Building Global Democracy

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.

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

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.

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.

As democratization has advanced in the developing world, developed countries such as the United States have implemented explicit strategies of democracy promotion by providing assistance to governments, political parties, and other non-governmental groups and organizations through a variety of channels. This analysis examines the relationship between democracy support by the US Agency for International Development and democratization in the developing world between 1988 and 2001. In a model that examines the simultaneous processes linking democratization and democracy aid, we argue that carefully targeted democracy assistance has greater impact on democratization than more generic economic aid packages. We test the relationship in a simultaneous equation model, supplemented by several time-series cross-sectional regressions. Our data reveal a positive relationship between specific democracy aid packages and progress toward democracy. We conclude by weighing the implications of these findings for democratization and democracy promotion policies.

This article analyzes Brazilian grand strategy under President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva. During Lula's eight years in office, he pursued a multitiered grand strategy aimed at hastening the transition from U.S. and Western hegemony to a multipolar order more favorable to Brazilian interests. Lula did so by emphasizing three diplomatic strategies: soft balancing, coalition building, and seeking to position Brazil as the leader of a more united South America. During Lula's time in office, this strategy successfully raised Brazil's profile and increased its diplomatic flexibility, but the country still faces several potent strategic dilemmas that could complicate or undermine its geopolitical ascent.

This article takes the example of global governance in order to reflect on the problematic relationship between theory and practice and on the gap that exists between the academic and policy worlds. That there is a gap between the two worlds is clear. Some insist on the benefits to be gained from trying to bridge the gap, highlighting the contribution that theoretical inquiry can make to the policy world and the responsibility of academics to contribute towards resolving policy challenges. Others argue for the continued importance of a division of labour, stressing that the logic of theoretical enquiry demands analytical and critical distance from power and politics. This article does not examine either of these extreme positions but instead explores the dangers of the middle road. For academics, insufficient awareness of the problematic ways in which theory and practice are inextricably interwoven makes it more likely that they will fall hostage to the politics and parochial prejudices of both time and place. For policymakers and for those who teach public policy, the danger lies in seeking the authority and legitimacy of academic work that purportedly embodies objectivity and detachment but that in fact merely translates the prejudices and preoccupations of the policy world back into a different idiom. An unreflective and uncritical attitude to the relationship between theory and practice can leave the academic study of International Relations in the worst of all possible worlds.

International Relations (IR) scholarship is directly in the path of two simultaneous tidal waves. The first is the rise of China and India in the traditional IR terms of military and economic power. The second is the expanding nature of what IR scholarship needs to address, as global integration transforms the nature of the issues to be addressed and numerous trends expand the number and types of relevant actors. Neither theory nor practice is yet coping well with the profound implications of these fundamental changes. Investigating what kind of a world order might emerge from these two simultaneous tsunamis will require an enormous research agenda that explores the roles of ideas, structural factors, and path dependencies across regions and issue areas. This article aims to illuminate a subset focused around the connection between theory and practice as related to two emerging powers. It briefly maps developments in Western IR theory and explores how those connect-or fail to connect-with intellectual and policy currents in the rising Asian giants. It draws on a number of interviews and workshops held in Asia in the past two years that explore how Asian scholars and policymakers are dealing with, and perhaps beginning to shape, the rapidly changing conceptual landscape.

Strong civil society provides individuals with arenas to bring their interests to the attention of policymakers. In so doing, civil society organizations (CSOs) can support state policies, but can also criticize policies. This paper argues that most minority rights advocacy CSOs in the Baltic states have little say in the crafting of policy and are compartmentalized into the existing agendas, with only a few groups able to evaluate policies independently. It concludes that the Baltic civil society is weak because the CSOs working on minority issues ask policymakers either too much, or too little. The findings suggest that policymakers quell criticism of their work from the side of the CSOs by ignoring their activities. Alternatively, by funding the CSO that shores up the state agenda, policymakers delegate their responsibilities to civic actors, keep critical voices from public debates and claim that their policies have the full support of a vibrant civil society. This paper investigates the options available for civil society actors to relate to policymakers in a nationalizing state by drawing on the data collected in 77 semi-structured interviews with the CSOs working with Russian and Polish minorities in the Baltic states between 2006 and 2009.

