The Politics of Change: Why Global Democracy Needs Dissent

By Roland Bleiker. Originally published in “Dynamics of Dissent” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Summer/Fall 2008 pp. 33-39. Used with permission of the author.

Editors Note: This article was written before the genocide by Israel in Palestine but casts perspective on the global dissent around the genocide. It also invites considering the global significance of the No King’s Day demonstrations and other national acts of dissent in relation to the current U.S. administration. In addition, it addresses the issues of inclusion and dissent around climate change as paramount while the annual global COP conference in regard to the ongoing climate crisis is currenly taking place in Brazil.

Dissidents are celebrated as heroes when they struggle against oppressive political regimes.1

In democracies, however, dissent is all too often seen as a dangerous force that undermines stability, order, and the rule of law.

Vilified as they are, dissidents nevertheless play an important role in democratic practice. This paper explores what may well be one of the key challenges of our day: extending democratic ideals to the global realm. Doing so is essential because processes of globalization increasingly undermine the traditional realm of democratic participation: the national state. Citizens’ daily lives are influenced by political, financial, and cultural forces that transgress state boundaries. For example, the effects of greenhouse gas emissions are global, even though most of them are caused by a relatively small number of developed countries. Any solution to the ensuing problems of climate change, from droughts to rising sea levels, can only be found through a concerted and coordinated global effort. People in all parts of the world should thus have a say in how the related issues are addressed, but many global institutions, international organizations, and multinational companies are neither transparent nor accountable to a democratic public.

Extending democracy to the global level is, of course, a difficult task. Some very limited efforts are already in place. The UN, for instance, offers a forum in which states can debate issues of global concern. Some urge the UN to add an elected and globally repre-sentative assembly to its existing struc-ture, but such suggestions are a long way from being realized in practice.2 Even if they are adopted, a far more difficult underlying problem remains: Global democratic institutions must be embesdded in a global regulatory framework with the power to implement decisions if they are to play the same role as their state-based counterparts. Such a scenario is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future. If democracy is to have meaning and significance at the global level, then a more fundamental rethinking of the very notion of democracy is required. This essay recommends how one might productively approach some aspects of the challenges at stake.

I first suggest, somewhat counter-intuitively, that dissident movements can make a positive contribution to the search for global democracy. This is pre-cisely because dissent disturbs existing political orders and the privileges they mask. I sustain this position through a brief engagement with the anti-globalization movement, focusing solely on the protest element of the movement. Anarchical, disruptive, and at times violent, the protest element is certainly the most contentious aspect of the movement. It also illustrates, however, how dissent can challenge institutionalized relations of power and, by doing so, generate public debate and perhaps even enforce a certain level of accountability otherwise impossible in a global realm that lacks viable democratic institutions. Arguing so is not to deny the importance of democratic institutions but to stress that without periodic political challenges, existing forms of governance tend to establish, uphold, and mask practices of domination and exclusion.

The second point I wish to make is a conceptual reinforcement of the first: democracy must be viewed not only as a set of institutions, but also as an evolving attitude. Many theorists suggest that our conceptualization of democracy should go beyond institutional models and into a procedural realm.3 William Connolly, for instance, fosters a democratic ethos based not on fundamental principles but on the need to disturb these principles. Connolly is afraid that any institutional order that remains unchallenged poses a serious obstacle to a truly transnational democratic disposition. He thus advocates a “democratic politics of disturbance” and, far-fetched as it may seem, promotes respect for “multiple constituencies honoring different moral sources.” 4

Globalization and the Changing Nature of Dissent

Dissent is, at first sight, an unlikely ally in the search for global democracy. More specifically, the anti-globalization movement seems to highlight the problems of globalization rather than the search for democratic solutions.

