Building Global Democracy

This article contributes to the discussion of the international democratisation of the so-called 'post-conflict' or 'fragile' countries by addressing one of the most important but least studied issues in the literature-the relationship between democracy and nation-building. It does so by analysing the major socio-political aspects of the democratic nation-state-building process in Timor-Leste in the post-1999 period. It argues that contemporary international democratisation policies and practices prioritise the 'stateness' problem, conceptualised by reference to a set of organisational, procedural and functional concerns. Little attention is, however, paid to the 'nationness' question. As the experience in Timor-Leste indicates, it is the national ideas that determine the structural and operational parameters of democratisation, which is, after all, a process of socio-political transformation by which political power and wealth are redistributed amongst a variety of competing societal interests.

This study asks which attributes make states the more valuable partners in military coalition operations. Due to the uncertainty inherent in combat in general and coalition operations in particular, successful military cooperation depends on the amount of discretion given to national armed forces. Since democracies usually have more harmonious civil-military relations, restricting the discretion of military agents is a relatively less attractive and needed tool for democratic principals. This in turn makes democratic states the more valuable allies. The argument has two empirical implications: On one hand, a state conducting a military intervention should be more likely to build a coalition with its allies, the more democratic allies it has. On the other hand, military interventions by democratic military coalitions should end more quickly with success for the interveners than interventions by nondemocratic coalitions. These hypotheses are tested and supported using data on military interventions between 1946 and 2001.

International law is currently undergoing a major transformation that has provoked a 'legal turn' in the field of International Relations. At the heart of this transformation are the juridification of international politics and subsequently the judicialisation of international law. This contribution argues that scholars of critical International Political Economy have not yet paid enough attention to this process. What is needed is a theory of international law that is able to grasp the societal implications of this transformation. In a first step some accounts drawing on Antonio Gramsci and Evgeny Pashukanis are presented, with a view to making their theory fruitful for analysing international law. Against the background of an empirical study that compares the global regulation of trade in goods with the trade in services, delivered notably through natural persons, some major shortcomings of these accounts are outlined. The last part of the contribution presents some ideas on how to further develop a critical theory of international (trade) law that introduces a communicative dimension into the legal turn with a view to distinguishing between different extra-economic dynamics

During 1998 Buenos Aires witnessed a singular event: in the context of a broad legal renewal, street sex work was decriminalized. This decision proved to be highly problematic though, and led to a series of juridical reformulations that culminated in the delimitation of an official red light district in 2004. Nonetheless, although it might be thought that the legalization of this area as a site for street sex work (de facto aimed at trans sex workers) would stabilize the conflict, the regulation of sex work continues to be the object of an intense political struggle and the current situation is still far from achieving a fair agreement for sex workers. Certainly, although these debates might seem focused on the legal status of sex work, they have been addressing much broader issues that appeal to profound moral beliefs that are in turn intersected by the social organization of gender and sexuality.

This article examines the impact of political opportunity structures (POS) on the activity choices of women's groups in the UK, France, and Germany in order to determine whether political opportunities, specifically elite alliances and changes in electoral cleavages, are gendered. We ask how/whether various institutional structures impact the activity choices of women's groups, gauging whether women react to opportunities in a similar manner as other social groups, namely environmental groups. We find that social democratic elite allies and electoral cleavages prompted by de-alignment influence activity choice among women's groups in a similar manner as among environmental groups, yet the data show that women's groups are disenfranchised from direct contact with policymaking elites through consultation, thus suggesting the presence of gendered POS.

Focusing on 'democratic deficit', this article examines how globalization affects the legitimacy of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Two contextual factors are considered: (i) democracy at the domestic level and (ii) global inequality. Since these two factors determine the severity of democratic deficit in each country, the impact of globalization on citizens' support for IGOs significantly varies across states. Globalization does not undermine the legitimacy of IGOs in democratically well-attuned rich states. The Pew Global Attitudes Project 2002 lends support to this primary argument.

A question of interest to scholars of International Politics concerns the manner in which weaker states attempt to influence stronger ones. This article offers a case study of one recent exercise in coalition-building among southern powers as a vehicle for change in international relations. It analyzes the global interests, strategies and values of India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) and the impact of the IBSA Dialogue Forum on the global order. Five major points are outlined. First, common ideas and values shape the global discourse of the emerging coalition. Second, soft balancing based on a value-driven middle power discourse is a suitable concept to explain IBSA's strategy in global institutions. Third, institutional foreign policy instruments such as agenda-setting and coalition-building are pivotal elements of IBSA's soft balancing approach. Fourth, the trilateral coalition suffers from considerable divergence of interest in global governance issues and limited potential gains of its sectoral cooperation, particularly in trade, due to a lack of complementarities of the participating economies. Finally, despite these obstacles the IBSA Forum has impacted the global order in recent years as a powerful driver for change. India, Brazil and South Africa have contributed to an incremental global power shift in their favour. The southern coalition also induced a change in the character of multilateralism and, in particular, its procedural values.

