Reimagining global democracy from world parliament to global digital deliberation and participation

Joe Mitchell Reimagining global democracy Summer 2012

Reimagining global democracy: from world parliament to global digital
deliberation and participation

Joseph Mitchell for MA Global Governance, University of Waterloo

Abstract

Globalisation presents the latest challenge to democracy, as rules made at the global level
lack the consent of the world‟s people. As a solution to this, several scholars propose a world
parliament, but such an institution would struggle to be effective and legitimate. Instead,
global democracy should be reimagined as a decentralised and networked form of
governance, as can be seen in digital deliberation and participation. While digital democracy
will grow over several decades, there are aspects that can be applied in the shorter term to
democratise existing global governance institutions, particularly through non-electoral
accountability. Potential criticisms of this model include fears over the relationship between
capitalism and democracy, and the representative nature and capability of digital users, but
responses can be made to each of these criticisms. Further research should aim to build a
more robust evidence base for the development of global digital democracy and suggest
actions to pursue it.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for the advice of Professor William Coleman, Dr. Dan Gorman and Dr.
Andrew Thompson.


Table of contents

1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
2. The historical development of global democracy ........................................................................... 2
2.1. Democracy in ancient and pre-industrial ages .................................................................... 2
2.2. Democracy in the industrial and modern ages .................................................................... 3
2.3. Democracy in the post-modern, global age......................................................................... 4
3. Global representative democracy .................................................................................................... 7
3.1. A world parliament ............................................................................................................. 7
3.2. Problems with a world parliament and representative democracy ...................................... 9
3.3. Summary ........................................................................................................................... 11
4. Towards a global digital democracy ............................................................................................. 12
4.1. Global deliberation............................................................................................................ 12
4.2. Global participation........................................................................................................... 15
4.3. Global demos .................................................................................................................... 17
4.4. Summary ........................................................................................................................... 19
5. Democratising the global governance institutions ........................................................................ 20
5.1. Non electoral accountability ............................................................................................. 20
5.2. Electoral accountability..................................................................................................... 22
5.3. Global governance institutions and social media .............................................................. 23
5.4. Global governance institutions and open data .................................................................. 24
5.5. Summary ........................................................................................................................... 26
6. Limitations of the democratising global governance agenda ........................................................ 27
6.1. Global democracy is not possible alongside global neoliberalism ................................... 27
6.2. The tyranny of those who show up ................................................................................... 29
6.3. The realistic limits of global digital democracy ................................................................ 30
6.4. Language and digital divides ............................................................................................ 30
6.5. Summary ........................................................................................................................... 32
7. Conclusion and agenda ................................................................................................................. 33

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If you want to stay sane in this world, you have to have the intelligence to be pessimistic in
the short term and optimistic in the long term.

Daniel Barenboim1

1. Introduction

This paper proposes reimagining global democracy, not as an extrapolation of representative
democracy as seen in national governance, but in a deliberative and participative form
enabled through digital communication. It suggests that the only appropriate response to the
liberalised economic structures and regulations that have led to such rapid globalisation - and
the resulting global problems - is a complex, decentralised and liberal political response from
global citizens.

This argument is elucidated over seven sections. Section two presents a brief overview of the
development of the theory and practice of democracy and suggests that cosmopolitan
democracy is the most advanced theory of global democracy. However, section three argues
that the institutional solution for enacting global democracy proposed by cosmopolitan
democrats – a world parliament – is untenable for several reasons. Instead, section four
argues for a reconceptualisation of the conditions of democracy and a shift away from
electoral involvement towards flexible and „always-on‟ networks of participation and
deliberation at the global level. It provides contemporary examples of such use of digital
communication technology, which suggest that this model is realistic.

Section five admits that global digital democracy is in a nascent form and so examines how
power-holding global institutions, both public and private, can be made more democratic
through digital technologies; in particular through the use of social media and a movement
towards open knowledge. Section six anticipates four problems with the model of global
digital democracy: the power of global private interest, the unrepresentative nature of those
who participate in the digital space, the likelihood that digital participation can solve complex
or zero-sum global problems and the language and digital divides. It responds to each of
these, suggesting that none conclusively weakens the model. The conclusion in section seven
reiterates the main arguments and calls for more research on global digital democracy and
urges increased uptake and protection of, and support for, open digital deliberation and
participation, anywhere in the world.

As the quote above advises, this paper is optimistic about the long term realisation of global
democracy.

1
BBC Radio 3, 2012. On 27 July, 2012, Daniel Barenboim conducted the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, made
up of players from Israel and several Arabic countries, in Beethoven‟s 9 th Symphony. The libretto from the
symphony – the „Ode to Joy‟ – is a call for universal brotherhood. Immediately after the concert, Barenboim
travelled across London to carry the Olympic flag at the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic
Games.

1


2. The historical development of global democracy

This section summarises the history of democratic thought, especially those developments
that could be considered precursors to ideas of global democracy. From democracy‟s first
recorded practice in Athens, through to the age of revolutions and the development of
representative democracy, to recent calls for global democracy, this section shows that efforts
to theorise systems of governance for world peace have been made throughout history, but
the term „global democracy‟ is a relatively new concept. This is partly because the use of the
term „global‟ in political terms is itself a recent construct. Following brief descriptions of
Athenian democracy, modern representative democracy, and advocacy for world federalism,
the term global is expanded and the demands for global democracy explained.

2.1. Democracy in ancient and pre-industrial ages

The first recorded experiments in democracy occurred in Athens around 500BC. The ancient
city state initiated the practice of decision-making by plebiscite – in this case, a show of
hands of all free men, the only eligible voters. This is now known as direct or unitary
democracy, and is practised only rarely today.2 Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye argue that
this unitary kind of democracy, whereby attempts are made to reach consensus among all
those present, is favourable to the modern „adversarial‟ kind of democracy, but that „no one
has figured out how to make unitary democracy work at a scale larger than the city-state.‟3

Following the fall of Athens to Alexander the Great, this form of direct democracy was lost.
The end of the Greco-Roman period led to the Dark and Middle Ages, in which systems of
monarchy flourished. During this time, governance systems were still debated, on religious
grounds in particular. Scholars such as Francisco Suárez questioned the validity of central
rule and earned the wrath of the Vatican by suggesting that power was legitimised from the
people upwards.4

In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia was signed, establishing the principle of national
sovereignty and self-determination in the governance structure of Europe. It followed a
historical trend of developments in governance following major wars: seen in Rousseau‟s call
for obedience to the „general will‟ following the War of Austrian Succession, and Kant‟s
development of the idea of perpetual peace following the bloody revolution in France.5 The
outcome of the Treaty of Westphalia, nation-state sovereignty, became the governance
standard around the world and continues to determine much of economic, social and political
affairs today. The most recently created nation state joined the community of states as
recently as 2011. This standard of „self-determination‟ established by Westphalia does not
necessarily include governing by the consent of the people within a nation state. In itself,
therefore, the treaty did not advance any kind of democracy, which only appeared again in
the late eighteenth century.

2
Most notably the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus, though it is likely that in smaller local
governments similar practices are informally followed.
3
Keohane and Nye, 2002:228
4
Murphy, 1999.
5
Hemleben, 1943: 182-183.

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2.2. Democracy in the industrial and modern ages

The age of revolutions, particularly in France and in what became the United States of
America, heralded the return of rule by consent and the end of monarchies, across Europe at
least. Rather than the direct democracy practised in Athens, revolutionaries constructed
systems of representative democracy based upon constituencies and offices. While
revolutionary leaders moved across borders to spread their new ideas, democratic
developments were internal to the nation states.

