Governing Global Democracy

Abstract

Global Governance, Global Government: Institutional Visions for an Evolving World System. Edited by Luis Cabrera. Albany, NY: State University Press of New York, 2011. 338 pp., $24.26 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-1-438-43590-9). Building Global Democracy? Civil Society and Accountable Global Governance. Edited by Jan Aart Scholte. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 424 pp., $32.39 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-524-14055-3). Global Democracy: Normative and Empirical Perspectives. Edited by Daniele Archibugi, Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, Raffaele Marchetti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 310 pp., $31.49 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-17498-5). There has been a concerted attempt over the past 20 years to address the emergence of the democratic practices of global institutions. Much of the attention has focused on the problem that global institutions lack the democratic structure of their institutional counterparts at the nation-state level. For the three books under review, such a dearth serves as the basis of a distinctive, yet evolving global dimension of democracy: the link between democratic accountability and new mechanisms to facilitate the coordination of global institutions and nonstate actors. The project of global democracy, in this sense, is a process rooted in not only the transference of sovereignty to the global level, but also the increasing ethical responsibility and novel capacity of global actors to legislate, administer, and enforce public goods (Rosenau 1995; Etzioni 2004; Price 2008; Franceschet 2009). As we shall see, the books under review offer differing yet systematic approaches to understanding and explaining the changing dynamics and unmet challenges of this project. Jan Aaart Scholte's edited volume investigates the accountability of global institutions through the influence and activities of civil society organizations (CSOs). As Scholte states in chapter 1, “the contemporary growth in influence of global governance processes has not been accompanied by a corresponding development of formal accountability mechanisms which link these agencies directly to the publics they affect” (p. 25). One of the central questions guiding this book is, who is accountable to whom and for what? If accountability in global civil society is derived from the consent of states, and not the people affected, then how do we assess the influence of mediating agents/mechanisms in the international and global spheres (Coicaud 2002)? The book addresses these questions by applying four variables—consultation, transparency, evaluation, and correction—to test and evaluate the legitimizing influences of CSOs on …