The document discusses reimagining global democracy in the digital age. It argues that globalization has posed challenges for democracy which is traditionally confined to the nation-state. A world parliament may not be effective or legitimate. Instead, digital democracy through open global deliberation and participation on the internet can realize a decentralized and networked form of global governance. The internet creates possibilities for free discussion, participation in political processes, and a global political community. Examples of digital collaboration like ProMED-mail and deforestation monitoring networks show how this can work in practice to address global issues.

1. Reimagining global
democracy
Joe Mitchell
MA Global Governance research paper
Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo

2. a quick
summary in three
slides...

3. Globalisation poses problems for
democracy.

4. The World Parliament response to
this would struggle to be effective or
legitimate.

5. Instead, global democracy is likely to
be realised by a decentralised and
networked form of governance.

6. A thirty-second
history of global
democracy

7. 500BC
A democratic system of governance is first
recorded in Athens. Decisions are made by a
show of hands – a unitary or direct democracy
in which everyone takes part.

8. A.D.1648
The inviolability of the ‘nation-state’ is created
by the Treaty of Westphalia. Monarchs agree
to recognise each others’ sovereignty. This locks
down the global governance structure for 365
years, and counting.

9. A.D.1795
In Perpetual Peace, Immanuel Kant proposes what
becomes liberal orthodoxy: republican states,
federated under international law, with one world
citizenship law.

10. ‘Originally, no one had more right
than another to a particular part
of the earth.’

11. 1860s+
Political internationals unite labour activists across
borders – an early global political movement.
While they have some success, notably the eight-
hour day, nationalism proves a stronger binding
force, and the International collapses by 1914...

14. 1918.
1945.
The world wars are followed by grand
changes to the international governance
structure - always in the form of new
institutions.

15. 1945
‘We the peoples of the United Nations...’
[not nations]
Preamble to the United Nations Charter

16. Postwar period
The objective of world peace drives
idealistic thinkers to consider world
federalism. In the US, a ‘Sense of Congress’
motion is passed for ‘strengthening the UN
and seeking its development into a world
federation’.

17. 1950s
The Cold War kills that idea.
McCarthy associates world
federalists with communists.

18. 60s, 70s, 80s
So world federalism fails. But globalisation takes
off: neoliberal economic ideas and powerful
multinationals open up the world to market
forces, encouraged by international financial
institutions.

19. 60s, 70s, 80s
In three decades, the world sees the
invention of satellite TV, Eurobonds, oil
crises, special economic zones, booms in jet
flights, international finance, shipping, and
growing cultural hegemony...

20. 1990s
Growing concern about globalisation bursts
into public consciousness at the ‘Battle of
Seattle’ in 1999.

21. 2011
A global financial crisis, high unemployment,
and anger at political leaders results in
revolutions and protests around the world.

22. What is the
problem?

23. In the 21st century, policies must be sought to
deal with climate change, economic shocks,
pandemics, terrorism, financial risks, trade
barriers, transnational crime (human trafficking,
drug trafficking, money laundering), poverty and
inequality.
The success and democratic nature of those
policies can no longer be guaranteed by national
institutions. Too many variables lie outside the
scope of the nation state.

25. “Everything has been globalized
except our consent. Democracy
alone has been confined to the
nation state.”
George Monbiot
Author, Columnist

26. “Ours is a world in which no
individual, and no country, exists
in isolation. Pollution, organized crime,
and the proliferation of deadly weapons
likewise show little regard for the niceties
of borders; they are problems
without passports...
Kofi Annan
(Then) UN Secretary General

27. “designing effective and
legitimate institutions is [the]
crucial problem of political
design for the twenty-first
century”
Joe Nye and Bob Keohane
Professors at Harvard and Princeton

28. What is the
answer?

29. One idea is global representative democracy – a
logical next step from having a local representative,
a national representative and, in some cases, a
regional representative (as in Europe, and
proposed in South America and Africa).

30. There’s already a Campaign for
a UN Parliamentary
Assembly – and the idea has
support from the European and
African Parliaments.

31. But could a system of
representatives really be
democratic for 7bn
people?

32. 1. How would such an assembly be
elected? A location-based constituency,
repeating the national system? Party lists?
Global political parties?

33. 2. How could such a parliament remain close
to the people? How could it deal with the
complexity of global policy? How could it
possibly represent all views?

34. 3. Is a hierarchical structure – in which
votes flow upwards and decisions flow
downwards - best for global democracy?

35. 4. Do existing representative democracy
institutions work satisfactorily? Does the
European Parliament democratise European
governance?

36. Advocates of global democracy
should abandon domestic
analogies. Instead, they should
imagine a ‘non-centralised, non-
territorial, non-exclusive
system’ of governance.
Heikki Patomaki (adapted)
Professor of World Politics, Helsinki

37. What delivers such a
‘non-centralised,
non-territorial,
non-exclusive system’
of governance?
Digital democracy.

38. “Global democracy can
only emerge from a
‘rupture’ in global
society.”
Richard Falk
Prof. Emeritus of International Law,
Princeton

39. That rupture is the information revolution:
a revolution in access to information and
in transparency. It creates new possibilities
of global participation, collaboration and
co-creation.