Robert W. Cox's contribution to International Relations theory places the discipline in a transformational framework. Building on Gramsci's ideas and a variety of other sources eclectically, his theory goes beyond the neorealist statecentric framework and brings out the connections between material conditions, ideas and institutions in what he terms the formation of 'world orders'. How people organize themselves in the sphere of production not only determines their own life but also that of their states and the world order. In saying that change can come from any one of the spheres (material conditions, ideas and institutions), he denies and goes beyond the base-superstructure thesis of Marxism.

Political scientists and policy-makers agree that democratic states were less likely to engage each other in militarized disputes than were other states during the Cold War. Most among them attribute this to their domestic political structures. Some, however, believe that the common and conflicting interests that the East-West conflict induced explain the relatively low democratic-dispute rate. Evidence from the post-Cold War world can help to arbitrate between these very different claims, as the collapse of the Soviet Union destroyed the bipolar system, precipitated a sharp rise in the number of democracies, and shifted dispute-rate patterns. The analyses in this paper show that dyadic dispute rates converge after the Cold War, casting doubt on the existence of a democratic peace.

I will discuss the historical development of the study of democracy through public opinion and behavior research. The article starts with a brief sketch of developments in Western democracies after World War II. With a general emphasis on comparative micro-survey research, it then traces major trends in the empirical study of political participation, with a particular emphasis on the Political Action Study (Barnes et al., 1979; Jennings et al., 1990). The significance of this study resides in its opening the way for political science to consider non-institutionalized acts of political participation not as a threat to pluralist democracies, but rather as an extension of the political repertory of democratic citizens. The article then discusses potential reasons for the observed unexpected decline of political support in Western democracies after the demise of totalitarian communism through the 'velvet revolution' in Central and Eastern Europe. In the conclusion, the article speculates about future developments in democratic governance in the light of encompassing social, economic and technological developments such as globalization and the Internet revolution.

This article identifies a theoretical nexus between indigeneity and liberal democracy in three post-colonial contexts. Like democracy, the politics of indigeneity asks questions and makes assumptions about where power ought to lie and how it ought to be shared in relation to political inclusion and national sovereignty. The interaction of indigeneity with democracy highlights the limitations of liberal theory as well as the opportunities it provides to meet indigenous claims and conceptions of justice. Exploring the ideological tensions and commonalities between democracy and indigeneity allows a contrast, in comparative context, of the proposition that in Fiji, for example, democracy is "a foreign flower" unsuited to the local environment with the argument that liberal representative democracy can, in fact, mediate power in favour of an inclusive national polity.

Despite the government of Canada's close relationship with the biotechnology industry, critical social movement organisations have had a significant impact on the adoption of genetically modified organisms in that country. Two cases of products rejected after widespread resistance - recombinant bovine growth hormone (1999) and herbicide-tolerant Roundup Ready (RR) Wheat (2004) - are revisited. Informed by empirical research that brings to light new factors shaping the RR wheat outcome in particular, two theoretical arguments are advanced. First, in response to those critics of a neo-Gramscian framing of hegemony who see it as overly deterministic, these cases highlight just how deeply alliances with hegemonic ambitions may be forced to compromise. Second, these cases demonstrate that any study of civil society must still pay close attention to institutional and material 'relations of force' when seeking to explain the impact of social movements on environmental governance.

Activists use emotional language and images - what Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter coined 'mindbombs' - to convince people that some actions are wrong, morally and environmentally. For instance, for over 50 years anti-sealing activists have employed mindbombs to transform seal pups into babies and seal hunters into barbarians. Although 'image politics' contributed to the decline of the Canadian sealing industry in the 1980s, its effectiveness has been - and continues to be - rocky, particularly as pro-sealing voices counter with competing claims of cultural rights, traditional livelihoods and sustainable use. Drawing on Tilly and Tarrow's 'cycles of contention' framework, this article argues that controlling and predicting the global uptake of messaging is becoming harder as activists operate in an increasingly crowded discursive landscape, as campaigners and counter-campaigners articulate scientific and moral frames that resonate differently across changing social and cultural contexts, and in light of globalising markets, transnational networks and changing media.

