What does it mean?

The Conceptualising Global Democracy (CGD) project starts from the observation that a principal difficulty in building democratic governance of global affairs is a general lack of clarity regarding what ‘rule by and for the people’ means in the context of a more global world. What principles and practices would, could and should apply when handling global problems?

More specifically, the CGD project explores questions such as who are ‘the people’ when it comes to global affairs? What are the processes through which rule ‘by and for’ the people are achieved in global politics? Are traditional models of democracy applicable to the regulation of global issues? Or do notions of democracy need to be reformulated? If so, in what ways and how extensively do notions of democracy need to be reconceived?

How are we doing it?

To address these questions the CGD project asked innovative (global) democracy authors from the ten world regions to set out their ideas of what democracy could mean when applied to global affairs. The authors 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.

To ensure that the CGD project did not transpire in an academic cocoon 20 practitioners from civil society and official circles were invited to act as primary discussants of and advisers to the authors at the project workshop held in Cairo and after. Both authors and discussants comprise diversity of age, gender and race.

What will be achieved?

The CGD project seeks to broaden discussions on global democracy to include the views of different cultures, ages, classes, genders and races and generate intellectually provocative and politically effective new ideas about the meaning of global democracy.

More specifically, the project aims to:

• increase attention to, and debate about, the democratisation of global affairs
• bring greater conceptual clarity and novelty around notions of ‘global democracy’
• contribute towards informed and viable proposals for forward action on global democracy
• enhance capacity of researchers and practitioners to promote democratic governance of global challenges
• improve understanding and collaboration between academics and activists on questions of global democracy
• strengthen networks for the promotion of global democracy 

How will the findings be shared?

BGD has produced several publications on the meaning of global democracy.

These include:

What does it mean to speak of 'global democracy'?

Summarising the key findings of our international workshop in Cairo

Your life is global! – Action Toolkit

Providing tools for you to develop your own ideas of global democracy

GLOBAL perspectives on GLOBAL democracy

Highlighting the keys ideas presented in the authors papers

Most of our publications are available in: العربية , 简体中文 , English, Español , Français , हिन्दी, Português and Русский  

Read more about:

cairo workshop | authors | discussants | publications | presentations