The general working principles elaborated in the preceding section are put into practice through a cycle of activities that unfolds in relation to each of the five projects. Facilitation, coordination and integration of the projects is pursued principally through the convening group, with the assistance of a full-time programme officer. This group has held an initial planning meeting at the University of Warwick in Britain on 23-26 April 2008. It will assemble a second time in conjunction with the World Social Forum in Belém, Brazil on 27 January-2 February 2009. These two meetings, together with ongoing correspondence in the intervening months, will consolidate working relationships among the conveners. Subsequently the convening group, with the programme officer as its secretary, will meet both ahead of and after the close of each of the five project workshops, using these occasions both to discuss the project at hand and to assess progress of the BGD programme as a whole.

 

Each project within the BGD programme develops through a sequence of ten main steps. The first step, taken at the Warwick meeting, has been to set a schedule for executing the respective projects. Each project follows a two-year cycle through its successive stages. The launch of the different projects is staggered rather than beginning all at once. This approach not only spreads the activities in a manageable timeframe, but also allows the format of the programme to be adapted with experience.

 

The second step, also taken at the Warwick meeting, has been to determine host sites for the various workshops. It has been agreed in this regard that the workshop on ‘Conceptualizing Global Democracy’ will be held in Cairo. The workshop on ‘Citizen Learning for Global Democracy’ will be held in New Delhi. The workshop on ‘Including the Excluded in Global Policymaking’ will be held in Rio de Janeiro. The workshop on ‘Structural Redistribution for Global Democracy’ will be held in Addis Ababa. The workshop on ‘Intercultural Constructions of Global Democracy’ will be held in Moscow.

 

In the next step of implementation the convening group agrees on a briefing paper for the project in question. The briefing paper expands on the summary descriptions provided in the next section of this prospectus. The briefing serves both as a public notice of the project aims and activities and as terms of reference for authors and workshop participants.

 

With the briefing paper in hand, the convening group commissions ten action-oriented researchers with expertise on the subject at hand to prepare case studies. Each convener suggests several prospective authors, in most cases drawn from their region. For fullness of coverage the slate of ten authors will be selected with a view to addressing different aspects of the theme at hand. Thus, for example, on Citizen Learning for Global Democracy case studies will variously address the role of schools, the mass media, civil society associations, and other pedagogic channels. The case studies in each project will also relate to a range of global issues (e.g. crime, environment, health, human rights and trade). Authors for case studies will also be selected with an eye to diversity on cultural, economic, geographic, political and social lines, as discussed above. Given the alternative methodology of the programme, authors will be urged to rethink their ideas and produce new insights on building global democracy, as opposed to merely recycling their earlier arguments. Invitations to authors will be issued through the programme officer at the latest nine months before the workshop in question.

 

Once authors have accepted invitations and confirmed the titles of their contributions – around seven months before the workshop – preparations turn to securing practitioner discussants for the various papers. Nominations for discussants (from civil society and official circles) are made by the relevant author. Normally these practitioners should not herald from the same country as the author. The convening group then assembles a list of discussants that embodies the desired diversity, and letters of invitation are issued through the programme officer.

 

Authors then prepare draft papers to be submitted at the latest two months ahead of the workshop. This early deadline is set to give sufficient time for translation of papers written in languages other than English. To enable flowing discussions all workshop participants will have fluency in understanding and speaking English. However, translation facilities will be provided for authors who prefer to write their papers in their first language.

 

The (translated) papers will be circulated to all participants several weeks ahead of the relevant workshop. The workshop will assemble around 50 persons: the 10 authors, the 20 discussants, the 10 conveners and circa 10 other participants from the area where the workshop is held. Papers are not presented at the workshop by their authors, but by the practitioners. By examining the set of ten papers together, the workshop will seek to formulate more general findings and recommendations on the given aspect of building global democracy.

 

Within two months after each workshop, summaries of the papers will be posted on the programme website. These abstracts will be translated from English into Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. In consultation with the workshop participants, the convening group will draft a policy brief that consolidates the findings and recommendations of the meeting. This document will likewise be posted online in the seven languages.

 

Meanwhile the authors will rewrite their papers in the light of the workshop discussions for submission within four months after that meeting. Two conveners will undertake final editing of the papers as book chapters. These editors will also take a lead in writing an introduction and conclusion for the volume, circulating a draft version of these two texts to all workshop participants for comment. The book manuscripts will be submitted to the publisher starting in 2010.

 

Finally, in a tenth and closing step of the cycle, post-publication presentations to official, media, academic, and civil society audiences in 2011-12 will further disseminate the findings and recommendations of the projects. The book releases (involving the volume editors, two authors and two practitioner discussants) will take place mainly in the home countries of conveners who have not hosted workshops. In addition, all conveners and authors will give various presentations of their BGD work to other academic and policy meetings.

 

Through this project design the Building Global Democracy programme will reach wide audiences. Thinking in terms of outwardly rippling circles, the programme activities will involve the convening group of 10 action-oriented researchers, 50 authors of case studies, and 150 other workshop participants. In addition, up to several thousand correspondents will join a database developed by the programme officer, drawing especially on the academic and practitioner networks of the various conveners. Readership of the policy briefs, paper abstracts and books, as well as attendance of the public presentations and visits to the website, will take the BGD programme to thousands more people.