However, the events did inspire Immanuel Kant to create a revolutionary theory of his own,
his plan for perpetual peace, which has formed a blueprint for scholars and activists since it
was first published in 1795. As well as immediate measures to secure the cessation of
violence, Kant provided three „definitive articles‟ that would form the basis of perpetual
peace: state governance by republicanism, a federation of states under international law, and
one world citizenship law. This latter article is even today a revolutionary idea, marking Kant
as one of the earliest global thinkers. Kant wrote that the third article was based upon
peoples‟ „common possession of the surface of the earth‟.6 Again ahead of his time, Kant
called for a world conference to establish the legal principles of the perpetual peace and a
league of nations.7

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, building upon the work of Suaréz, Grotius, Kant and
others, nation states began to build a body of international law and a number of functional
international organisations in fields such as health and communications. This consolidated the
position of the nation state in governance. Even following the traumatic, globally-affecting
world wars of the twentieth century, the world peace conferences formed of nation state
government representatives do not create any new systems of governance. Though the United
Nations has furthered the cause of democracy at the national level, by playing a significant
role ending colonialism and supporting free elections, it does not deserve the epithet
designated by Paul Kennedy in his book „Parliament of Man‟. 8 An idea for the UN
representatives to be elected by the nations passed without discussion at the San Francisco
conference.9

Although never realised, several more radical suggestions for governance changes were made
at the time of the foundation of the UN. In particular, considerable attention was given to
world government. Both politicians and academics argued for the development of a
democratic world federation, a concept which had grown in popularity between the world
wars. The matter was discussed in US politics, and the US Congress passed a non-binding
„Sense of Congress‟ resolution stating their support for the „strengthening of the UN and to
seek its development into a world federation‟.10 It was signed by popular US politicians such
as John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, and more conservative figures too. At the same time,
several new books were published in favour of stronger supranational governance, including

6
Kant, 1897:19.
7
Patomaki, 2005: 111.
8
Jolly et al, 2009 ; Kennedy, 2006.
9
Camilieri, 1924.
10
Weiss, 2012: 25

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works on world, as opposed to international, law; on placing all nuclear fuel under the control
of the UN; and proposing a world constitution.11

The Cold War rapidly put a halt to further development of these ideas. The activities of
Senator Joseph McCarthy in the US led to a direct association of „international‟ with
„communist‟, and the discourse around the American role changed from one of the US
working with the world to build peace, to one of the US as a defender of freedom. Members
of one pro-federation organisation, the World Federalist Movement, resigned „in fear of
McCarthy ruining their careers.‟12 The post war period outside of the US was marked by
Western Europe‟s pursuit of regional integration, and the Global South‟s fight for
independence from colonialism. The idea of a world federation slipped out of intellectual
consciousness and any ideas of global democracy were replaced by schools of realism and
power relations.13

2.3. Democracy in the post-modern, global age

In the decades after the collapse of the movement for world federalism, the word „global‟
began to be used in academia and beyond.14 In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, the
rise of neoliberal policy and extensive deregulation helped fuel the process of globalisation,
which saw capital movements move around the world more freely, 15 encouraged by
international financial institutions throughout the 1980s. The term, and the issues associated
with it, perhaps reached worldwide public consciousness in the 1990s, highlighted by the
Battle of Seattle in 1999.

The use of „global‟ to describe business and social affairs reflects the fact that globalisation‟s
effects went far beyond the legal relations of states and the pursuit of the prevention of
violent conflict, the main aims of the UN. In this post-modern, global age, academics
question the nation state as the appropriate atomic structure for analysing governance issues
beyond national territories. Scholars discuss the power of transnational business and activist
organisations. Better communication technology, as well as growth in international travel,
allows networks of interest, from tax authorities to terrorists, to build greater connections.
These elements render a new world in which the nation state struggles to maintain control of
national policy, let alone its voice at the world table.

Members of the public, hundreds of millions of whom struggled to achieve democratic rule
only recently in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa, now find themselves
affected by forces they have no say over. Citizens going about their business in one state find
themselves buffeted by global financial shocks, climate change, or pandemics caused halfway

11
Ibid.
12
Citizens for Global Solutions, n.d..
13
The World Federalist Movement today campaigns on less controversial issues than its name suggests.
Headquartered in New York with a staff of 50 and members across 80 countries, it appears to carry some weight
in international politics. The organisation points to recent successes such as the creation of the International
Criminal Court and, more optimistically, the development of the Responsibility to Protect. World Federalist
Movement – Institute for Global Policy, 2010.
14
Scholte, 2005: 43-44.
15
Ferguson et al, 2010.

4


around the world. New global public bads emerge in the forms of transnational terrorism and
drug or people-trafficking networks. Power becomes fragmented and multi-scalar, operated
by unelected technocrats or private corporations richer than entire states, with accountability
not to the people, but to bond markets, boards or a small coterie of governments.

Thus a problem of democracy is renewed. Nation states and their representative parliaments
no longer seem appropriate. The issue is best summarised by George Monbiot: “everything
has been globalized except our consent. Democracy alone has been confined to the nation
state.”16

This is not only a problem for democrats, but for anyone interested in effective global
relations or solutions to global problems. There is a link, as the UN-sponsored Commission
on Global Governance points out, between legitimacy and effectiveness.17 More
emphatically, Jan Arte Scholte argues that a lack of accountability in global governance is „a
core challenge for anyone concerned with obtaining decent human lives for all in the twenty-
first century.‟18 It is for this reason that Richard Falk suggests that global democracy
„presents itself as an attractive normative project...the classless achievement of a more just
social and political order.‟ He argues that without global democracy, „there will have to be
some hegemonic rule that guides global affairs, or there will be dysfunctional chaos.‟ 19 Faced
with these latter two options, global democracy seems favourable, but calls for such political
structures are not supported by nation state governments. Paradoxically, the powerful nation
states, who consistently support democratisation within other nation-states, do not apply the
principles of self-determination to the global level.20

In sum, this new economic and political structure „demand[s] a new normative and
conceptual understanding of democracy.‟21 The most radical response to that demand has
been from cosmopolitan democrats. This theory, developed in the 1990s by David Held and
Daniele Archibugi, calls for a renewed model of democracy to create governance structures
that account for the changed economic structure. David Held‟s model attempts to protect
individual autonomy against multinational forces through protection of democratic law across
a scale from local to global. In reality, he argued, this required a supranational criminal court,
an international court of justice with compulsory jurisdiction, and reform of the UN Security
Council.22 Daniele Archibugi uses the same normative framework to suggest five priorities
for global institutions: restrict the use of force, support acceptance of cultural diversity,
strengthen self-determination, monitor internal affairs and develop participatory management
of global problems.23 It is this latter priority, italicised here, that has been neglected in much
of the discussion of global democracy.

16
Monbiot, 2003: 1.
17
Commission on Global Governance, 1995: 66.
18
Scholte, 2011: 4.
19
Falk, 2012: 278-279.
20
Falk and Strauss 2001: 220.
21
Bohman, 2007: 3.
22
Held, 1995.
23
Archibugi, 2008: 88.

5


2.4. Summary

This section argued that ideas of global democracy developed only recently. The power of the
Westphalian model of nation states has, since its earliest existence, overcome any alternative
structure that might meet the goals of world peace. Today, when global social and economic
structures touch almost all areas of human behaviour, governance concerns go far beyond
violent conflict, but the same structural problems remain. The response to the lack of consent-
based governance at the global level has been new strands of political thought. This section
highlighted the views of cosmopolitan democrats, themselves guided by earlier work,
especially by Kant. The cosmopolitans have not met with universal acclaim, but as Robert
Keohane and Joseph Nye suggest, „designing effective and legitimate institutions is [the]
crucial problem of political design for the twenty-first century.‟24 The next section, therefore,
reviews the most commonly held suggestion among cosmopolitans and those remaining
world federalists: a world or global parliamentary assembly.

24
Keohane and Nye, 2002: 242.

6


3. Global representative democracy

This section describes the various conceptions of a world parliamentary assembly in order to
deliver representative democracy at the global level. It briefly reviews different academic
suggestions, the reasons to support such a parliament, and a contemporary political campaign
for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. It then examines the problems with these conceptions and
suggests that the potential for effective design of such an institution, the likelihood of its
creation and its potential legitimacy are weaker than the advocates suggest.

3.1. A world parliament

Over the last 15 years, various models of a world parliament have been suggested. The
authors of the models struggle with the perceived conflict between equal representation of the
world‟s people and fears about a truly representative organisation‟s efficacy. George Monbiot
eschews national borders, instead dividing the world into ten-million-member constituencies
across borders, with direct elections in each – a direct reflection of parliamentary systems in
the Commonwealth.25 Joseph Camilleri et al propose a more complex system of
parliamentary houses - a global parliament rather than a world parliament – which would
include groups of leaders from transnational corporations, labour groups, civil society
organisations, and ultimately a UN Parliamentary Assembly linked to the existing General
Assembly.26 Andrew Thompson and Jan Aart Scholte suggest that to avoid the difficulties of
designing a new world parliament, a small democratic step could be taken by the formation of
a Civil Society Forum to enhance the voice of the marginalised in global governance.27

Daniele Archibugi focuses on the role of such a parliament. He envisages a World
Parliamentary Assembly that would have the authority to decide which level of government
should take a decision in the case of a transnational issue. This is a unique idea which suits
the cosmopolitan theory of respecting subsidiarity. He proposes a parliament for the
administration, rather than the exercise, of power. The assembly would be directly elected
from existing states.28

Johan Galtung theorises several potential forms. One model would upgrade the power of
heads of state (perhaps a Group of 193), another would upgrade the power of heads of UN
agencies. Similarly to Thompson, Scholte and Camilleri et al, he also suggests capturing the
global element by involving houses of corporate and civil society actors. He argues that the
UN could appoint a civil society forum, which would meet in August of each year in order to
guide the General Assembly, which takes place each September. Ultimately, however,
Galtung argues that there is no alternative to worldwide direct elections, which are „bound to
come sooner or later.‟29

25
Monbiot, 2003.
26
Camilleri et al, 2000.
27
Thompson, 2008; Scholte, 2008.
28
Archibugi, 2008.
29
Galtung, 1995.

7


Scholars have also discussed the method of establishing such a parliament. They argue that
this could occur by UN Charter alteration, but that is unlikely to occur due to the veto powers
of the permanent five members of the Security Council.30 Greater opportunities lie outside the
UN system in a stand-alone treaty process between willing nations, as gave rise to the unique
Rome Statute, yet this would risk losing „global‟ legitimacy. The more informal suggestions
of fora of civil society organisations or corporate members could be unilaterally created by
those actors.

