Each BGD project includes a workshop to encourage interregional, intercultural, interdisciplinary, ideologically plural and action-oriented discussion of the topic at hand. The Conceptualising Global Democracy (CGD) project convened its workshop on 6-8 December 2009 in Cairo. The event involved 40 core participants from 29 countries around the world, as well as a number of local contributors from Egypt.

Specialist authors attending the workshop heralded from ten world regions and brought highly diverse perspectives to the issue of conceptualising global democracy, including Austronesian culture, Confucian philosophy, feminism, Gandhian views, Islam, postcolonialism, post-communist socialism, and western liberalism. Read more about the authors.

The twenty respondents to the papers were policy practitioners from official circles and civil society groups. Like the authors, the discussants came from ten world regions and adopted highly diverse perspectives. Read more about the discussants.

Local participants from Cairo and surroundings also joined the workshop sessions, exploring issues of global democracy from their host perspectives.

Facilitating and coordinating the discussions were the ten BGD Convenors. (For more information about our Convenors, please see the About Us section).

The main points of the two and a half days of conversations have been summarised in a policy brief.

Participant feedback on the workshop, as garnered from evaluation questionnaires, was very positive. The theme, content, format, method and logistics - all of them highly challenging - generally worked well. Shortcomings remained, of course, including the hegemony of the English language, time constraints, and the desirability of more small-group discussion.

Comments included:

"Very commendable - a valuable method of dialoguing."

"A great mix. The strong presence of women was fantastic."

"Useful, thought-provoking, intense. I feel more 'capacitated'!"

"Hope the Building Global Democracy programme can play an important role in the era of globalization."