Pathways to global democracy? Escaping the statist imaginary (original) (raw)

The literature on global democracy has often been accused of trading in institutional fantasies, divorced from the constraints of the real political world. Miller for instance has criticised the literature on global democracy for asking “only about where democracy is needed ... without considering whether it is actually possible to conjure the necessary democratic body into existence (or if this is possible, in a formal sense at least, how it is likely to perform).” Even supporters of aspects of normative democratic projects often express scepticism of this kind, Buchanan and Keohane for example claiming that: “... the social and political conditions for democracy are not met at the global level and there is no reason to think that they will be in the foreseeable future”. Scholars of global democracy are taking such practical questions about the necessary social foundations for a global democratic project increasingly seriously.4 Attention is turning both to the analysis of existing social conditions to assess the extent to which democratic institutions might already be feasible, and to questions about the social forces and mechanisms that could at least move global institutions in a more democratic direction.