Proposals for a world parliament as a method of re-establishing consent-based governance
structures, as opposed to a different type of democratic system, are not always justified.
Direct democracy is largely ignored, perhaps on the assumption that, as Keohane and Nye
spell out, unitary democracy for six billion seems utopic. There seems to be an unwritten
assumption that there are only two types of democracy, as well as an assumption that
representatives do a relatively good job in the national systems, and that it is possible to
simply recreate the national structures at a global or world level.

Only a few scholars do not rely on these assumptions. Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss
suggest that a parliament is the only institution that allows „interest-group pluralism‟ to
flourish, compared with contemporary global governance in which „unelected interest groups
speak for the citizenry as a whole.‟31 Daniele Archibugi argues that a parliament would work
because it builds on existing institutional governance; efforts to go beyond this would entail a
world government, which risks creating a tyrannical centre and is likely to be unpopular.32
Public support would seem like an obvious reason for such a structure, but it is hard to
determine the will of the global public. The small amount of polling data that exists suggests
that the public of at least 18 countries are broadly positive towards the idea of „more
democracy at the UN‟ and the idea of electing their UN representative.33

The most advanced project derived from these ideas is the campaign for a UN Parliamentary
Assembly (UNPA), led by the Campaign for a Democratic UN. The UNPA would be
populated with representatives from national or regional parliaments until direction elections
were possible. The UNPA would perform consultation on the work of the General Assembly
before gaining „genuine rights of information, participation and control vis-à-vis the UN and
the organizations of the UN system.‟34 In 2011, the European Parliament voted to ask the
Council of the European Union „to advocate the establishment of a UNPA within the UN
system in order to increase the democratic nature, the democratic accountability and the
transparency of global governance and to allow for greater public participation in the
activities of the UN.‟35

There are several real organisations that currently seek to involve national parliamentarians at
the international or global level. The Inter-Parliamentary Union was formed in 1889 to „foster

30
UN Charter, Chapter XVIII, Article 108.
31
Falk and Strauss, 2001: 212.
32
Archibugi, 2008.
33
Council on Foreign Relations, 2009.
34
Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, n.d..
35
Bummel, 2011. The Council will decide on the matter in 2012.

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coordination [among parliaments]...exchange experiences...defend human rights...and
strengthen parliamentary democracy.‟36 The Union has been criticised for not supporting the
development of UNPA.37 Another group, Parliamentarians for Global Action, is more typical
of global governance institutions. Its 1300 members operate on an ad-hoc, non-partisan basis,
to rally support for relatively uncontroversial global issues. Several other organisations exist
to involve national parliamentarians in the work of specific institutions or issues, such as the
Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation Parliamentary Assembly, or the Climate Parliament. 38 Anne-
Marie Slaughter suggests that these networks tend to be unsuccessful compared with their
equivalent judicial and executive networks, due to the closeness of national legislators to their
constituencies (they are designed to be parochial, not global), the short-term nature of their
posts, and their broad job remit.39

3.2. Problems with a world parliament and representative democracy

The problems with the idea of a world parliament reflect the design and size of its
constituencies and the real likelihood of it being created. More fundamentally, the idea that
global democratic consent for governance can be concentrated at an apex does not
appropriately reflect the way global governance has emerged.

Firstly, it is difficult to determine a structure that could represent the world‟s population
without being too vast to function. Most of the models suggest that the constituency borders
should be nation states, which risks repeating a mistake made in the European Parliament: the
national constituencies create an adversarial parliament in which the public vote for a
member to „defend their interests.‟40 None of the suggestions made include the idea of global
proportional representation or a presidential system - perhaps felt so unrealistic that nobody
dared propose it - that would coalesce publics around issues instead of locations, thus leading
to more cosmopolitan global political parties. This would require party lists for voters to
choose from, and global political links are currently weak. However, history suggests that this
idea would have potential: in the early 1900s, transnational labour groups had millions of
members and were successful in creating certain influential labour standards.41 Slaughter
suggests that a global parliament would be 'huge and unwieldy, its members too removed

36
Inter-Parliamentary Union, n.d.. The IPU‟s strategy for 2012-2017 has three priorities, the second of which is
„greater international involvement of parliaments.‟ This includes developing a „parliamentary division to the
work of the United Nations and other multilateral institutions.‟ It does not mention a UNPA. IPU, 2011.
37
Daniele Archibugi called the IPU „part of the problem, not the solution, for global democracy.‟ Bummel,
2010.
38
For more, see www.pnowb.org, www.nato-pa.int and www.climateparl.net.
39
Slaughter, 2004: 105.
40
See the proposal of Duff, 2012.
41
For example, the Second International was influential in creating the norm of the 8-hour day, practised around
the world. The first and second „internationals‟ had many millions of members, but collapsed during World War
1, which proved nationalism to be a greater force than solidarity. Later iterations, notably Comintern, would
never quite gain the global policy setting power. Contemporary transnational Islamic parties such as Hizb-ut-
Tahrir have similarities with those older organisations. The Online Encyclopaedia of Marxism
(www.marxists.org/glossary) is a good source for information on these groups.

9


from their purported constituents' and would only have time to engage in 'vague
deliberation.‟42

Secondly, a world parliament may be unfeasible: the world is not yet ready for such an idea.
Thomas Weiss hints at the lingering concerns related to the fears of a world government,
suggesting that the idea is a taboo subject.43 The polling data mentioned above showed that a
world parliament has support from many countries around the world, though not from the
United States or Australia.44 More importantly, the reaction of large undemocratic states to
this idea is not known. Any parliament that did not include the world‟s most populous nation
could not claim to speak for the world. Jeffrey Laurenti argues that if the parliament lacks
authority and legitimacy in the absence of China, politicians from democratic nations will not
invest their time in it. He argues that UNPA is an idea whose time has not yet come.45

Thirdly, it is not clear that a parliament would be sufficient to close the legitimacy gap in
global governance. There would be a complex balancing act to perform with national and
regional legislatures, with some arbiter of decision-making necessary. Several of the models
above suggest that a parliament should include transnational corporations or civil society
organisations, which also raises doubts as to legitimacy and authority. While these are
powerful actors, they cannot pass for democratic representatives. George Monbiot suggests
that inclusion of civil society organisations would be a „disaster for democracy...the world's
peoples would be represented by animal welfare charities and cancer research trusts.‟46
Scholte points out that both progressive and conservative causes would have to be
represented in any such forum.47 Moreover, these organisations are already involved in global
governance. Their power should be scrutinised before it is increased.48

A similar, but more fundamental critique applies to the idea of the creation of another single
institution. A parliament would present authority and power in global governance as
something to be controlled at an apex. But it may be impossible for a single institution to
appropriately reflect the affairs of seven billion people. Heikko Patomaki suggests that
theorists are unable to overcome „the domestic analogy...[and the idea that] the experience
and institutions of modern, Western men in a domestic polity can and should be applied to

42
Slaughter, 2004: 237. This is arguably a problem at national levels too. As governance gets more complex
with interdependency across borders, but also across industries, social programmes and so on, representative
parliament looks weaker.
43
„I cannot recall a single undergraduate or graduate student inquiring about the theoretical possibility of a
central political authority exercising elements of a universal legal jurisdiction. Certainly no younger scholar
would wish to cut short her career by writing a dissertation about it.‟ Weiss, 2012: 24
44
Council on Foreign Relations, 2009.
45
Laurenti, 2009. Laurenti is the Director for Policy Studies at the UNA-USA, so can be assumed to be a UN
supporter.
46
Monbiot, 2003: 80-81.
47
Scholte, 2011: 310.
48
Freidrichs, 2005: 53. He refers to these groups as 'transatlantic civil society', quoting the Yearbook of
International Organisations, which shows that 85% of CSOs are headquartered in Europe or the US. One World
Trust did a review of the accountability of CSOs, IGOs, TNCs and in some respects, TNCs proved more
accountable than CSOs. Kovach et al, 2003.