In this article, we address the ways in which theories and practices of cosmopolitanism and professionalization intersect in the sphere of global civil society. We emphasize the experiences of grassroots development activists, arguing that although they have so far been pivotal to the legitimacy of these spaces and discourses, such activists are increasingly absent from the practices of global civic spaces. We explore this process of change over time using the example of grassroots health promoters in Peru, explaining it in terms of the articulation of neoliberal processes of professionalization with a particularly neoliberal version of cosmopolitanism. We argue that the two are mutually reinforcing and produce a particularly narrow, and arguably less cosmopolitan, rendition of global civil society, with implications for the possibility of building critical and transformative encounters across difference as a foundation for more equitable ideas and practices of development and democracy.

This paper begins by reviewing the ancient Chinese worldview, one imbued with cultural particularism wherein the Middle Kingdom identified itself as the centre of the universe. I then distinguish the ways in which historically the Confucian East and Christian West have respectively exerted cultural hegemony. I next analyse China's rebuffing of liberal democracy, and how the CCP's retention of one-party rule has generated concerns about its legitimacy. I conclude by showing that China and America each possess moral traditions - specifically Confucianism and Jeffersonian Deism - that have overlapping outlooks. Both maintain a worldview that disavows extremism. Based on this broader philosophical-religious analysis, I argue that contentions over liberal democracy notwithstanding, China and America share moral ideals vital for confronting some of today's exigencies.

By any measure, China's economic reform is of world-historical significance. While acknowledging the remarkable achievements China has made over the past thirty years, this introductory essay foregrounds some of the major challenges and problems China faces. Since the open-door policy was formally adopted in 1978, the country has been undergoing radical sociohistorical transformations that have created not only unprecedented wealth, new freedoms, and possibilities, but also widespread and significant inconsistencies and discontinuities that characterize the everyday life of China at the present moment. Is China's substantially marketized economy sufficient evidence of its abandonment of socialism? Is it a socialist market economy or marketized socialism? Is it a socialist state with "Chinese characteristics" or one without socialism? Would the continuation of economic reform lead to democratization? Thirty years after the reform, China has emerged as a site of paradoxes and contradictions. Contemporary China cannot be fully understood unless some of its most significant new features are identified, analyzed, and comprehended; but our attempt to understand what is unfolding in China requires an acknowledgment of the inadequacies of the accepted views and formulations about the country. By foregrounding some of those problems that this special issue of boundary 2 seeks to identify, analyze, and understand, the introduction urges for the need to move beyond the existing theoretical paradigms and categorizations for describing China's political and social formations, and to develop a more nuanced critical language for the complexities of contemporary Chinese society.

Technology has always played an important role in global politics, economics, security, and culture. It has continuously shaped the structure of the global system, its actors, and the interactions between them and vice versa. However, theories of International Relations (IR), and in particular those of International Political Economy (IPE), have performed little to theoretically conceptualize technology as a powerful factor within explanations of change in global affairs. Although technology often is implicitly present in the theories of IR and IPE, it is often interpreted as an external, passive, apolitical, and residual factor. This essay argues that to develop a better understanding of transformation in global affairs, technology has to be integrated more systematically into the theoretical discussions of IR/IPE. Technology should be understood as a highly political and integral core component of the global system that shapes global affairs and itself is shaped by global economics, politics, and culture. This paper makes the case for an interdisciplinary approach, which systematically incorporates insights of Science and Technology Studies (S&TS) to provide a better understanding of how technology and the global system and politics interact with each other. In so doing, it opens the field to a richer understanding of how global systemic change is impacted by technology and how global politics, economics, and culture impact technological evolution.

