DUAL DEMOCRACY, by Anne Peters
Abstract and Keywords
Global constitutionalism requires dual democratic mechanisms. A fully democratized world order first of all rests on democratic nation states, thus on democracywithinstates. Above and among states, both the production of primary international law and the international institutions and their secondary law-making can and should be democratized on two tracks. On the one hand, citizens should continue to be mediated by their states that act for them in international relations (statist track). However, even if all states of the world became democracies, this would not in itself suffice to attain a meaningful degree of global democratic legitimacy because national democracy itself is undermined for various reasons. Therefore, citizens must be enabled to bypass their intermediaries, the states, and take direct democratic action on the supra-state level (individualist track). This could begin by introducing parliamentary assemblies in more international organizations, and expanding their so-far merely consultative powers.
Keywords:democracy,oligarchy,citizenship,solidarity,NGO,parliamentary assemblies,legitimacy,accountability,transparency, majority voting
1.Democracy as a Principle of the Global Constitutional Order
The democratic deficit of international law and global governance has been called one of the central questions perhaps the central question in contemporary world politics.The deficit is crucial because it delegitimizes international law and offers a reason for states not to apply and observe international law.The constitutionalist response to this problem is that the issue of democracy in the international sphere should not be bracketed as unrealizable, but that all should be attempted to make the global order democratic both at the state and at the supra-state level. However, domestic democratic procedures cannot simply be zoned up. The type, shape, and procedures of democracy cannot and need not be identical on both levels of governance. Moreover, the complementarity and interaction of various levels of governance inevitably transforms the domestic ways of democracy as well. Finally, the designers of a global constitutional order must be prepared to give the concept of democracy a new meaning without, however, diluting it to the extreme, and without selling undemocratic procedures as democratic. This book devotes one chapter to the constitutional principle of democracy, not because it is more important than other constitutional principles such as the rule of law, due process, and the protection of fundamental rights and of minorities, but because democracy is more conspicuously absent in global(p.264)governance, and because it seems particularly difficult to build in democratic elements in the design and operation of global governance.
1.1The duality of global democracy
Global constitutionalism requires dual democratic mechanisms. These should relate both to government within nation states and to governance above states, thus to multiple levels of governance. The result should be a multi-unit democracy, built with domestic and international building blocks.
A fully democratized world order first of all rests on democratic nation states, thus on democracywithinstates. International processes and institutions can hardly be democratized if their constituent units do not themselves know and apply democratic internal procedures. More specifically, domestic democracy is needed in order to secure a transitive democratic basis for global governance, and as a guarantee for the promotion of global goods such as peace and security.For these two reasons, the spread and support of national democracies constitutes a kind of indirect global democratization. It already is and should be further encouraged by international law (see in detail below pp. 273277). Because of its fundamental and systemic importance, the requirement of democracy within states should be acknowledged as a global constitutional principle.
Above and among states, both the production of primary international law and the international institutions and their secondary law-making can and should be democratized on two tracks. On the one hand, citizens should continue to be mediated by their states which act for them in international relations (statist track). On the statist track, states as principals of international institutions should be reasserted and their influence improved. But because the ultimate reference point of democracy are natural persons, such a state-mediated democracy is present only to the extent that states really are the representatives of their citizens. Put another way, global governance is transitively democratically legitimate only to the extent that international bodies are accountable through states to citizens. It follows that we can meaningfully speak of an indirect democratization of the global order on the statist track only when all states have realized domestic democratic government. As long as not all states are democratic, a large number of people are not represented in a democratic sense by their states in the international institutions.
However, even if all states of the world became democracies, this would not in itself suffice to attain a meaningful degree of global democratic legitimacy for reasons which will be explained below (pp. 286296). Therefore citizens, as the ultimate source of political authority, must be enabled to bypass their (p.265)intermediaries, the states, and take direct democratic action on the supra-state level (individualist track). It is necessary, as Eric Stein has put it, to inject the voice of individual citizens into the exclusively state-based structures.
The two-track model does not imply a complete shift of the international institutions accountability to natural persons, but merely suggests bringing in the global citizens as principalsbesidesstates where appropriate. The accountability of the global governance institutions is extended and duplicated. The institutions will not be accountable only to states, but additionally (and sometimes competingly and conflictually) become accountable directly to citizens. The result is a dual accountability of international institutions to a dual constituency: states and citizens.
1.2The meanings and merits of democracy
Democracy, both as a constitutional principle and as a political process, has been loaded with various, even competing meanings, and has undergone important changes throughout its history.Abraham Lincoln once defined democracy as government of the people, by the people, and for the people.Put another way, democratic government requires that the citizens can give their input to decisions of law and policy, and that political processes produce outputs in the interests of the citizens.Necessary elements of democratic governance are, on the one hand, political equality, participation, inclusion of all governed, and, on the other, responsiveness and accountability of the governing actors to the governed. An essential element of democracy are mechanisms which allow the citizens to evaluate and eventually to sanction the performance of the(p.266)power-wielders. A system is democratic only if it allows the citizens to disempower and throw out politicians, normally through elections. An important enabling condition for this mechanism is the transparency of governance.
Democracy has become a slogan nearly as powerful as human rights. Practically all governments of the world boast that they are democratic, although they often practice forms of democracy that do not allow the citizens to hold power-wielders accountable, and are therefore not democratic in the sense just defined. But these distortions of democracy only demonstrate how strong the pull of the principle is.
The traditional western defence of democracy, formulated by Jean Jacques Rousseau, is that democracy best reconciles individual freedom and equality with life in society.A new justification of democracy specifically accommodates the basic facts of diversity, disagreement, and cognitive bias, and is therefore particularly relevant for the global scale. Thomas Christiano has argued that political institutions should be designed so as to advance equally the interests of persons who are affected by those institutions. Because the diverse interests and backgrounds make people cognitively biased towards their own interests, the objective of equally advancing affected persons interests can only be realized through an equal say.This reasoning is especially pertinent for global decision-making, because on a global level there is particularly strong disagreement about how the world should be shaped. This calls for a global collective decision-making process which grants each human an equal say in decisions affecting him or her.
Democratic governance has not outlived itself. Post-democracy, as diagnosed and deplored by Colin Crouch, is no good option. Crouch has pointed out that, while the norms of democracy remain fully in place and are actually even strengthened, politics and government are increasingly slipping back into the control of privileged elites in the manner characteristic of pre-democratic times; and one major consequence of this process is the growing impotence of egalitarian causes.Crouch does not acclaim but criticizes the depolitization of lives, privatism, and consumerism in developed western democracies. Propagating post-democracy would be Eurocentric and risks defaming democratization processes outside Europe. In many states in Africa, the Near East, and South East Asia, democratic procedures have just come into being and need to take root. For all these reasons, democracy still seems to be, as Winston Churchill put it, the worst form of government, except all others.
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