10


the society of states or the world as a whole.‟49 The global democracy debate has defined
global democracy too narrowly by only looking to representative democratic models.
Patomaki instead suggests that global democrats should focus on the process of
democratisation, rather than on the idea of some utopian end-state. Global democracy must
be „grounded in realist analysis of context, actors, social relations and mechanisms, and its
transformative possibilities.‟50 For example, a more basic condition of democracy should be
pursued, such as the power of public deliberation. A better theory of global democracy would
understand a more flexible distribution of power.51

3.3. Summary

This section reviewed proposals for a world parliament, finding that most scholars lacked a
sufficient explanation for why democracy should be pursued in representative form at the
global level. In fact, in light of the problems considered above, it is clear that representative
democracy would be a weak response to the need for global consent-based politics. If, as
Patomaki suggests, a theory of global democracy must abandon the domestic analogies and
think in terms of democratising processes, then global democracy must be reimagined. In the
next section, this paper develops ideas inspired by digital communications and collaborative
digital production, and suggests that a global digital deliberative and participative democracy
is a stronger proposal.

49
Patomaki, 2005: 104. Tevio Teivainen, 2012, argues, similarly, that to „change that world beyond the
territorial limits of states, we need to develop new ways of thinking apolitically about transformative agency‟
(143).
50
Ibid.
51
Frey, 2005.

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4. Towards a global digital democracy

The last section showed that a world parliament may not solve the democratic deficit in
global governance. This section presents an alternative. It argues that digital communications
technology creates the conditions for global democracy. Rather than adapting the United
Nations system, or copying domestic models, it is inspired by Richard Falk, who suggests
global democracy can only emerge from a rupture in global society. 52 This rupture is
happening through the digital information and knowledge revolution. As seen throughout
history, communications technology will disrupt and change governance.53 This section is
partly descriptive of change already occurring and partly predictive of change over the next
few decades.

This section suggests that digital democracy is a „grass-roots‟ phenomenon. Millions of
micro-level campaigns or globally-oriented actions are digitally connected to become
democratic macro-demands for change or macro-solutions to specific global governance
problems. As opposed to elites inventing another top-down governance institution, the model
outlined here is of global democracy as a self-establishing force.54 It suggests that as our
understanding of democracy went from city-state level to representative national government,
it can move back towards the inclusive unitary approach of those city-states, but on a global
scale.55

This section proceeds by examining some of the fundamental elements of democratic
governance: public deliberation, public participation and, more controversially, a global
demos.56 The role of digital communications technology is discussed in regard to each
element.

4.1. Global deliberation

In this paper, political deliberation is taken to mean the public process of the expression of
individual views and of free engagement with others on certain subjects with a view to
determining the best course of action. In a deliberative space, good ideas rise, others fall,
through discussion of the merits among the public. In this space, the public creates social
norms, establishes priorities, and determines the boundaries which demarcate the realms of
possible action.57 At a global level, this is the space in which global governance is discussed
and the methods for its democratic control will be developed.

For deliberation to be effective and inclusive, people must have equal access to information
and the ability to publish their views. Slaughter says that the first „basic principle to ensure an

52
Falk, 2012. Mathias Koenig-Archibugi makes a similar argument, 2012:175.
53
A good example is provided by The Economist, 2011, which compared the arrival of the printing press and
reformation with social media and the Arab Spring.
54
Monbiot, 2003: 117.
55
Bohman, 2007: 20-21.
56
These were chosen from a range of democracy-concerned readings in the bibliography. Bohman, 2007 and
Dryzek, 2008 were particularly influential.
57
Doris Fuchs‟ discussion of discursive power describes these aspects well. Fuchs, 2005.

12


inclusive, tolerant, respectful and decentralised world order is global deliberative equality.‟58
Global democracy must establish this and maximise the possibilities of participation. While
Slaughter described informal deliberation as the goal of transnational networks of judges,
finance ministers or industry figures, global democracy goes beyond those groups to all
people everywhere. Martin Albrow and Fiona Holland suggest that „an open global society‟
will occur when „Jefferson‟s idea of the power of ideas is joined to Habermas‟ view of full
and free communication‟.59 Thus any inequality in communicative and receptive capacity
leads to unequal access to knowledge, which weakens the open discussion necessary for
global democratic development.

Greater global deliberation is essential not only as part of global democracy, but also to build
the case for global democracy, which is not yet widely understood. This is partly because
global governance and the need for better public oversight of, and accountability from, the
actors at that level is itself not well understood. This will take time, as will the cultivation of
global trust and solidarity. The dialectical process required across cultures and languages is
most eloquently described by John Dryzek:

“Democracy is about communication as well as voting, about social learning as well as
decision making; it is the communicative aspects that for the moment can most
straightforwardly by pursued in the international system.”60

Similarly, Amartya Sen says that democratic deliberation helps citizens to learn from each
other and helps society to form values and priorities.61 For global democracy, all citizens
must be able to join the conversation. Keohane and Nye use this principle to refute ideas of
global democracy, because the „world as whole lacks...a corresponding public space for
discussion.‟62 This is no longer true: the internet provides at least 2.3 billion people with a
digital voice; including one billion mobile broadband subscriptions, a number growing at
40% per year.63 Digital technology provides the platform for thousands of linked „spaces‟ for
constant global deliberation and the subsequent development of social norms, codes of
conduct, and reputations. This allows people to coalesce around an issue at any level from
local to global, reflecting the polycentric, multi-scalar nature of global governance. Within
ten years, a majority of humanity will have equal access to information, knowledge and the
ability to publish to the rest of the world. The ease and instantaneity with which good ideas or
arguments will be shared around the world can help establish a meritocratic global
discussion.

Throughout history, the „democratisation of knowledge has been a driving force in
democracy,‟ but there has never been such a democratisation as this.64 While problems of
language, access and culture will limit this deliberation – issues are discussed in section six –
the information revolution still represents a transformative change. Whereas other systems of
58
Slaughter, 2003: 29-30.
59
Albrow and Holland, 2008 : 270.
60
Dryzek, 2006: 25.
61
Sen, 1999: 10.
62
Keohane and Nye, 2002: 234.
63
International Telecommunication Union, 2012.
64
Camilleri et al, 2005: 26.

13


governance are challenged by the involvement of huge numbers of people, digital
deliberation benefits, as it sees greater engagement in micro issues, greater numbers of voters,
individual actions, and more connections between similar-minded people.

In James Bohman‟s description of a global deliberative space, he suggests that participants
must acknowledge freedom and equality for all others in the space, and themselves address
„an indefinite audience.‟65 Though Bohman was writing before the advance of social media,
both these ideas are good descriptions of the digital public square. Users do publish online to
an „indefinite audience‟: they do not know who will read their posts or the extent of support
for their views. Furthermore, the nature of the popular web platforms makes it hard to avoid
the acknowledgement of freedom and equality of others in the space: the designers of the
platform set the rules for posting and the same rules apply to all users.

Digital communications technology provides an open space for constructing whatever users
are able to produce, which gives people the opportunity to define their own deliberative
space. They might be invited to discuss a particular document online, but if it has no
relevance or interest to them, they can create a new deliberation space on a different subject.
Anonymous web spaces, such as Reddit, provide „fringe‟ areas of popular deliberation,
which, as the history of art demonstrates, are often productive of creative ideas. The
realisation of these digital spaces, compared with their absence in traditional media, supports
Scholte‟s call for „greater political space and more respectful hearing for radical critics of
predominant capitalist and rationalist structures of contemporary global politics.‟66 The vast
range of (potential) spaces also prevents monopolies of information. In 1995, Johan Galtung
warned of the danger of single global media ownership, such as the powerful network of
companies owned by Rupert Murdoch. He suggested that „global democracy is only as a
good as global media‟ and that an ideal exchange of information would resemble local
bulletin boards and town hall meetings.67 This is today a reasonable description of
contemporary global possibilities in the online space.

One of the most used online publishing spaces is Twitter. It has 150m active users, of whom
a large proportion are from the US, but the site sees significant numbers of Brazilian,
Indonesian and Malaysian users too.68 Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, in which users
have 140 characters to make their point, whether banal or profound. They may include one or
more links to substantiate their post. Users can repost, reply or „mention‟ other users‟ posts
and discussions can be followed by anyone. Reputations are built, and users gain followers
based upon trust and the quality of their posts. A few celebrities bring real world recognition
with them and so start with a larger audience than merit would suggest, so it is not a perfectly
democratic platform. However, it is completely open: any user can ask questions of any other
user, or follow any other conversation. The growth in user numbers of the platform shows
greater numbers of politicians, activists and non-elite people are converging in this one space.

