Good governance

Democracy is no more susceptible to a single, universal, fixed, and final definition than any other key concept. On the contrary, notions of rule (kratia) by the people (demos) have varied enormously across different historical times, cultural settings and political commitments since the world was coined in ancient Greece. That said, the diverse notions all broadly concur that governance is democratic when decision-taking power lies with the people, a public, a community of fate, whom the regulations in question affect. But, what builds a general concession is less the number of voters than the common interest uniting diverse social groups; for, under democratic system, each necessarily submits to the conditions he imposes on others: and this admirable agreement between interest and justice gives to the common deliberations an equitable character. Of course democracy is not the only core human and social value. Its promotion must be integrated with the pursuit of other primary concerns such as cultural promotion, ecological care, economic efficiency, and peace. Often democracy and these other pillars of a good society can be mutually reinforcing, so that more of one is also more of the other. It is sometimes assumed, that greater democracy comes at a cost of reduced efficiency. Some critics have maintained democratic constructions are inherently deficient, what ever the cultural context. From this perspective globalization would need to promote different kinds of public self rule in order to be truly democratic. Democracy, according to this view, requires more than multiplicity of political parties, periodic elections to representative state institutions, respect of civil rights, and non partisan bureaucracies. At best, these sceptics say, liberal arrangements can achieve a low-intensity democracy that does little to mobilize the majority and to empower marginalized circles(Gills et al., 1993). Chronic low voter turnouts in many countries and widespread cynicism about political parties and politicians would seem to reflect these limitations of liberal democracy (IDEA, 1997). For some social commentators, then supplementary or alternative means are required to move from a democracy of form to a democracy of substance. On its won, liberal democracy cannot generate levels and types of public awareness, participation and accountability that would constitute a veritable democracy. An engaged citizenry is strongly correlated with the effectiveness and responsiveness in government that is a prerequisite to addressing sustainability problems.

As Churchill famously observed, democracy in general is ‘the worst form of government.‘ The glories of the fabled Athenian polis rested on a foundation of slavery. “Citizenship was an ethos, a creative art, indeed, a civic cult rather than a demanding body of duties and a palliative body of rights. At his best, the Athenian citizen tried not only to participate as fully as possible in a far-reaching network of institutions that elicited his presence a s an active being; the democracy turned his participation into a drama that found visible and emotional expression in rituals, games, artwork, a civic religion - in short, a collective sense of feeling and solidarity that underpinned a collective sense of responsibility and duty.(1) This was different from the modern notion of the good citizen holding the right to vote, a tax payer, and not so political.

Even so, the state, being territorially grounded, is not sufficient by itself as an agent of democracy in a world where many social relations are substantially supra-territorial. A statist framework of democracy cannot adequately subject Trans world flows to public direction. Global democracy needs more than a democratic state. For veritable democracy in a more global world, rule by the people has to extend beyond the relationship between states and their respective national populations. No state can fully control its jurisdiction’s involvement with global flows. Even the most powerful national governments cannot by themselves effectively regulate global health problems, global financial markets, global communications flows, global migratory movements, and global environmental changes. Each states rules over a limited territory, while global processes encompass the planet, often defying country borders. In this sense global flows can undermine even the best national democracy. The growth of sub-state, trans-state and no territorial identities and solidarities has reconfigured the public.

In so far democracy through the state is focused in the first place on education, of participation by, and accountability to the nation. The people has many identities in the contemporary globalizing world, and state based democracy often proves to be an unsatisfactory framework for self determination by collectivises other than state-nations. The mode of governance now has moved towards polycentrism. In the contemporary globalizing world, public awareness, participation and control need to be achieved not only in relation to the state, but also in respect of the various other parts of a multicolour and diffuse regulatory apparatus. With polycentrism a host of sub-state, trans-state, supra-state and private governance mechanisms have acquired a significant degree of autonomy from state based democratic processes. Democratic deficits cannot be corrected through the state alone in today’s globalized world.

More often a working democracy depends on knowledgeable citizens. A public that is unaware of its situation, and thus immobilized, cannot pursue meaningful self determination. To be democratically competent, people must have access to relevant information and an adequate understanding of the issues, concepts, principles, policies, procedures, and evidence at hand. Public participation in, and public control of, governance are ineffective if citizens are ignorant. Unfortunately, widespread public ignorance prevails today about globality and its governance. Most people recognize the term globalization, but few are clear about what, more precisely, the process entails and why it is significant. Public awareness of the nature, scope, scale, intensity, causes and impacts of globalization is deplorably low. Likewise, few citizens have well grasped the polycentric character of contemporary governance. Many individuals are ignorant of the involvement of their national and local governments in the governance of globalization.

Most people have not even heard of many of the supra-state and private agencies that figure in the regulation of global flows. Even activists in the politics of globalization often confuse, say the IMF with the World Bank. Few citizens have more than a loose intuitive sense of how arbitrary social hierarchies of country, class, gender, race and other structures are compromising democracy in polycentric governance of today’s world. This democratically unacceptable ignorance has by no means resulted from inherent stupidity on the part of citizens. Rather the problem has bee a general lack of sufficient opportunities to become cognizant of globalization and its governance. These failures of public education have been systemic across all the main sites of knowledge production: schools, universities, mass media, civil society, and governance agencies themselves.

(1) Bookchin, M., from Urbanization to Cities: Towards a new politics of citizenship, (London: Cassel, 1995), p. 63

Prugh, T., Costanza, R., Daly, H., The local politics of Global sustainability, Island Press, 2000

Scholte, J. A., Globalization: A critical introduction, second edition, Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 2005

Gills, B., et al. (eds), Low intensity democracy: political power in the New World Order, London: Pluto, 1993

IDEA, Voter turnout from 1945 to 1997: A global report. Stockholm: institute for democracy and electoral assistance, 1997