The power of representation: democratic politics and global governance

Abstract

The notion of democracy has been invoked in the past decade by both opponents and proponents of global governance. Many in the so-called ‘anti-globalisation’ movement have underlined the inherently unaccountable, opaque and unrepresentative nature of global governance, whilst those more sympathetic to the pluralising dynamics of the phenomenon have emphasised the potentially democratic aspects of this new form of rule, especially with reference to the incorporation of a putative ‘global civil society’ into the structures of global governance and the accompanying diversification of sources of international political authority. Yet both critics and advocates also tend to agree that there are two basic challenges to (on some accounts, causes of) global governance: the global capitalist market and the concomitant system of sovereign states. The disjunctures generated by the operation of these two structures of power, so both liberal defenders of global governance and their radical, anti-capitalist contenders argue, have created the conditions for decentralised, multilateral mechanisms of socioeconomic and political management of world affairs, that is, ‘global governance’. It therefore seems that the question on both sides of this divide, is not so much whether to do away with transnational, multilateral forms of political authority altogether (although that is certainly one aim in some quarters of the anti-globalisation movement) but rather, how to render these democratic, that is, how to democratise global governance.

Postmodern Left-Liberalism: Hardt and Negri and the Disavowal of Critique

“…helping out in local community events) to the spectacular (e.g. antiglobalization demonstrations) are simply collapsed into one all-embracing notion: 'multitude' (see also Buchanan, 2003;Colás, 2003;Saccarelli, 2004;Thoburn, 2006).…”

Radicalizing Democracy

“…This is the path favoured by Unger, and it is explored by actual experiments in empowered democracy such as the participatory budget initiated in Porto Alegre. 104 The participatory budget allies municipal state institutions with bottom-up participation of independent citizens and civil society organisations, who hold on to their autonomy. This is a promising avenue, but it should not iron out the acute tensions that course between the two logics.…”

Rethinking Globalised Resistance: Feminist Activism and Critical Theorising in International Relations

“…Further, we insisted that any effort to explain the origins of resistance politics has to be more reflexive about the assumptions it makes regarding the relationship between relations of power and resistance politics. Thus, Mark Rupert's lack of surprise at resistance to US policies given that ‘global capitalism cannot be normalised’ (Rupert 2005, 57), and the assumption of Alejandro Colás that ‘capitalist relations—like most power relations—are politically contested’ (Colás 2003, 99), need to be questioned and explored. In other words, tracing the origins of resistance compels us to go beyond mapping power relations to the ways in which activists conceptualise oppression (Eschle and Maiguashca 2005b, 215).…”