65
Bohman, 2007: 60.
66
Scholte, 2011: 341.
67
Galtung, 1995: 28.
68
Graham and Stephens, 2012.

14


Even in undemocratic countries, microblogging is opening possibilities for discussion and
establishing an understanding of deliberation. China‟s most popular microblog is Sina Weibo,
which is regulated, but not owned, by the government, and has several hundred million users.
While there is little English-language analysis of this platform so far, anecdotal evidence
suggests that local governments are willing to engage with citizens through microblogging
and that Weibo has been the catalyst for growing online activism with impact in the real
world.69 These spaces represent the global public square necessary to build global
deliberative democracy.

4.2. Global participation

The development of a global deliberation space will not necessarily lead to consent-based
global policy, because there is no clear route to move from an idea agreed upon in global
discussion to global action. This is as opposed to national governance, in which public
deliberation might lead to a motion in a political party, further discussion by elected
representatives and eventually legislation. This subsection suggests that global digital
democracy could instead develop global policy and its delivery through global digital
participation.

In essence, digital collaboration and participation among the public in global affairs is the
most transformative effect of digital technology for democracy. Rather than activism, in
which people aim to encourage or place pressure on governments to act, the global public, or
enthusiasts and experts among them, develop projects which deliver the global services that
they themselves desire. This reflects a shift towards functional collaboration to achieve
certain goals, similarly to some of the earliest international organisations, rather than places
of political debate, such as the post-war international organisations and particularly the UN
General Assembly.70 It is the desire for solutions to particular problems that drives public
involvement and voluntarism. So far these examples mainly involve producing more and
better quality information on global issues to influence policy, but in future, delivery of
global policy could arise through digital participation.

One of the earliest digital examples of the transformative effects of technology, which created
a small, but important revolution in global health governance, was the development of
ProMED-mail in 1994. The service, which still operates, is a simple email list of doctors and
public health technicians, used to share news of disease outbreaks anywhere in the world.
This small, open association had significant effects on traditional international health
relations. Prior to its existence, infectious disease information was shared by government
medical departments to other governments through the World Health Organisation (WHO),
which could not prevent a country from hiding information on disease outbreaks. ProMED‟s
data, from practitioners not governments, was more reliable, so much so that when the WHO
developed new International Health Regulations in 2005, member states agreed that the
WHO could draw on this non-official information. This simple digital tool ended the official

69
The Economist, 2012a and The Economist, 2012b. See also Hewitt, 2012 and Magistad, 2012.
70
Lederer and Mueller, 2005: 2.

15


monopoly on global health information, and empowered medical professionals in any locale
to act globally.71

Other examples suggest that digital participation can deliver global goods regardless of
existing organisational efforts. The best contemporary examples come from the provision of
information, particularly using digital mapping, in which users work to provide stronger
evidence bases for global policy. In the global environmental sphere, technology is being
used to link users to collectively monitor deforestation in the Amazon. This is something
international organisations, such as the UN Environmental Programme, have been unable to
do. The Sistema de Alerta de Desmatamento platform connects local and global activists,
harnessing the latter to monitor copious real-time satellite data to feed information to the
former, who can take appropriate action to prevent further deforestation. Their joint actions
will have positive effects globally: helping limit climate change. In this case, support was
provided by Google Earth Outreach, whose manager suggests that a „collaborative
monitoring community, powered by the internet, [has] never been possible before.‟ 72 This is
one example of the active participation that individuals can take in global governance,
regardless of their nationality, expertise or affiliation.

There are even examples of participation in global security governance, a field generally seen
as managed by realpolitik and powerful states, with limited global normative restrictions. An
end to the monopoly of information on global security through digital participation could
herald more democratic solutions. One example of a digital development that helps to build
that evidence base is Ushahidi, a crowdsourced disaster or conflict monitoring platform, built
by volunteers in Kenya to allow citizens to send information via SMS messages to a central
web platform. It has proved fast and accurate in mapping real-time local events in a range of
different contexts, opening the data gathered to the world for analysis and response.73 Clearly,
an actual digital participative response, in the event that the data called for intervention, is
difficult to imagine. The crowd only provides the information, it does not control the physical
means to intervene. However, there are emerging signs that private actors – such as hackers -
could play a role in punishing transgressors of global democratic norms.74

The above examples will be indicative of greater and more complex digital participation in
the future. Those interested in global governance solutions will not need to lobby national
representatives to present their views at an international organisation, instead they will build
collaborative solutions themselves. This presents questions of accountability and legitimacy
of those taking part, which are discussed in section six.

71
International Society for Infectious Diseases, n.d., and Zacher and Keefe, 2008: 48.
72
Souza, 2012. While Google support necessary now, good candidate for crowdfunding.
73
See www.ushahidi.org. For an evaluation of its use in Haiti, see Morrow et al, 2011. Even more remarkably, a
charity called Satellite Sentinel is using commercial satellite imagery of Sudan to prove when and where attacks
happened. It is easy to imagine how this data could be opened up for teams of volunteers to review, highlight
and feed to the world (see www.satsentinel.org).
74
Individual hackers under the label „Anonymous‟ have already acted several times in what they believe to be
the global public good, see, e.g. Perlroth, 2011.

16


4.3. Global demos

Demos is a Greek word (δημοι) meaning „the people or commons of an Ancient Greek state,
especially a democratic state, such as Athens.‟75 It has become used as a term for a political
community in a specific location; it is in this sense that this paper uses it. The demos is
relevant because a criticism levelled against the idea of global democracy is that there is no
global demos: no shared sense of political union and no common global value set.76 The term
is not entirely uncontroversial. This subsection reviews three varied approaches to demos:
firstly that the demos already exists, secondly that democracy in fact creates a demos, and
thirdly that demos is actually unnecessary for global democracy. The subsection then shows
that digital democracy helps establish demos, whichever approach is taken.

Firstly, the argument that a global demos already exists can be made by reference to our
„common humanity.‟ This is most clearly demonstrated in the establishment of the United
Nations and in the lofty preamble, as well as in the legally-binding articles of the UN Charter.
The concepts of self-determination, human rights and above all, peace, were supported by
every country on earth having legally ratified the Charter of the United Nations.77 It is likely
that the vast majority of people on earth at least support the goal of peace.

The second argument is that a demos is a product of socialisation, in which institutions are
created first. Archibugi provides the example of the United States of America to demonstrate
this. He argues that a demos - „Americans‟ - was constructed by the institution of nationhood
and the symbols of the flag and anthem that were created by a small group of leaders. 78 In
Europe, alternatively, institutions have failed to create a demos, perhaps in part due to the
political design mentioned earlier. Europe is instead a loose group of national demoi.79
Similar arguments that suggest a global demos would be built from global democratic
institutions have been suggested by several other scholars.80 Given that any kind of group
consciousness, whether it concerns values, community or solidarity, is likely to be a product
of social interaction in which a cognitive shift occurs due to arguments, context, events, and
learning, this seems like a reasonable argument.

The third argument that demos is in fact a myth can be split into three: it does not exist, or it
exists in a multiple and flexible sense, or it is in fact a misleading and wrongly-pursued idea.
Firstly, in an example like India, it may be hard to identify a demos, but India can still claim
to be a democracy. The country is home to a wide variation of races, religions, languages and
a complex social caste system. This plurality could prevent the existence of any kind of
political „community‟ or shared values. Yet all Indians receive the same legal voting rights, at
75
"demos, n.". OED Online, 2012.
76
Keohane and Nye suggest that a demos must have a „degree of shared understanding.‟ 2002: 236. Bohman
suggested that Demoi (peoples) be used instead at the global level. Bohman, 2007:2. See also, Marchetti, 2012:
23; Laurenti, 2009.
77
UN Charter, Preamble, Article 1(1-5).
78
Archibugi, 2008: 143.
79
Voters elect an MEP for their region, rather than voting from a party list to represent their views for the whole
of Europe. There is a campaign for the European Parliament to move towards x-European seats: Duff, 2012.
80
Murphy, 1999 describes the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on collective consciousness and the
foundation of unity. Chardin argues that eventually humanity will come together in a world public space.
Murphy himself argues that there has to be some sort of „rupture‟ that provokes this (p.126).