40. Global digital democracy doesn’t need a top
down institution. Instead, it benefits from a
flexible distribution of power.

41. It’s global peer-to-peer governance.

42. What do we
talk about
when we
talk about
democracy?

43. Three foundations:
1. Free and open discussion and deliberation
2. Free and open participation in political
processes
3. Political community – the ‘demos’
The Internet creates these at global level.

44. 1. Internet as open
global deliberation
space

45. “The first basic principle to
ensure an inclusive, tolerant,
respectful and decentralised
world order is global
deliberative equality”
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Professor of Politics, Princeton

46. “Democracy is about communication as
well as voting - about social learning as
well as decision making. It is the
communicative aspects that for the
moment can most straightforwardly be
pursued in the international system.”
John Dryzek
Professor of Social Theory and Political Theory,
Australian National University

47. 2.3bn
have Internet
access (ITU)

48. 3G will cover 85% of
the world’s population
by 2017
(Ericsson)

49. A perfect deliberative environment would be
where everyone can access any information.
And anyone can converse with anyone else.
Where everyone has the power to produce
information that can be shared instantaneously
anywhere in the world.

50. Huge population figures are a problem for
representative democracy (and hierarchical
organisations in general) – but they strengthen
global deliberative networks, creating broader
and deeper conversations.

51. “Global democracy
is only as good as
global media”
Johan Galtung
Founder of Peace and Conflict Studies

52. Western countries produce the vast majority of
global information. English is the most popular
language for books, journals, newspapers and film.

53. As the Internet opens publishing,
this is changing. Global information
production is becoming broader.

54. The microblogging platform
Twitter shows examples of this.
The next slide shows shows the
location of tweets during one week
of 2012.

55. Russia
USA UK
Mexico
Fr
Italy
Brazil
Malaysia

56. Jakarta
Tokyo
London
Sao Paulo
New York
Bandung, Indonesia
Paris
Los Angeles
Chicago
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Istanbui
Osaka
Toronto
Madrid
Rio de Janeiro
Seoul
Miami
Atlanta
Houston

57. In their idealised* form, microblogs
spread information meritocratically
(with varying understandings of
merit).
Everyone has the same format to
use, the same ability to mention
others or repost others’ posts.
*problems discussed later

58. 2. Internet as open
global participative
space

59. In existing democracies, deliberation happens in
the media and in institutions like parliaments.
Political representatives turn lobbying into law.
Without a world parliament, how does debate
turn into action?

60. With no global government,
global democracy has to be
truly participative: people
must collaborate digitally to
deliver the projects they
want to see.
Three examples:

61. ProMED-mail

62. Global disease information used to be shared
between governments via the World Health
Organisation (WHO). But this meant that
governments could hide embarrassing or trade-
threatening outbreak information.

63. ProMED-mail was a simple email list for
epidemiology practitioners to share worldwide
disease news, set up in 1994. It created a network
of professionals who shared the latest disease
information from across the world.

64. As a result, the nation-state members had to
change WHO’s rules to allow it to share non-state
produced information. ProMED-mail ended a
monopoly on disease information. It provides more
people with access to better information, leading
to a safer world.

65. Sistema de Alerta de Desmatamento

66. The Sistema de Alerta de Desmatamento
(Deforestation Alert System) connects activists to
monitor satellite data on rainforests. It has the
potential to become a mass collaborative anti-
deforestation effort with global benefits.

67. The project was created by Imazon, a Brazilian
NGO, now supported by Google. As Google’s lead
mapper said: “a collaborative monitoring
community, powered by the internet, [has] never
been possible before.”

68. Ushahidi

69. Ushahidi (testimony or witness in Swahili) is a public
monitoring platform that crowdsources its
information. It was invented in Kenya to map election-
related violence. Citizens could send SMS and email
updates to be published on the map. It’s now in use
for all kinds of projects across the world.

70. This kind of conflict data used to be the preserve of
intelligence agencies, the United Nations or national
governments. Once anyone anywhere can use this
platform to contribute information, power shifts to
the information-producing public.

71. All three examples are really about participative
creation of knowledge. If knowledge is power, this
matters. But what if you wanted to act on that
knowledge? How does digital democracy result in
participative solutions or service delivery?
For example, the activists monitoring
deforestation can’t actually do anything about its
increase, right? Because digital collaboration
doesn’t create enforcement mechanisms...

72. Even this is changing. At one extreme there is
digital vigilantism: the enforcement of global norms
by private actors. ‘Anonymous’ hacked Israeli
websites in response to the government’s threat to
shut down Gaza’s internet access.

73. Less drastically and with significantly more activity:
offline commitments are inspired by digital
networks. Digital communities are funding and
supporting direct action around the globe. A range
of new platforms is making this easier than ever.

74. 3. Internet as
creator of global
democratic
community:

75. The classic ‘earthrise’ image is thought to have
boosted ‘global’ movements. It helped people
visualise themselves as members of one home –
a single shared space, without borders.