Human rights and democracy have been regarded as a mutually reinforcing couple by many political theorists to date. The internationalisation of human rights post-1945 is often said to have severed those links, however. Accounting for the legitimacy of international human rights requires exploring how human rights and democracy, once they have been decoupled or disconnected, can be recoupled or reunited across governance levels (vertically) and maybe even at the same governance level (horizontally) albeit beyond the state

The possibility for transnational democratic representation is a huge topic. This article is restricted to exploring two unconventional aspects. The first concerns 'the representative claim', extending one critical part of previous analysis of the assessment of such claims, especially by largely unelected transnational actors. The second, which strongly conditions the account of the first, concerns 'slow theory' as the way to approach building democratic models and, in particular, to approach transnational democratic representation.

Everyday use of communication technologies within social networks for civic and civil behaviors The structure of people's social networks predicts democratic engagement. However, the relative contribution of different types of social ties to civic and civil behaviors is unclear. This paper explores the role of core networks - bonding social capital - to the role of overall network diversity - bridging social capital - for participation in formal civic institutions and informal civil behaviors. Emphasis is placed on the possible role of heterogeneity within core networks - political disagreement and the presence of nonkin ties - and on frequency of interaction, in-person and mediated: mobile phone and the Internet. This study finds that overall network diversity is a more consistent and substantive predictor of civic and civil behaviors than the size or heterogeneity of the small number of ties that make up the core network of most people.

The need for state institutions to promote good governance is now a necessary condition for consolidating new democracies. However, achieving this objective represents a daunting challenge for the emerging constitutional bodies in Ghana. This article sets out to examine the Electoral Commission's (EC) efforts at institutionalising good governance in the management of the electoral process. Against the backdrop of failed electoral process in most African countries, the EC has organised four successful general elections with marginal errors. The most distinguishing factors accounting for the EC's success were largely, but not exclusively, the making of the electoral process transparent, fostering agreement on the rules of the game and asserting its autonomy in relation to the performance of its mandate. What needs to be done is electoral reform to overcome challenges posed by delayed adjudication of post-election disputes and executive financial control of the EC. This will require the creation of an electoral court to deal swiftly and impartially with election disputes and a special electoral fund to insulate the EC from government's financial manipulations.

This article investigates whether and how family policy influences the probability and intensity of mothers' labor market participation. Unlike previous studies, this contribution focuses on group-specific policy effects, thereby accounting for the fact that, theoretically, women with different resources and preferences should respond differently to given policy measures. The analyses show that varying individual characteristics indeed influence the impact family policy measures have on women's individual behavior. First and foremost, family policies most strongly influence mothers with medium levels of education, for whom labor market participation tends to be "optional." Moreover, high direct and indirect cash benefits to families, which primarily stem from traditional conservative family policy, reduce the probability of employment for women with low to medium levels of education.

Voluntary governance arrangements focusing on responsible business behavior have proliferated over the past decades, and in many sectors of industry, different governance organizations now compete for business participation. This private governance competition has negative consequences for the effective functioning of these arrangements. In the literature up until now, optimism prevails on how a process of policy convergence between organizations may come about that would solve some of the problems that arise because of this competition. It is remarkable, however, that in one of the key industries referred to in this literature, the garments industry, convergence is virtually absent. This article explains why this is so and suggests that next to three existing approaches to the evolution and possible convergence of private governance organizations, actually a fourth, pessimistic type should be introduced, taking into account the evolution and perseverance of political difference between interest groups creating and supporting private governance arrangements.

The WTO system and democratic rights are unexpected bedfellows. The GATT/WTO requires governments to adopt policies that provide foreign products (read producers) with due process, political participation, and information rights related to trade policymaking. Because these nations also provide these rights to their citizens, a growing number of people are learning how to influence trade-related policies. As trade today encompasses many areas of governance, these same citizens may gradually transfer the skills learned from influencing trade policies to other public issues. Thus, the WTO not only empowers foreign market actors, but also citizens in repressive states. We use both qualitative and quantitative analysis to examine whether membership in the WTO over time leads to improvements in these democratic rights. Our qualitative analysis shows that these issues are discussed during accessions and trade policy reviews. Quantitative analysis examines how members of the GATT/WTO perform on these democratic rights over time. We use a cross-national time series design of all countries, accounting for selection issues of why countries become members of the GATT/WTO regime. We find that longer GATT/WTO membership leads to stronger performance on our metrics for political participation, free and fair elections, and access to information.