17


least in theory. Global democracy may be the same: a vast plurality of views, cultures,
religions and other divides exists, but individuals have the same access and voice in the
global digital public space. Secondly, cosmopolitan democrats would argue that there is no
such thing as a single global demos. Instead, the demos is constantly changing. Following
globalisation, demoi form around issues, fates or identities, such as „climate refugees‟ or
indigenous peoples, rather than locations.81 As a result, global democracy would require
flexible decision-making structures and institutions. Lastly, Jurgen Habermas argues that the
idea of demos is actually normatively backward. He argues that politics must be decentralised
and be rid of the metaphysical and inaccurate assumption of a „people‟ whose „collective
will‟ is expressed. Instead we must recognise the individual as part of the whole.82

A conception of global digital democracy can satisfy any of these approaches to demos.
Firstly, if demos is a sociological construct, global digital democracy‟s prospects are
strengthened by the effects of digital social networking platforms. Seventeen years ago, well
before the internet‟s broad public use, the Commission on Global Governance claimed that a
„new generation...are neighbours to a degree no other generation on earth has been.‟83 If
globalisation has created a „smaller world‟ then digital technology has connected it, eroding
the restrictions of time and distance, and potentially reducing „otherness‟. Internet users can
today connect with others on platforms such as Facebook, on which nearly one in seven
people on the planet is now represented.84 This may increase people‟s awareness of the
effects of their actions upon others, which, coupled with the ability to empathise, could create
a sense of community necessary for a global demos.

Secondly, if a demos must be flexible and multi-scalar, as cosmopolitan democrats would
argue, digital democracy copes well with this: it allows the creation of platforms at little to no
cost and allows multiple membership of demoi or demos, which are flexible according to
peoples‟ wishes. This is a unique element provided by digital democracy: individuals can join
in any debate or participatory project that interests them, anywhere in the world, thus
removing the problem of constructing fixed constituencies for a world parliament. The digital
space allows what Bohman called „distributed publics.‟85 A good example of this is in „urban
publics‟ for the governance of cities. Local communities tend to lead deliberation on local
subjects, but they are likely to experience common problems and thus could share common
solutions with similar cities around the world. Digital communities allow networking across
the globe on these matters, sharing ideas and values. Membership of this „global urban
demos‟ does not render the city-dweller any less a part of their national or regional demos.86

Thirdly, if the idea of demos is in fact misleading because it discounts the individual, as
Habermas claimed about the falsehood of „collective will‟, digital democracy does not have
to repeat this mistake. Digital deliberation can occur at an individual-to-individual level. In
larger participative projects an individual‟s view can be uniquely recorded as well as

81
The author is grateful to Prof. Will Coleman for this point.
82
Habermas quoted in Bohman, 2007: 31.
83
Commission on Global Governance, 1995: 356.
84
Facebook claims it has 955 million monthly active users. See Facebook, 2012.
85
Bohman, 2007: 15.
86
In this sense, cities are especially useful spaces for helping people understand a multilevel form of democracy.

18


categorised as part of a group. This allows a more complex understanding of political views
and renders political labels such as left or right less useful. The technology allows clear
macro-impressions to be made from the vast quantity of individual data. Digital technology
enables this to occur in real-time, and data-visualisations can be performed to increase public
understanding of macro trends.

4.4. Summary

This section proposed a reimagining of global democracy as a ongoing process of global
deliberation and participation in the digital space. It suggested that digital democracy
provides a solution to any problems, should they exist, with the creation or existence of a
global demos.

The democratisation of knowledge and information is the first step towards and main focus of
contemporary global digital participation, but it is possible to conceive of participative global
policy-making and ultimately even of better global policy delivery. Some of these long-term
issues are dealt with in section six. The next section, however, suggests that while the
foundations of global digital democracy are being created, digital communications
technology also has positive implications for the current system of global governance. It
suggests that the existing institutions of global governance, currently far more powerful than
global participatory movements, can be democratised through digital means.

19


5. Democratising the global governance institutions

This paper argues that global democracy is not best served by a world parliament. Instead it
suggests a digital deliberative and participative democratic model, which will be a constant
project over the coming decades. Currently, digital deliberation and participation does not
lead to sufficient global action. Instead, the making and delivery of global policy rests with
the institutional bodies of global governance: any effort to create global democracy must aim
to democratise these institutions. Robert Dahl believed that international organisations could
never be democratic, partly since they lack elected officials.87 But the challenge of global
governance institutions is much broader than only international organisations. Global digital
democracy will have to drive openness and transparency in civil society organisations,
transnational corporations as well as international organisations.

James Bohman argues that the „weak publics‟ of the internet can only demonstrate global
opinion and that they will become strong only when they are able „to exercise influence
through institutionalised decision procedures.‟88 The examples in the fourth section have
shown „internet publics‟ are capable of acting entirely independently, but in the short term,
perhaps over the next decade, this section supports Bohman‟s view. It suggests that
democratisation of global governance institutions can be pursued via non-electoral
accountability and recognises some potential role for digital electoral accountability too. It
then presents two subsections on social media and open data, two popular themes in digital
media that will help democratise existing institutions.89

5.1. Non electoral accountability

Accountability for the exercise of power is not only provided by elections. This is most
clearly elucidated by Jan Arte Scholte, who suggests that there are four elements to
accountability in a system in which A has power over B.90 First, transparency is required to
understand where power lies and how that power is exercised by A in a way that might affect
B. Second, consultation is required where A intends to act in a manner that may affect B, in
order that B could alert A of this, and request changes to A‟s plan. Third, independent
evaluation is required to demonstrate the true effects of A‟s action upon B. Fourth, correction
is required if B is unfairly or unjustly suffering from A‟s action, which should lead to
remediation, or even A‟s removal from power. This subsection argues that digital
communication allows B, the affected party, to directly work to hold A accountable. In the
paragraphs that follow, digital democracy is discussed in relation to each of these four
elements.

87
The other reasons that Dahl gives: global people are not all free to express themselves, there are no political
aprites, nor are there global citizens equal under one law. Archibugi, 2008: 134-135.
88
Bohman, 2007: 82.
89
A note on word choice: „institutions‟ is used to capture more than „organisation.‟ Organisations are assumed
to have headquarters, letterheads, etc., whereas institutions are more flexible arrangements, such as such as the
Wolfsberg Group. A large international relations literature exists on this subject: Simmons and Martin, 2002,
gives a good overview.
90
Scholte, 2011.

20


Digital communication has reduced the resources required for institutions to become
transparent, voluntarily or not. Global institutions can publish more detailed and explanatory
web sites and open their databases or they can be subject to involuntary transparency through
leaks to digital platforms such as WikiLeaks or through less controversial methods such as
independently-authored Wikipedia pages. Digital information does not expire or disappear, at
least as long as server space exists. Once published it is nearly impossible to prevent its
dissemination around the world. Digital tools often automatically record author names and
the dates of any alterations. When Slaughter described the lack of transparency in global
transnational policy-making networks, she argued there was a need for „a public sphere for
the operation of government networks, to help citizens understand.‟91 This is now being
realised, along with a greater expectation of transparency.

Consultation between A and B can happen more often, more easily, globally, and far less
expensively due to digital media platforms that exist solely for the purpose of consultation or
through institutions‟ dedicated consultation web platforms; such as the World Bank‟s e-
publishing, which creates the space for online comment and discussion on draft
publications.92 While consultation such as this has yet to reach a large audience, and it
requires educated, literate audiences as well as enthusiasm by the institutions themselves, this
too reflects positively on global democracy. Digital technology allows large amounts of
consultation data to be handled or visualised easily, and by taking place in one shared digital
space, consultees may find it easier to work together on a constructive and powerful response.

Evaluation requires independent and thorough monitoring of the effects of A‟s action on B.
This may mean that vast amounts of data need to be analysed, and that independent authors
need to be found. Digital platforms allow data to be collected and analysed far more easily. It
can be done automatically by following „digital exhaust trails‟ or digital „footprints‟ left by
internet users, or „crowdsourced‟ by encouraging a large group to participate in data entry.93
This group-sourced data is harder to corrupt, and the global deliberative space renders
evaluation more independent and more stringent.94 When publishing an opinion or joining a
public debate in a digital space is a possibility for the majority of the world‟s people, the
quality of evaluation and its analysis should rise, as a greater number of worldviews are
brought together and the merits of an argument are more widely discussed.

Correction involves changing policies to mediate the ill effects of a policy, to compensate B,
or even to remove A. In this area global digital democracy can not yet achieve much, because
correction such as compensation requires a legal structure. However, some elements of
correction are possible: a digital community could decide to collectively remediate or support
B following A‟s action. Further, digital campaigns could put A under a public spotlight and,
by sheer moral weight, force a response. These campaigns could encourage member states to
act against an international organisation, or for consumers or shareholders to act against a
91
Slaughter, 2003:235. Slaughter did mention the role that „virtual spaces‟ could play, but was writing long
before the popularity of social media.
92
See, e.g., www.opendta.org. Digital consultation products can be bought off-the-shelf via companies such as
Delib: www.delib.net. Accessed 17 August, 2012.
93
Global Pulse, 2011.
94
See Goldman, 2004, for an example of problematic pre-digital „independent‟ consultation and evaluation
carried out by the World Bank in South East Asia.

