Background

Following the pilot exercise on Civil Society and Accountable Global Governance, the project on Conceptualising Global Democracy (CGD) was launched in mid-2008 as the first in a series of five main endeavours of the Building Global Democracy programme. 

The CGD project starts from the observation that ideas of what 'global democracy' entails are usually vague and/or unconvincing. Countless commentators have bemoaned the failings of democracy in relation to contemporary globalisation. However, there is a general lack of clarity regarding what 'rule by and for the people' means in the context of global politics around, say, climate change, financial crises or internet communications.

Several key questions arise. By what principles and institutions are global problems governed? What is the nature of 'the people' or 'the demos' when it comes to global affairs? With what processes could 'rule by and for the people' be achieved in global politics?

Underlying all of these points is the more general question of whether traditional models of democracy inherited from the nation-state are applicable to the regulation of global issues; or whether a more global world requires that notions of democracy be reformulated. In the latter case, in what ways and how extensively do ideas of democracy need to be reconceived?

A number of social and political theorists have begun to examine such questions over the past two decades. However, the debate remains underdeveloped, particularly as thinkers on the subject have tended to remain separated along regional, cultural, disciplinary and ideological lines. Moreover, little interchange has transpired between scholars and the practitioners who would need to put ideas of global democracy into action.

Aims

The CGD project seeks to address these past oversights and generate intellectually provocative and politically effective new ideas about the meaning of global democracy.

To this end the project has brought together ten innovative thinkers on (global) democracy from around the world as authors in an interregional, intercultural, interdisciplinary, ideologically plural and action-oriented dialogue on conceptions of global democracy. The authors are drawn from the ten BGD regions and span a broad spectrum of humanities and social studies. Their theoretical perspectives range across Austronesia, Confucian, feminist, Gandhian, Islamic, liberal, postcolonial, socialist and other approaches. The authors furthermore comprise diversity of age, gender and race.

Like all Building Global Democracy programme activities, the CGD project does not transpire in an academic cocoon. Practitioners from civil society and official circles are primary discussants of and advisers to the researchers at the project workshop and after.

To be sure, the CGD project does not aspire to forge a consensus out of the many different perspectives that come to it. The inspiration is rather that dialogue among persons and approaches that do not otherwise meet can enrich the knowledge of all concerned and generate innovative thoughts and practices of global democracy.

Activities

The CGD workshop was held in Cairo on 6-8 December 2009, drawing 40 main participants from across the world. A workshop summary summarising the Cairo conversation is available in seven languages. Various other  presentations and publications will follow in 2010-11. It is intended to launch the eventual book from the project in Beijing.

Funding

Funding for the CGD project has been provided with grants of US$80,000 from the Ford Foundation and €30,000 from Oxfam Novib.