Building Global Democracy

The Democracy Manifesto signals that the time has come to open ourselves to the many ways in which the demos, that is, the people, organize themselves around the world to take charge of their own destiny.

However ruthless monopoly forces may be in limiting freedoms, the Democracy Manifesto challenges us to consider if the unruly power of the market isn't also a home of democratic freedom.

Systems of governance are legitimised as an almost indispensable response to global co-ordination over matters of environmental degradation. Considering sustainable development as the key label for 'common-sense' political approaches to environmental degradation and a key informant for international environmental policy-making activity, this article seeks to problematise such a widespread discourse as (re)productive of (hetero)sexist power relations. As such, this article, informed by Foucault's conceptions of governmentality and biopower, contends that the global thrust towards sustainable development projects works to construct identities and discipline power relations with regard to gender and sexuality. Specifically, I argue that the disciplinary narratives and apparatuses of international sustainable development initiatives work to construct gendered identities and naturalise heterosexual relations. To demonstrate this, this article focuses on the discourses surrounding one of the most important international documents directed at informing national environmental policy, Agenda 21.

This paper analyzes the case of Porto Alegre, Brazil as a counter-hegemonic global city. Porto Alegre is a city with no particular relevance to neoliberal globalization that, nevertheless, was launched to a global scale by transformations in local governance. New mechanisms of deliberative democracy captured the attention of social actors constructing a movement of globalization from below, making Porto Alegre the de facto capital of the World Social Forum. In this paper I focus on the educational policies created in the city, which expanded the social imaginary in education and are a key component of Porto Alegre's 'globalization'.

Brazilian industrial entrepreneurs have shown a high degree of mobilization and political activity in defense of their specific interests since the beginning of Brazilian industrial capitalist development. They have been characterized by pragmatism, support of different governments and political regimes (dictatorships or democracies), and adaptation to the political instability typical of the country from the proclamation of the Republic until the mid-1980s. For almost half a century they have played a prominent role in sustaining the different phases of national developmentalism by joining diverse political coalitions that upheld the industrial order. The past 10 years have been marked by an important reversal of this pattern that is essentially political: the socialization of entrepreneurs in democratic values, rules, and practices. A thread of continuity is represented by an ideological pragmatism characterized by successive adaptations to positions more or less aligned with a more active role for the state.

We investigated the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT, namely mobile phones) in support of citizen agency and its potential in calling authorities to account. We focused on Eastern Africa and we used a mixed methodology, which allowed us to explore the current uses of ICT to strengthen accountability and to forecast the growth of mobile phones' adaption in that region. Evidence from both analyses suggests that there are two main areas where citizen agency and ICT can reinforce each other in bottom-up and horizontal processes: participation and engagement of citizens, and the diffusion of information.

Looking at the formation of transnational advocacy networks, this article argues that central aspects evade attention unless approached from a discursive orientation. Utilizing interviews and first-person observation from a particular example of transnational mobilization-critical of negotiations to expand the World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade-in-Services-the article demonstrates how an expanded focus on discourse can help research better understand: (1) the self-driving momentum within networks through which those actors involved experience a reconstituted identity and affinity to one another; (2) the role played by earlier moments of collective action in providing both an infrastructure of pre-existing relations and politicization from which the network may draw upon; (3) the often porous character of campaign activity where there is rarely one but, in fact, many overlapping networks at play as part of a much wider discursive process; and (4) the role abstract signifiers such as 'global'-as in 'Global Campaign for …'-play in framing the network despite an often uneven geographic distribution to campaign activity and power within the network

This article attempts to problematise the conventional notion of dialogue, proposing 'utmost listening' as an alternative approach in International Relations (IR) dialogue. More specifically, I argue that we need to regard IR as a foreign language; I particularly explore the proposed approach in terms of feminist IR. Having a dialogue as a 'non-native' speaker demands hard work and consistent training. Most of all, a starting point would be to listen carefully to dialogue partners. This is different from the conventional approach in dialogue which presupposes that listening and speaking are situated almost equally in epistemological terms. In this sense, I reflect on myself as a 'provisional-straight man' researcher who engages with feminist IR. I also consider other men scholars, such as Robert Keohane. Finally, I introduce Momo - a fictional character in Michael Ende's novel - as an 'utmost listener'. What happens if we follow Momo in the IR community?

