Project

A short presentation of our research project

In the last decade, ‘global governance’ has become a central object of study for a myriad of political scientists, legal scholars, economists and political philosophers. Many have begun to realise that governance beyond the state is rapidly expanding, with significant consequences: decision-making – both formal and informal – is more than ever taking place beyond the nation-state, and its increasingly important (domestic) impact is frequently beyond the control of democratically elected nation-state governments and legislatures. Therefore, an increasing number of scholars have started to raise a set of fundamental questions regarding the democratic quality of global governance: (How) can global governance be democratised? What can democracy on a transnational level mean? And how can notions of democratic legitimacy be implemented within specific domains of global governance?

Based on these and other questions, this project intends to recast the current debate about the democratisation of global governance. This is done both through theoretical work on the concept of global democracy and through a number of empirical case studies which inform our theoretical framework. The theoretical work will critically inquire into the logic of democracy, comparing the virtues and limits of various models for democratising global governance. Within this framework, it will explicitly focus on investigating the role of democratic representation. On that basis, four case studies on the democratic quality of various global governance arrangements will be carried out in particular: 1) the elaboration and implementation of a post-2012 climate change regime (global environmental governance), 2) the functioning and legitimacy of the UN Security Council and its relationship to regional security actors (global peace and security governance), 3) the functioning and legitimacy of the G-20 and the World Trade Organization (global economic governance), and 4) corporate social responsibility and the role, responsibilities and regulatory initiatives of business enterprises (global human rights governance).

Based on a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the conditions under which institutions, processes and practices of global governance can be established more democratically, it is the ambition of the consortium to develop, operationalise and apply a new paradigm for (genuine) democratic global governance.