Arthur Okun famously argued that "effciency is bought at the cost of inequalities in income and wealth". Okun's trade-off represents the antithesis to Karl Polanyi's view of the relationship that the more embedded markets are in society, the better the social and economic outcomes they produce. This paper refines both these views. We argue that not all forms of market embeddedness are created equal, and that the relationship between equality and efficiency can be both positive and negative. We show this by examining how different ways of embedding economic activity in society through market regulation produce different combinations of efficiency and equality. We identify empirically three broad patterns: market liberal regulatory frameworks that promote competitive markets without decommodifying institutions; embedded liberal regulations that allow markets to work efficiently, but within the framework of decommodification and equality; and embedded illiberalism, where regulations hinder markets in favor of powerful social groups and where decommodification undermines both efficiency and equality. Okun's trade-off emerges as a special case limited to the English-speaking democracies: other OECD countries tend to exhibit either efficiency and equality together, or inefficiency and inequality together. These findings suggest a corrective to both nave market liberal views of the incompatibility of efficiency and equality, but also to the more sophisticated Varieties of Capitalism framework, which pays insufficient attention to the ways in which markets can be embedded in stable but apparently dysfunctional institutional arrangements.

This article locates tensions at the heart of deliberative democracy by contrasting insights of Pierre Bourdieu and Jürgen Habermas. It argues that deliberation contains implicit presuppositions of two opposing sorts. Universalising presuppositions lead people to treat one another as equals. Differentiating ones lead people to treat one another as of greater or lesser worth in political dialogue. They undercut deliberative democracy by rendering some points of view less valuable than others. These contrary tendencies cannot be reconciled in a purely theoretical way; they are contextually specific challenges that must be negotiated in politics itself. In response, this article seeks to clarify the difficulties faced by deliberative regimes and better understand their relation to other forms of politics.

This article examines Mao Zedong's theory of new democracy in order to explicate the relationship between minority nationalities and sovereignty within the state system of the People's Republic of China. It argues that the position of minority nationalities in China has been overdetermined by territorial sovereignty in the identification of the Chinese peoples, with the result that minority nationalities are fixed within China because of the imperialist framework of the contemporary international order. Chinese government policy remains bound by a contradiction between imperialism and socialism, a dialectic that has created and determines the dialectics of chauvinism- that contradiction between the Han majority and the minority nationalities.

The Niger Delta predicament has fascinated academic curiosity and intellectual nosiness in the recent time. Thus, several analytical frameworks and theoretical postulations have been adopted in the explanation of the Niger Delta quandary. One of the competing explanations is the "geography of terrorism or terror of geography" thesis which construed the inauspicious geography and murky topography of the region as a major factor that precipitates development tragedy. The article argues that beyond the terror of geography thesis is the endemic political and bureaucratic corruption that has engulfed the Nigerian political system at all levels of government.

Legitimacy is an important question to ask of the theory and practice of global governance. In this introduction, we make two propositions that are used to push thinking about these issues forward. Firstly, in analytical terms we outline a spectrum between legitimacy and legitimization which is aimed to capture the diverse set of approaches to this subject and to develop an engaged and reformist attitude that refuses the either-or distinction in favour of a methodologically pluralist logic of 'both and'. Secondly, in political terms, we argue that discussions of legitimate global governance in both policy and academic circles can carry a 'Trojan horse' quality whereby the ambiguity of the term might allow a point of intervention for more ambitious ethical objectives.

Do women possess the requisite personal qualities and characteristics of political leadership needed by a president, characteristics that male politicians are often assumed to have? In Chile's historic 2005/6 presidential campaign, the responses of Michelle Bachelet and her male opponents to this question became an explicit area of debate

Material queer analyses argue the urgent need to reincorporate class to comprehend sexual (re)formations in advanced capitalism, and some theorists propose a revitalized historical materialism as a framework for doing this. In contrast, this article illuminates the significance of class for late modern sexualities by taking a 'cultural' approach to the issue. By analysing gay men's personal accounts of class (dis-)identification that were told in interviews in Britain, the article elucidates the ways in which class and sexuality were articulated as intertwined, and how class and gay identities were constructed relationally through each other. Specifically, it generates insights into the performativities of classed gay identities; the differential value attached to working- and middle-class identities; and how narratives of (dis)identification often articulate gay and working class identities as relational 'Others'. Contrary to some theoretical and popular notions of gay identities as classless, my analysis shows that class identities can be centrally important to gay ones. While the relationship between gay classed identities and socio-economic positioning is not straightforward, such identities illuminate how cultural, social and economic (dis-)incentives promote distancing from 'working-class' forms of existence and strong attachments to 'middle-class' ones and to the idea of gay class transcendence. Such distancing and attachments are also features of sexualities theory and research that deny the significance of class.