2001: Between the local and the global: democracy
in C21st in R. Axtmann (ed) Balancing Democracy
(Continuum)