In an effort to reconceive the conduct of 'dialogue' within world politics, it is necessary for us to find new subject-positions from which to speak. This article develops a typology of six distinctive intellectual strategies through which 'decolonising' approaches to social theory can help rethink world politics by bringing alternative 'subjects' of inquiry into being. These strategies include pointing out discursive Orientalisms, deconstructing historical myths of European development, challenging Eurocentric historiographies, rearticulating subaltern subjectivities, diversifying political subjecthoods and re-imagining the social-psychological subject of world politics. The value of articulating the project in this way is illustrated in relation to a specific research project on the politics of the liberal peace in Mozambique. The article discusses a number of tensions arising from engaging with plurality and difference as a basis for conducting social inquiry, as well as some structural problems in the profession that inhibit carrying out this kind of research.

Recognition of other cultural mappings and sensitivities can facilitate meaningful dialogue in International Relations. On this assurance, the naturalised history of the discipline becomes more susceptible to rival accounts that materialise in other locales. Limits to dialogue, however, are internal to International Relations, a product of particular histories and settlements. This article probes some of the limits imposed by the spectres of nihilism on International Relations as theory and practice. These limits originate principally from the repudiation of Transcendence and the collapse of Western metaphysics as well as the imposition of a framework of 'post-politics' drawn from reading obituaries of the death of the liberal modern Western subject worldwide.

There is a politics to the West/non-West distinction that is bound up with predominant models for dialogue in IR; rethinking these models of dialogue implies a new politics, and therefore also, I will suggest, a move away from the West/non-West binary as a way of characterising the participants in dialogic exchange oriented towards the expansive transformation of disciplinary imaginaries.

Scholars of International Relations (IR) increasingly realise that their discipline, including its theories and methods, often neglects voices and experiences outside of the West. But how do we address this problem and move the discipline forward? While some question whether 'Western' and 'non-Western' (or 'post-Western') are useful labels, there are also other perspectives, including those who believe in the adequacy of existing theories and approaches, those who argue for particular national 'schools' of IR, and those who dismiss recent efforts to broaden IR theory as 'mimicry' in terms of their epistemological underpinnings. After reviewing these debates, this article identifies some avenues for further research with a view to bringing out the global heritage of IR. These include, among other things, paying greater attention to the genealogy of international systems, the diversity of regionalisms and regional worlds, the integration of area studies with IR, people-centric approaches to IR, security and development, and the agency role of non-Western ideas and actors in building global order. I also argue for broadening the epistemology of IR theory with the help of non-Western philosophies such as Buddhism. While the study of IR remains dominated by Western perspectives and contributions, it is possible to build different and alternative theories which originate from non-Western contexts and experiences.

This address suggests some avenues through which IR scholars from a variety of methodological approaches and different geographical locations might better dialogue with each other in mutually respectful ways. It begins by briefly revisiting IR's great debates since they represent the way the discipline has traditionally defined itself. It claims that these debates have centred on challenging the predominance of a US-centred discipline and its commitment to neo-positivist methodologies. Drawing on postcolonial and feminist literatures, it then offers some suggestions as to how might envisage an IR that is built on more global foundations and on a more pluralist understanding of what we define as scientific knowledge. It concludes with some thoughts on possible paths towards placing different scientific traditions on a more equal and mutually respectful footing.

This article seeks to extend feminist critiques of Habermasian discourse ethics in International Relations by engaging with the feminist ethics of care. Using the work of Andrew Linklater as a starting point, it argues that neither the existing critiques nor the responses have adequately addressed the key features of care ethics. The article critiques the idea of ethics as dialogue among 'human beings as equals' through an elaboration of several features of the ethics of care: firstly, the importance in care ethics of 'dependency' and 'vulnerability' not as conditions to be overcome, but rather as ways of being for normal human subjects; secondly, the focus on the responsibilities for listening attentively to the voices of others rather than on rights of individuals to be included in dialogue; thirdly, the need for patience and commitment in the recognition that responsibilities to others are fulfilled over the long, rather than the short, term; and, finally, the idea of care ethics as a substantive, democratic ethic of responsibility. These arguments emerge out of the basic ideas of care ethics - that relations and responsibilities of care are central to human life, and that care is a public value that must be negotiated at a variety of levels, from the household to the international community.

