As noted summarily above, the Building Global Democracy research programme has seven principal goals: agenda formation; conceptual clarification; empirical investigation; policy prescription; capacity enhancement; promotion of practitioner-researcher interchange; and network development. These objectives, which serve as foundations on which global democracy can be built, may now be briefly elaborated in turn.

 

A first aim of the BGD programme is to increase the attention given in academic and practitioner circles, as well as amongst the public at large, to the challenges of democratizing the governance of global affairs. Democracy as a cornerstone of human dignity and a good society has arguably suffered relative neglect when it comes to global politics. Policies towards contemporary globalization have principally focused on advancing material welfare, accompanied in recent years with some heightened concern for ecological integrity and peace. In comparison democracy has tended to figure marginally. The BGD programme seeks in its modest way to push questions of democracy up the agenda of global politics, so that ‘global democracy’ becomes a more prominent – if still heavily contested – discourse.

 

A second programme objective is to increase conceptual clarity, particularly in relation to notions of ‘global democracy’. Although many civil society actors and policymakers wish to further this core value, considerable vagueness and confusion reigns when it comes to specifying the foundations and features of democracy in relation to global affairs. Moreover, academic political theorists who examine this issue have to date generally not formulated ideas in ways that are accessible to and effective for civil society advocacy and governance practice. The BGD programme therefore pursues conceptual clarification for policy action.

 

A third goal of the BGD programme is systematically to record, assess and raise awareness of past and ongoing innovative efforts to further global democracy in respect of the identified five core challenges: reconceptualization; citizen learning; institutional accountability; structural redistribution; and intercultural recognition. What has been tried regarding these interrelated needs of global democracy? What circumstances have furthered or frustrated the success of those initiatives? What opportunities for the future do these experiences suggest?

 

A fourth ambition of the BGD programme is to draw on conceptual explorations and empirical investigations to develop informed and viable prescriptions for forward action on global democracy. The programme is concerned not just to consolidate findings regarding the past, but also to formulate recommendations for the future and to spread these proposals across academic and practitioner circles. What modes of reconceptualization, citizen learning, stakeholder participation and control, structural redistribution, and intercultural recognition offer possibilities for greater global democracy in the future?

 

A fifth programme goal, capacity enhancement, relates to research circles, policy arenas and the general public. On the research side the aim is to further the competences of individuals and institutes, particularly in the global south and other marginalised quarters, to investigate questions of global democracy. On the policy side the aim is to raise the capacities of civil society and official actors, again especially in marginalised locales, to develop practices of global democracy. In respect of the general public the aim is to foster citizen capacities to contribute to more participatory and accountable governance of global affairs.

 

A sixth BGD aim is to advance practitioner-researcher exchange around the issue of global democracy. Arguably the most powerful engines of change are generated when academe and advocacy work in tandem. Knowledge feeds effective activism, and concrete experience informs politically relevant research. Global democracy can be furthered the more when concerned researchers and practitioners know of each other, communicate with one another, and collaborate together. The mutual learning borne of practitioner-researcher interchange can generate greater wisdom and contribute more effective strategy.

 

A seventh objective of the programme is to help build networks for the promotion of global democracy. Network forms of organization generate some of the most formidable power in contemporary politics. They have been highly instrumental in advancing everything from neoliberal economic policies to the land mines treaty. A crucial part of building global democracy is therefore to increase and deepen interactions among academics, activists, entrepreneurs, journalists and officials who support the notion.

 

As is apparent under each of these seven core aims, as well as in the title of the programme, the general objective of the BGD initiative is ‘to build’. To be sure, the work is motivated by critiques of the pervasive and deep democratic failings in current governance of global affairs. However, the programme emphasis is to go beyond critique to creativity, using diagnoses of current ills to inspire broad visions and specific proposals for the furtherance of global democracy. Deconstruction is therefore only a preliminary step to the principal programme focus on reconstruction for a better world.