Speaking of globalised democratic politics makes very little sense when democracy is disappearing at the national level. No global democratic political process can develop unless it is based on serious democratic change at the national and local levels.

The problem is not global democracy, but the lack of adequate ways to achieve change within the framework of existing national democracy. Popular unrest and mass riots are becoming a frequent occurrence even in many democratic European countries, showing that existing institutions do not allow for expression of discontent and resolution of issues. Moreover, although these issues are related to global developments, people express them as concerns of their specific nation. Only when new contenders for power emerge at the national level will there will be a reason to discuss a prospect for global democracy.

Democracy at the national level is quite weak today, even if many liberals describe the late twentieth century as the time when democratic principles triumphed. By 2000 one can hardly find any government around the world that is not praising democracy in its abstract form. It was considered self-evident that, with the establishment of multi-party electoral systems and the achievement of press freedom, people of different countries around the world would be empowered to control their fate.

However, in practice exactly the opposite was has happened. Governments have accepted formal democratic procedures, but these institutions have increasingly lost any substance and now in no way challenge the overriding power of corrupt and irresponsible elites controlling societies. Even in Western Europe elite rule has turned increasingly arrogant and irresponsible, denying the public any influence on the decision-making process.

This decay of democratic institutions was extremely well expressed when the electorate in most countries of the European Union (EU) was denied any chance to vote on the draft of the European constitution. When national referendums in France and the Netherlands rejected the project, the constitution was put back on the agenda in the form of the Lisbon Treaty that was not subject to popular vote in those countries. And when this new version of the document too was rejected in a popular vote by the Irish electorate, this country was forced to replay the referendum in order to obtain ‘the right result’ the second time around.

These problems with referendums and other political procedures are nothing but the result of a much deeper erosion of democracy around the world. This erosion is taking place across the East and the West, across the North and the South. The right to choose a political party which will hold public office remains, but the right to decide on policy has been lost to unaccountable bureaucracies. Control has shifted to regional and global institutions which are presented as being a fair representation of national democracies at the international level. However, in practice they are unaccountable bodies that work closely, and in increasingly authoritarian fashion, with the national bureaucracies of their member states. One sees this in the EU, the WTO, the G20 and elsewhere.

Many critical intellectuals have described this situation in detail, but then tend to offer only utopian or partial solutions as an alternative. Some have advocated participatory democracy, which became the latest fashion among intellectuals. Unfortunately, this answer is no more valid than the proposition of global civil society. Concentrating attention on local self-government, these initiatives have no chance to withstand and overcome the pressure of global forces which now erode democracy.

Nor will an anti-political approach work. That would simply leave the realm of politics to those who are interested in protecting the current status quo. What is needed are collective political actors who are capable not just of protesting and saying no, but also of working out and putting into practice real reforms.

These struggles for democracy in regard to global problems need to focus on national politics and the state. The current global crisis is good news in this respect, because it weakens the present system and creates opportunities for change. This crisis also reveals the limits of power of global corporate and institutional actors, while again showing the central role of the nation-state as a main source of financial resources that are needed to put the global economy back on track. It also shows how much the state itself needs to be changed. But this change will not happen spontaneously; nor is there any guarantee that new contenders for power at the national level will be progressive or democratic. Movements must remain alert to these dangers.

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