Rethinking Global Democracy in Brazil

Markus Fraundorfer

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781786604538
• eBook ISBN: 9781786604552
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In recent years, a growing literature has focused on how to create more effective and democratic global governance mechanisms to better tackle global challenges such as health epidemics, global hunger, Internet surveillance or the consequences of climate change. Yet there is a gap in accessible published material to reflect contributions of democratic states from the global South.

Among these democracies from the global South, Brazil is a popular case for teachers and researchers looking to study global governance mechanisms. This book provides students with a framework that challenges the Western-centred views on questions of how to democratise global governance processes, arguing that developing democracies from the global South have developed serious and sustainable approaches to a more democratic global system.

With chapters on Brazil's responses to global food security, the purchase of drugs, open government initiatives and internet governance, this book opens up contemporary and novel practices of democracy for examination.

Chapter 1

Introduction

NEW REALITIES, OLD STRUCTURES

How to tackle the immense global challenges overwhelming humankind at the beginning of the 21st century? We are confronted with challenges which are no longer limited to a particular country, region or continent. With every passing day, the consequences of climate change in the guise of rising sea levels, droughts, floods and other extreme weather conditions become more threatening to the security and safety of every society on this planet. Every couple of years a new dangerous virus embarks on an aeroplane and travels the world with potentially disastrous consequences. The Ebola outbreak in Western Africa in 2014 was only the latest example of a virus which nowadays, given our globalised and interconnected world, has the potential to spread beyond its natural confines of a few isolated villages and frighten to death whole societies hundreds of thousands of kilometres away. And the clock is already ticking for the next global virus outbreak, the next environmental disaster, the next security crisis.

The miserable living conditions of approximately one billion people on this planet represent another grave threat to the stability and security of countries in the developing and the developed world.¹ The developed countries are particularly vulnerable to the massive waves of immigrants and refugees, crashing day after day on the high walls of fortresses like the United States (US) or the European Union (EU). And time and again even these high walls, the intimidating barbed wire or the menacing fences at the external borders of the US or the EU are not sufficient to wear down the desperate determination of those masses to seek shelter on these islands of relative wealth and calm in the midst of an all too often very stormy sea. Global terrorist networks are able to disrupt, from one moment to the other, the finely woven fabric of the affluent societies in the West, producing chaos and fear. And while the Internet provides the tools for global dissemination of information, news and knowledge, it also plays into the hands of terrorists and lunatics spreading hate speech, intolerance and ignorance. All this within the blink of an eye!

In our ‘brave new world’ the once enormous distances between different world regions have shrunk so rapidly that global challenges affect us all – sometimes instantly as in the case of global health epidemics, sometimes more gradually as in the case of climate change. The problem: the contemporary intergovernmental system of nation-states has experienced enormous difficulties tackling those challenges which no longer respect the boundaries of the state. The states have repeatedly failed to come up with sustainable and long-term solutions to the grand challenges of our time.

Zygmunt Bauman argued that ‘we presently find ourselves in a time of “interregnum”, when the old ways of doing things no longer work, the old learned or inherited modes of life are no longer suitable for the current conditio humana, but when the new ways of tackling the challenges and new modes of life better suited to the new conditions have not as yet been invented, put in place and set in operation’.² When considering the current transformation processes in the global system, we may arrive at a similar conclusion. The institutions, structures and decision-making processes, which the main international actors of the 20th century put in place to govern interstate relations, are no longer adequate to solve the crises, problems and challenges at the outset of the 21st century. David Held calls this situation the ‘paradox of our time’, when ‘the collective issues we must grapple with are of growing extensity and intensity and, yet, the means for addressing these are weak and incomplete’.³

What can be done to tackle these overwhelming challenges?

OLD STRUCTURES, UNDEMOCRATIC STRUCTURES

The global order at the outset of the 21st century suffers from severe structural injustices and a profound democratic deficit. Many scholars emphasise the neo-colonial and neo-imperial traits of the contemporary global order caused by the Western powers and the Western-dominated international organisations created after the Second World War, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – since 1995, the World Trade Organisation (WTO).⁴ James Tully, for example, characterises the contemporary global order with the following words:

First, it is a complex form of rule that governs imperialized peoples by means other than formal colonies (that is, by a combination of informal and indirect means). Second, the hegemonic great powers and their accompanying institutions recognize the imperialized or subalternized peoples as self-governing constitutional states and they interact with them on this basis, yet within the deeply unequal hegemon-subaltern relations of economic, political, legal, educational, and military power laid down over centuries of western expansion (that is, an interactive mode of governance among unequal sovereigns rather than the unilateral domination of formal colonialism).⁵

The structural injustices caused by these neo-colonial and neo-imperial activities of the Western powers are seen as a major reason for the stubborn existence of poverty and misery in the developing world.⁶ And more than that, the profoundly undemocratic and unjust nature of the global order represents a major reason for the repeated failures of the intergovernmental system to find sustainable and long-term solutions to the kaleidoscope of transboundary challenges. Many international organisations such as the IMF or the World Bank are still in the firm grip of the established powers; the UN Security Council no longer represents the distribution of power among the nation-states since the beginning of the 21st century; and the WTO, at its creation a clear instrument to further the interests of the Western states, is currently blocked due to the irreconcilable positions of the major trading blocs, the US and the EU, on the one side and the developing countries on the other side.