21


transnational corporation, or for members to act against a civil society organisation. While
ultimate accountability through correction would be met by A losing their job, global digital
democracy can not yet force this, though some ideas for electoral accountability are
suggested in the next sub-section.

In sum, there is not yet a democratic revolution within global governance institutions, but
pressure is increasing on global institutions to open up and if necessary, publicly explain or
justify their actions. It is the connections that digital communication creates between the
institutions and the people, which allows the pursuit of non-electoral accountability. Every
time an institution‟s ideas, arguments, policies or data are published online, and each time a
member of staff of these institutions engages online, transparency is increased, and global
governance gains a little more democratic potential.

5.2. Electoral accountability

Electoral accountability, as practised in national governance institutions for parliaments,
mayors, presidents - and in some jurisdictions, judges or police chiefs - does not exist in the
same sense in the global governance institutions. These national elections present an
opportunity for holding power accountable and typically also represent a moment at which a
significant part of a population participates in their democracy. At the global level, this is
„easier to state than to implement‟.95 Not only is there the size of the electorate to consider,
but there are many areas of decision-making and power, which complicates the issue of to
whom accountability is owed, and from whom it should be expected.

Digital voting is already being used to shape global policy priorities, which may show the
potential of online voting. One recent example saw the organisers of the UN Conference on
Sustainable Development (or „Rio+20‟) establish a voting platform to try to make an
authoritative case for prioritisation of certain goals, which were presented to national political
leaders. The organisers first invited public deliberation on ten topics led by experts in each
field, then invited each topic group to nominate ten global goals. These were presented to the
global online public for a vote. The impact of the voters‟ decisions, such as whether national
negotiators were influenced by this global popular support, is not yet known and would
require further research. However, the ease with which the platform appeared to be
established and the level of response, thought to be over a million votes, suggests this type of
global online voting platform may become more common.96

The next step for electoral accountability in institutions would be global elections for
leadership positions. Throughout history, only one such election has been attempted. The
board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which coordinates the
naming protocol for the internet and has „an important impact on the expansion and evolution
of the internet,‟ ran global direct digital elections in 2000 to elect five board „members-at-
large‟ from nominations via the internet.97 Hans Klein suggests that while the election
presented several challenges, it broadly refuted sceptics who view global elections as

95
Archibugi, 2008 : 286.
96
See vote.riodialogues.org.
97
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, 2010.

22


impossible: the community deliberated sensibly and many typical national institutions sprung
up at the global level in response to the election.98 Despite ICANN‟s decision not to run
further elections – they subsequently changed their governance structure – their experience
proved that running such an election is relatively simple. The size of a potential digital
electorate is today both considerably larger and more reflective of the world population.

It is also possible for an interested party to simply hold a digital vote without the approval of
an institution. For example, one small global governance weblog set up an informal poll for
the recent election of the President of the World Bank and received 3,500 votes and generated
much debate.99 It is not hard to imagine a more professional operation and a substantial
education campaign resulting in a substantial electorate. The moral legitimacy conferred by
this vote might influence institutional voting reform or force national governments to reflect
the global verdicts.

One more radical proposal to establish electoral accountability for global governance
institutions, which would adequately reflect their complex, networked and multi-scalar
nature, would be to mirror this in a complex, multi-scalar digital voting platform. One
example of such a platform is LiquidDemocracy, developed by a German political party to
ensure that its members all had a say in the party‟s policy positions.100 It is based on
preferential and delegated voting: a member does not have to vote every time, they can
instead delegate their votes to somebody else, for as long as they trust them. The trustees can
allow the manager of their vote the authority to delegate further, such that votes „trickle up‟
in a digital network of delegated responsibility, which can flex according to reputations,
expertise and so on. People seeking change on an issue could request votes from individuals
or other delegates on different occasions, creating a hybrid between direct and representative
democracies – a flexible, flowing style of democracy. The preferential element in the voting
allows for ranked decision-making, which is arguably a more equitable way of finding
agreement across a range of opinions and a complex electorate. There will probably further
digital innovations of this sort in future.

5.3. Global governance institutions and social media

This subsection, and the next, look at two still-emerging digital themes and their application
to global governance. Social media refers to the information published by internet users and
the ability of connections to be made between them. In its most popular forms this includes
weblogs, social networking sites and photo and video sharing. Many global governance
institutions run their own weblogs and many more have a presence on social networking
sites. Some of the most popular institutions have over a million connections with individuals
or other institutions. Institutions use social media differently: some sign post their events or
publications, others, more promisingly, engage with citizens. For example, following Jim
Kim‟s election to President of the World Bank, the institution invited questions from the
public via social networks and he answered them in a web video, translated into four

98
Klein, 2001. Scholte, 2011b refers to „this unique experiment‟ as „highly problematic‟, but this is an unfair
reading of Klein‟s article.
99
See www.worldbankpres.org. Accessed 17 August 2012.
100
See www.liquiddemocracy.org. Accessed 17 August 2012.

23


languages.101 Compared with traditional media interviews, digital social networks allow
leaders of institutions to maintain a constantly-updated presence, to informally discuss their
work and to connect with the public in a way that forms a permanent, transparent, accessible
record.

Social media can help lead to institutional transparency, a vital part of non-electoral
accountability. Social media lowers the barriers to public inquiries and to finding useful
information already published. It also helps improve the consultation element by making it
easy for institutions or their staff to share ideas and proposals in the early stages of their
development, in a more informal style than a bureaucracy would typically encourage. For
example, consultation can be ongoing, rather than based on deadlines. Social media can also
improve evaluation processes, as individuals can easily check records of an institution‟s
previous claims and connections can be made to directly link those affected with those who
took the decision at the institution. The nature of the media means that every institutional
response to questions from the public will be open for discussion and comment. Improving
the correction element of non-electoral accountability is more of a challenge for social media,
though examples do exist of moral outrage changing the behaviour of such institutions,
particularly corporations, and this effect will grow with greater membership.102

The aspect of social media with the most transformative potential for institutions is the digital
presence of actual policy-making institutional staff members, rather than press officers or
corporate channels. If decision-making individuals operate openly in the digital space, then
the lack of political representation of the public is less of a problem, as they can communicate
directly with the international civil servant, factory manager or campaigner that concerns
them. People do not need to elect someone to „represent‟ their interests, they can pursue it for
themselves.103 Several leaders of global governance institutions have online profiles and use
them appropriately to respond to questions, to seek the opinions of others or to share their
current reading list.104 However, the majority either have no digital presence, or have a
presence, but use it only to broadcast their views, as opposed to debating issues with other
users. This may change as a generation of staff more exposed to digital technology gain more
senior positions in these institutions.

5.4. Global governance institutions and open data

The term „open data‟ refers to institutional databases which have been published online for
public use. A growing quantity of data held by national governments is being shared online,
such as databases of expenditure, pollution rates, reported crimes, and so on. One useful

101
World Bank, 2012. The World Bank reported that they received 1,000 questions and comments from 62
countries.
102
Consumer goods and apparel companies, such as Apple, Nike and Reebok, have come under the most
pressure. See, e.g., Sage, 1999.
103
The limits of this approach may not just be set by leaders of global institutions. Member states, donors or
private sector partners may discourage public engagement in an open manner.
104
Examples include the Administrator of UNDP, Helen Clark, the President of the International Fund for
Agriculture and Development, Kanayo Nwanze; the Head of the European Parliament, Martin Schultz; the CEO
of Virgin Group, Richard Branson; the director of the anti-poverty advocacy group One, Jamie Drummond; both
Bill and Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation, and many more.

24


global example showing what the global public can do with open data from nations is an
attempt by OpenSpending.org to track every government financial transaction in the world.105
Another smaller example, but with a similar potential for transformative effects, is the effort
by the Danish Refugee Council to publish real-time feedback on their aid programme from
those it is supposed to help. This is revolutionary in the aid field, in which agencies are
typically accountable only to their donors. By opening this data, any interested people around
the world can review it, comment, provide assistance or flag up concerns to the institution.106

The open data „movement‟ is largely led by a diverse group of national governments, some of
whom formed the Open Government Partnership in 2011 to „make governments better‟.107
The Open Government Partnership Declaration states that open governments will „increase
the availability of information about governmental activities, support civic participation [and]
increase access to new technologies for openness and accountability‟ among other things.
Countries can sign up to the declaration providing they meet minimum criteria. 108 This
clearly encourages transparency within national governance and membership of the OGP
club provides an incentive and social norming in favour of openness. However, the
partnership currently only includes national governments: it should be widened to include
global governance institutions.