Using a critical review of selected works on Africa by prominent African intellectuals, this interdisciplinary study concludes that, contrary to Amartya Sen's theory about the "real freedoms" that people enjoy in democratic states, these freedoms cannot be realized in Africa, because the continent's mode of capitalism is dependent upon international finance. This system cannot function as an autonomous structure and has engendered major political contradictions in the continent's nation-states. The capitalist ruling elites have hindered the expansion of full democratic rights in Africa by encouraging and exploiting the politics of class division. The African experience with liberal democracy indicates that Sen's theory of development and "real freedoms" fails to take into account these contradictions as well as the religious and cultural idioms in Africa that run counter to liberal conceptions of emancipation. Achieving democracy and freedom in Africa is not merely a question of capacity building, it involves resolving difficult issues of power - particularly, in class and gender relations. The essay concludes by suggesting that there needs to be a shift away from conceptualizing development in terms of only economic factors to a new approach which combines more enlightened neoliberal capitalism with new indigenous strategies of development.

This essay starts by exploring how history can contribute to the discipline of international relations (IR). It then moves beyond this question to explore a broader question, beyond IR and history, with which this symposium is concerned: how can we enhance interdisciplinary analysis in international studies? With regard to the first question, this essay advances several themes. First, while history can serve IR in several ways, it is especially salient to the study of change in IR. Second, the study of history can help us connect the dots across time in ways that can complement IR. Stringing detailed cases together or examining the broader sweep of a longer time period may help us discern causal connections that would have been buried in more streamlined and short-term analyses. Third, history can aid in theory-building, modeling, and testing in the study of IR. Quantitative approaches can also benefit from in-depth historical studies. In assessing the value of history to IR, however, it is critical to ask what type of historians and IR scholars we are considering and to be aware of the differences among them. Fourth, while it is useful to draw on history for IR, history also has its limits and may be misused. At the core, this essay examines how history can contribute to IR, but that analysis raises a broader question: how can we integrate notions and insights from various disciplines in international studies, including history and IR? This essay advances one schema for doing so, which it calls "integrated approaches." It demonstrates one type of integrated approach for the study of foreign policy behavior. The approach systematically draws on multiple disciplines to explain behaviors such as decisions to make treaties, go to war, or ally with other countries.

This article examines the compelling enigma of how the introduction of a new international law, the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), helped stimulate labor cooperation and collaboration in the 1990s. It offers a theory of legal transnationalism-defined as processes by which international laws and legal mechanisms facilitate social movement building at the transnational level-that explains how nascent international legal institutions and mechanisms can help develop collective interests, build social movements, and, ultimately, stimulate cross-border collaboration and cooperation. It identifies three primary dimensions of legal transnationalism that explain how international laws stimulate and constrain movement building through: (1) formation of collective identity and interests (constitutive effects), (2) facilitation of collective action (mobilization effects), and (3) adjudication and enforcement (redress effects).

In a commentary on Coleman and Bassi's study of hegemonic masculinities in the British anti-globalization movement, the author brings to bear the scholarship on the gendered culture of the World Social Forum and through this, suggests the importance of contextualizing such studies in particular places and incorporating race, nation and class as salient dimensions.

This discussion engages with Janet Conway's and Sian Sullivan's comments on our article, 'Deconstructing Militant Manhood: Masculinities in the Disciplining of (Anti-)Globalization Politics'. First, we clarify our understanding of global capitalist forms of ordering and of the gendered scripts attendant to them as a response to Conway's call for a more intersectional analysis and to her point about the relationship between the situated practices we explore and the global order within which we locate them. In doing so, we defend our methodology based on an ascending analysis of power and the usefulness of our particular ethnographical approach to carry out such analysis. Second, we address Sullivan's concerns about our choice of an academic journal as the site for a discussion of the forms of gendered exclusion that we have experienced. While we have not been able to engender a space of active listening in the activist groups we analyse, developing our own tools of analysis of what had happened to us and finding this academic space to share them has been part of a process of making sense of our traumatic experiences both intellectually and emotionally.

In this commentary I engage with Coleman and Bassi's significant intervention 'Deconstructing Militant Manhood'. My intention is a further problematization of what they identify as the exclusionary orderings of powerful gendered and heteronormative scripts within left-political organizations that otherwise identify with a project of contesting the inequities associated with patriarchal modernity. I draw on Nietzsche in considering the production and exclusion of societal 'truths', and the (im)possibilities of 'speaking truth to power', when what is empowered is so precisely through dismissal of difference. I affirm the significant political project of 'becoming-other', as a multiplicity of choices that do not collude with contemporary onto-epistemological order, at the same time as noting the seeming impasse of identity politics in shifting the juggernaut of broader disciplining structures.