Terry Macdonald - Böcker

A pressing question at the forefront of current global political debates is: how can we salvage the democratic project in the context of 'globalization'? In recent years political activists have mounted high-profile campaigns for the democratization of powerful international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, and for greater 'corporate accountability'. In turn, many of the NGOs linked to these campaigns have themselves faced demands for greater democratic legitimacy. Global Stakeholder Democracy responds to these challenges by outlining an innovative theoretical and institutional framework for democratizing the many state and non-state actors wielding public power in contemporary global politics. In doing so, the book lays out a promising new agenda for global democratic reform. Its analysis begins with the recognition that we cannot simply recreate traditional constitutional and electoral institutions of democratic states on a global scale, through the construction of a democratic 'super-state'. Rather, we must develop new kinds of democratic institutions capable of dealing with the realities of global pluralism, and democratizing powerful non-state actors as well as states. Through reflecting on the democratic dilemmas surrounding the political power of global NGOs, the book mounts a powerful challenge to the state-centric theoretical assumptions that have underpinned the established democratic theories of both 'cosmopolitan' and 'communitarian' liberals. In particular, it challenges the widespread assumption that 'sovereign' power, 'bounded' (national or global) societies, and 'electoral' processes are essential institutional foundations of a democratic system. The book then re-thinks the democratic project from its conceptual foundations, posing the questions: What needs to be controlled? Who ought to control it? How could they do so? In answering these questions, the book develops a novel theoretical model of representative democracy that is focused on plural (state and non-state) actors rather than on unitary state structures. It elaborates a democratic framework based on the new theoretical concepts of 'public power', 'stakeholder communities' and 'non-electoral representation', and illustrates the practical implications of these proposals for projects of global institutional reform.

Scholarly debate on the subject of global justice has been overwhelmingly focused so far on the socio-economic aspects of justice. Much less attention has been given to those political aspects of global justice concerned with arrangements for public decision-making and the collective exercise and control of power. This gap is not adequately filled by literatures on global democracy, either, since these do not incorporate sufficient analysis of whether the democratic institutions that deliver political justice within states can achieve the same result when dealing with the very different forms of power and political agency that structure the domain of global politics.This collection brings together scholars from across the disciplines of political theory, normative ethics, and International Relations to undertake a fresh examination of some fundamental theoretical questions about the nature and significance of global political justice. Contributors tackle several dimensions of this complex theoretical topic, exploring questions about: the relationship of global political justice to other normative standards like ‘legitimacy’, ‘democracy’, and ‘socio-economic’ justice; the nature of global ‘public power’ and the prospects for global political community; the justice and continued significance of traditional ordering principles of sovereignty and territoriality; and the relevance of standards of political justice (like political equality) to the regulation of international violence and principles of just war.This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.