Some such institutions already support the open data movement, such as the World Bank.109
Others, particularly in the science field, have always published their data, recognising the
value in opening up to fellow experts around the world.110 However, there are hundreds of
lesser known institutions operating in global governance that could become more transparent.
The data held by international financial institutions, for example, is presumably - or hopefully
- particularly robust and detailed; making global economic governance claims relies on
complex economic data. Yet these institutions are some of the most closed in global
governance.111

In terms of open data and the private sector, extractive industries have been under pressure
from activists for several decades to „publish what you pay‟ to display any corrupt payments
to governments. Opening the data of powerful private institutions would expand this effort
and generate useful information for the global public. Open Corporates, an enthusiast-created
platform, scrapes public information on over 40 million corporations in 52 jurisdictions and
publishes it in a user-friendly way online. They argue that „few parts of the corporate world
are limited to a single country, and so the world needs a way of bringing the information
together in a single place, and more than that, a place that's accessible to anyone, not just

105
See www.openspending.org. Their data includes most European and North American governments, but also
data on Cameroon and Kenya.
106
Ayala, 2012.
107
Open Government Partnership, n.d..
108
The criteria are based on a points system, by which your position on transparency indexes developed by
various NGOs (e.g. on access to information get points based on score in RighttoInfo.org index developed by
Open Society Initiative; on Citizen Engagement they use the EIU‟s Democracy Index). Makes some tough
demands of countries. The founding governments of the OGP were Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway,
Philippines, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States.
109
See data.worldbank.org.
110
For example, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change. See www.ipcc-data.org.
111
Mattli and Woods, 2009.

25


those who subscribe to proprietary datasets.‟112 Although the site relies upon good national
data reporting, it forms a useful example of the ways in which the open data movement is
likely to focus on the private sector over the next decade. The global private sector is likely to
show some intransigence, but simply opening non-proprietary data would create information
that could help change the system.113 This kind of data could help local activists vet factories
and working conditions, rather than relying on local government agencies that might not have
the will or capacity to enforce global standards.

In sum, open data improves transparency, making it easier to see the exercise of power and to
discuss and evaluate the use of that power. Further, it democratises the knowledge on which
global policy arguments are constructed. Open data allows anyone in the digital space the
opportunity to construct robust policy ideas and strengthen their arguments in global
deliberation. Online enthusiasts are also proving skilled at visualising data such that even a
weak grasp of data-handling or statistics does not prevent people from analysing such
information. Eventually, open data and the tools to use it will enable inspired individuals or
networked groups of globally-minded citizens to build their own constructive solutions
(„open solutions‟) to global governance problems.

5.5. Summary

This section has shown that the democratisation of global governance institutions, as with
global democracy as a whole, is most rapidly developing in terms of freer information, which
in this case improves non-electoral accountability most obviously through increased
transparency. The democratisation of knowledge and of access to global policy makers,
through open data and social media will create a more direct and participatory system. In the
long term, innovations in digital collaboration may render certain institutions resistant,
particularly those that are too bureaucratic to react to change or those whose principals,
member states or shareholders, would lose from democratisation.114 In the meantime,
however, these institutions hold the budgets and much of the knowledge necessary to scale-
up better solutions for management of global affairs. Democratising the institutions through
digital means is an important first development of a global digital democracy.

This paper has thus far presented an optimistic view of the potential of digital
communications technology to lead to global democracy. The next section considers the
limits of these arguments.

112
See www.opencorporates.org
113
Shadbolt, n.d.. The apparel company, Nike, have experimented with open data (Turoczy, 2011).
114
Keohane and Nye, 2002, suggest that a lack of transparency in international organisations is politically
efficacious for member states (p. 221).

26


6. Limitations of the democratising global governance agenda

This section attempts to anticipate criticism of the general thesis put forward in this paper –
ideas which have arisen throughout the paper, but that are listed here to avoid repetition. Four
potential criticisms are identified: the dangers created by neoliberalism, the issues with direct
or participatory democracy as the „tyranny of those who show up‟, the real limits of global
digital democracy when faced with complex or zero-sum problems, and finally the language
and digital divides that could prevent a true global public space. Each argument is outlined
and followed by a counterargument below.115

6.1. Global democracy is not possible alongside global neoliberalism

The first criticism suggests that as neoliberal forces drove globalisation, the interests of
global capital-owners will compete with any attempt to build a global democracy that would
reflect the interests of everyone else. Bhupinder Singh Chimni criticises cosmopolitan
democrats for their failure to recognise the importance of economics in global politics.116 In
his view, in order to enact global democracy, the economic system must be changed. There
are several examples of the effects of economic globalisation on global governance, including
in global economic governance, which is led by international financial institutions, at which
voting structures are determined by national income, not by population. These international
organisations, along with the Group of Seven, Eight or Twenty countries, the Bank of
International Settlements and several private organisations, have been criticised for coming
under the undue influence of private interests.117 Another more subtle example of private
influence is shown in the distinction between the World Economic Forum, an agenda-setting
organisation whose annual conference presents many opportunities for networking between
business leaders and political leaders, and the World Social Forum, which fails to generate
the same discursive influence.

The response to this argument is twofold. Firstly, it is conceivable that the norm of
transparency and accountability, as outlined in section five, will grow even in transnational
corporations. Clearly, the private sector, as befits its name, is the most closed part of global
governance. Yet everything this paper has described thus far suggests that private sector
organisations too will be unable to avoid opening up; if not they will face creative destruction
at the hands of more collaborative, cooperative production methods. This relates to the
second, broader and more fundamental response to Chimni: digital participation is something
of a revolution itself. It is driving non-market-driven collaboration and production and it is
changing the traditional assumption of the value of intellectual property rights. In digital
communities, users direct their resources, often time and expertise rather than money, based

115
This paper assumes throughout that democracy is an appropriate state for global governance to aspire to. As
Amartya Sen says: democracy „is intrinsically important to human life ... [and has a] constructive function in the
formation of values. These merits are not regional in character.‟ 1999:16. Yet this is not uncontroversial.
Arguments from various scholars in fields such as critical political theory and anthropology suggest that the
universalisation of democracy is not value-neutral. Due to limited space, and the underlying assumption of the
paper, these are not dealt with here, but the author is grateful to Professor Will Coleman for his guidance on this
issue.
116
Chimni, 2012.
117
Mattli and Woods, 2009.

27


upon interest or need, not on wage or price signals. According to classical economics, this
does not happen, least of all with people who have never met.118 While there is a risk that
private interests will attempt to exercise discursive power in the digital space as they do in the
offline world, the greater publishing freedom and overall transparency that the space provides
will limit their success.

A counter-response from Chimni might be that in this global deliberative and participative
democracy, it is still wealthy individuals, those who have benefitted from the economic status
quo, who sit in the vanguard. The most popular digital social network is run by an American
company, the governors of internet rules are almost universally Western, and a substantial
majority of material on the internet is in the English language.119 Further, much of the digital
public space relies on privately-owned hardware: servers based in a offline location in a
specific legal jurisdiction, which may, for example, require oversight by local intelligence
agencies. Public spaces also rely on private companies, who may come under pressure from
governments to restrict the ability of global public platforms, as seen in the difficulties that
Wikileaks experienced in its relationships with American host companies.120

The counter-response above is limited by the fact that there is growing involvement in the
creation of digital spaces for democratic goals outside North America and Europe. The
Ushahidi platform, mentioned above, was developed in Kenya and has been used by
organisations across the world.121 Brazil is home to Imazon, the charity partnering with
Google to design crowdsourced forest monitoring. India is home to world-leading
programmers, developers and civil society activists responsible for websites such as I Paid A
Bribe, a digital accountability platform. Anyone with access to the internet, an idea and some
coding knowledge has the capacity to build solutions. While they may not currently have the
market power of Google or Facebook, they will in time. Furthermore, regarding the collision
of private and public interests, several recent online campaigns have been successful in
preventing private sector efforts to increase intellectual property protection in the digital
space.122 This hints at both the growing political power of internet freedom defenders, but
also at a growing understanding of the value digital collaboration among legislators. Finally,
the risks of interference by governments or private interests can be mitigated through the
distribution of infrastructure and fall-back infrastructure around the world. In sum, the vision
of global digital democracy that this paper provides reflects „the decentralised face of global
democracy‟, an idea which Chimni himself supports.123

118
This is comprehensively examined in Benkler, 2006.
119
Facebook is headquartered in California. On language see Lobachev, 2008. On internet governance see
Mackinnon, 2012.
120
The Economist, 2010.
121
The short film on the Ushahidi website gives several examples.
122
In the United States, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was abandoned after concerted action by internet
activists, in Europe the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement met a similar fate, with help from the European
Parliament.
123
Chimni, 2012: 245.

28

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