In the face of these impasses, gridlocks and stalemates, an increasing number of scholars argue that international organisations, global processes and mechanisms need to be gradually democratised to unlock the inherent potential of all the different actors involved in today’s global system and create new ways of thinking and governing.⁷ Since global challenges affect everyone – every citizen, state and world region – much more voices need to be included in international decision-making processes and collective action.⁸ Apart from the powerful Western states, this would include developing countries, civil society organisations, social movements and local communities. Global governance mechanisms need to be redesigned to include meaningfully in their decision-making processes those actors and communities significantly affected by a transboundary problem such as environmental degradation, health epidemics or food insecurity.⁹ Democratic structures may help to make global mechanisms more responsive to the interests and needs of those actors, communities and citizens currently excluded from the intergovernmental decision-making processes; increase the states’ accountability vis-à-vis civil society; and, consequently, reduce existing injustices and inequalities.¹⁰

Many scholars argue that civil society actors are a central democratising force.¹¹ Through global mobilisation efforts and the creation of transnational advocacy networks, civil society actors have been able to raise awareness about global challenges, frame international discourses and shape the international agenda. In this process, civil society actors have contributed to the generation of new norms; the reinforcement of international human rights legislation; the adoption of groundbreaking treaties, such as the Mine Ban Treaty; or the creation of new international bodies such as the International Criminal Court. Hence, civil society actors can be regarded as a highly dynamic and vibrant force in global governance, fighting very often at the forefront of global challenges. In 2014, during the most severe Ebola outbreak in history, it was the civil society organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) that reacted faster than any state or international organisation to the tragedies unfolding in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The courageous actions of MSF and other civil society organisations during the Ebola outbreak probably avoided a global disaster with a deadly virus spreading from country to country and from continent to continent.¹²

Nonetheless, civil society actors are confronting a fundamental dilemma. Although they have an increased role to play in global politics and have become indispensable on many policy issues, they are still mostly left out of international decision-making mechanisms. In other words, it is still the states that primarily control the levers of power in global governance, be it in the decision-making processes of international organisations, international summits or international negotiations. Civil society actors are all too often relegated to an observer or advisory role in the arenas of global politics without real decision-making power. It is certainly true that the role of the state as the primary actor in global politics has been undermined by the rise of new non-state actors. And yet civil society actors still have a long way to go in securing a place among the states at the high tables of global power politics where the ultimate decisions are taken. Civil society organisations do have a crucial role to play in democratising global politics, but they ultimately rely on the support of governments to create more just and democratic global governance mechanisms.¹³ As a consequence, for any realistic study on global democracy the states need to be included as indispensable actors.

In the literature, several theoretical approaches emphasise the key role of the state. Scholars embracing the theoretical model of a world confederation argue that only democratic states can promote global democracy.¹⁴ The empirical evidence, however, refutes this argument. The most powerful Western states, which still largely control the dominant arenas of global politics, are all liberal democracies. Ironically, these democracies bear enormous responsibility for the undemocratic and unjust nature of the global order. Another current of scholars argues in favour of a cosmopolitan democracy, a global democracy consisting of global democratic institutions such as a world government and a world parliament.¹⁵ Although fascinating as an idea, its realisation will probably remain confined, for the foreseeable future, to the imagined worlds of science fiction.

Over the last few years, a third approach, called polycentric democracy, has gained traction in the debate.¹⁶ In contrast to a world confederation and a cosmopolitan world state, polycentric democracy unfolds its democratisation potential due to the polycentric, fragmented and networked nature of global governance. This approach argues that global governance can be gradually democratised on the basis of the interaction and cooperation of all the relevant actors in global governance, including state and non-state actors. And when democratisation processes are understood as processes which ‘aim to transform power relations into relations of shared authority’,¹⁷ the cooperation efforts of all these actors play a fundamental role in the creation of more democratic global governance structures. As a consequence, the networked and polycentric nature of global governance, where countless state and non-state actors including international organisations and agencies, corporations, NGOs, social movements, philanthropic foundations and individual experts compete for power and influence, has opened up new opportunities for the democratisation of global governance mechanisms and processes.

When considering the polycentric nature of global governance, the approach of polycentric democracy appears to be the most realistic theoretical blueprint on which to base empirical studies of global democracy. In this context, scholars have almost exclusively focused on the role of civil society actors.¹⁸ What this literature has almost completely ignored so far is the role emerging democracies from the global South play in collaborating with other state and non-state actors to democratise global governance mechanisms. This omission is not particularly surprising, given the Western-centred focus of most of the research on global democracy. In the face of the profound transformation processes in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Democratising Global Governance
• 3 Brazil and the Purchase of Drugs
• 4 Brazil and Food Security
• 5 Brazil and Open Government
• 6 Brazil and Internet Governance
• 7 Conclusion
• Interviews
• Bibliography
• Index