76. Now, with digital social networks, we can
visualise not only the shared space, but our
connections with people. There are one billion
people on Facebook. The average path between
any two of them is just 4.3 friend ‘hops’.

77. That is, you are connected to almost
one billion people via your friend’s
friend’s friend’s friend. It’s a small
world.

79. Nice examples. But
isn’t this far too
utopian?

80. Take three problems:
• existing power structures,
• tyrannies of those who
show up,
• a global digital divide.

82. Powerful nations and companies are prospering
in a non-democratic system. Global democracy
would threaten those who wield illegitimate
power at the global scale.

83. The World Economic Forum helps the wealthy
set the agenda – the World Social Forum barely
gets media coverage.

84. Most social media relies on private companies:
Twitter, Facebook et al aren’t here for the lulz.

85. But private companies will have to be more
open too. They are increasingly subject to
consumer control.
“social production is reshaping the
market conditions under which
businesses operate.”
Yochai Benkler
Professor, Harvard Law School
Author, ‘The Wealth of Networks’

87. Digital democracy might suffer from a tyranny of
those who show up. Who really has the time
and energy for this stuff? Is Wikipedia a
democratic information platform when only
0.13% write it?

88. But the transparency afforded by digital media
enables a record of who did what. The nature of
digital communications makes it easy to keep
commenting, debating, editing and re-editing.
Reputations matter.

89. Two global digital divides:
1. poverty
2. censorship

90. It’s only a minority of the world’s
population that has Internet access.

91. But smartphone ownership is growing rapidly, and
mobile internet coverage is increasing. Perhaps
within ten years this will cease to be seen as a
problem.

92. Censorship, on the other hand, is practised by
a large number of governments, and isn’t likely
to go away quickly. Or at all.

93. But smart users can get around censorship using
proxy servers. And ‘netizens’ will develop simple
acts of ‘everyday resistance’ – vocabularies of
dissent, codewords and underground discussions.
There have been, and always will be, ways to
escape censors.

94. Ultimately, it’s the numbers. China might call in the
army to monitor microblogs, but they’ll still never
control hundreds of millions of internet users. In
the long run, the people win.

95. So be optimistic.
And do more
research...

96. Do notions of solidarity or allegiance change in
the digital space? Do digital social networks
reduce a sense of otherness and boost
cosmopolitan identity?

97. Do notions of solidarity or allegiance change in
the digital space? Do digital social networks
reduce a sense of otherness and boost
cosmopolitan identity?
How are all languages and cultures engaged in a
global deliberation and participation space?

98. Do notions of solidarity or allegiance change in
the digital space? Do digital social networks
reduce a sense of otherness and boost
cosmopolitan identity?
How are all languages and cultures engaged in a
global deliberation and participation space?
Can open internet access, literacy and a robust
digital infrastructure be ensured for all?

99. Think about how
far we’ve come.

100. “This is for everyone”
Tim Berners-Lee
Inventor,World Wide Web

101. The Internet was developed in the 1960s. The
World Wide Web, which allows information to be
linked globally and viewable through a browser -
was only created in 1991. In the two decades since,
we’ve experienced a slow-burn revolution. Imagine
what another two decades might do.

102. Where do we go
next?

103. Thanks for reading.
Want references? Fewer pictures, more
words? Something missing? Go here.

104. Earth sunrise/Moon earthrise: NASA Tahrir Facebook: rouelshimi Imazon screenshot: Google
Protestor: murplejane All-seeing eye: cobalt123 Frog silouhette: ggalice
UNPA emblem: UNPA Notepad: melstampz Amazon rainforest: CIFUR
Starlings: Elsie Esq. Chain link fence: Thomas Hawk Network: sjcockell
Stopwatch: wwarby Euro Parliament: Xaf Security Council: riacale
Athens/Pnyz: : qwqchris Mathematical shape: Melisande World Economic Forum: WEF
Westphalia: Gerard Ter Borch Napster: pasa47 Yochai Benkler: arcticpenguin
Kant portrait: v Wikipedia A-M Slaughter: personaldemocracy LazyCat: Nicola Albertini
The Crucible: drurydrama H1N1 Virus: AJCann (CDC) Internet World Map: Jeff Ogden
1914-1918: yeowatzup Avian Flu Sign: Incessant Flux Internet truck: ALEMUSH
1939-1945: Kaptain Kobold WHO speaker: US Missn Gva Internet switch: Mike Licht
UN Charter: UN Photo Facebook world; Facebook via dullhunk
1999 Battle in Seattle: Steve Kaiser Love(Heart)Peace: israellovesiran.com Number on wall: Pink Sherbert
Posters: Freestylee Library: 96dpi Incoming tide: Tim Donnelly
OccupyResist: Devon Shaw Crowd: Alex Kess Olympic Stadium: Nick Webb
George Monbiot: v Wikipedia Lobby: SEIU International CERN NeXT: coolcaesar
Annan TV: Dark Inertia Johan Galtung: Manipulating Light
Joe Nye: dsearls Wall St English: futureshape
Richard Falk: UN Geneva