For one, the movement is disorganized, chaotic, and seemingly unable to come up with any coherent and positive strategy. Among the diverse and often polarized groups of the movement we find feminists, environmentalists, steel-workers, anarchists, farmers, and students. Their goals are far too diverse to produce a common agenda, and violent elements of the movement, even if they are in the minority, often derail a protest event that was meant to be peaceful. Skepticism is thus warranted about the extent to which such a chaotic dissident movement can make a positive contribution to global democracy. But is this skepticism really justified? A closer look reveals a surprisingly different picture.

A crisis of legitimacy stems from the weak democratic accountability of the state and multilateral institutions.

The movement’s first major event that attracted global media coverage was the so-called “Battle for Seattle,” which resulted in four days of massive street demonstrations against a December 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle, Washington. Many commentators consider this event, which brought together some 40,000 demonstrators of different backgrounds and political persuasions, a watershed event in the public awakening to a global consciousness. They speak of an event that symbolized the world’s discontent with the spread of globalization and with policies that seemingly promoted free trade and corporate greed over the inter-ests of average people and the environment.5 Numerous other protest events followed in the years to come, including demonstrations against meetings of the World Economic Forum, the Interna-tional Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank.

The substantive claims of the anti-globalization movement are highly con-troversial. Its main targets are key liberal economic institutions of the world economy: the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO. Protesters strongly lament the lack of democratic accountability within these organizations. The influential voice of journalist Vandana Shiva, who argues that the WTO is enforcing an “anti-people, anti-nature decision to enable corporations to steal the world’s harvests through secretive, undemocratic structures and processes,” is representative of many anti-globalization protesters.6 Many scholars and commentators dismiss such a pessimistic understanding of globalization. Instead, we often hear of the benign story of Western democracy and free market principles bringing progress and economic growth to previously undeveloped parts of the world.7

The reality lies somewhere in between these extremes, but the message that the anti-globalization movement seeks to convey is perhaps less important than the manner in which it has managed to capture public attention. Since many people around the globe see street protests as the only opportunity to express their opinions, a crisis of legitimacy stems from the weak democratic accountability of the state and multilateral institutions. The anti-globalization movement demonstrates what Joan Bondurant identified as liberal thought’s primary flaw: “the failure to provide techniques of action for those critical occasions when the machinery of democratic government no longer functions to resolve large-scale, overt conflict.”8

But the situation is not nearly as gloomy as anti-globalization movements claim it to be. The very fact that we are aware of this movement and of its various grievances demonstrates that globalization has provided populations with a new method of participating in political debates. There are at least two reasons for this transformation of dissent.

First, recent technological innovations have provided dissidents with tools to organize and coordinate their actions. Many of the protesters that went to Seattle, for example, were united through e-mail correspondences and a variety of websites that organized resistance strategies, thus making the movement far less disorganized and aimless than it initially seemed. Mobile phones helped coordinate on-the-ground actions, which resulted in alliances between highly unlikely protest segments. In Seattle, again, the labor and environmental movements joined with anarchists and church groups to present a common front.9

Second, global media networks have fundamentally transformed the nature and methodology of dissent. Media can deliver images of protest that reach a global audience. The Battle for Seattle will be remembered as a global media spectacle—a rallying call for anti-globalization political movements worldwide. As such, dissidents utilized another way to attack the global economic order.

Global Democracy as a Politics of Disturbance

So far I have suggest-ed that globalization empowers average citizens as much as it disempowers them. Effective protest actions may be able to induce political change at the global level. Dissenting protests may even become a new method of accruing power. Are dissenting protests a new kind of democratic participation, then, and do they make a meaningful contribution to the theory and practice of global democracy?

When viewed from a traditional, institutional democratic perspective, protest actions do not seem to add a meaningful dimension to democratic deliberations. The situation looks more complex, however, if we push our understanding of democracy beyond an institutionalized framework of procedures, such as holding elections. Anti-globalization protests may then be understood as part of broader, transnational democratic processes.

In an oppressive political environment, longed-for change will often come not from internal and institutionalized reforms, but from an externally induced politics of disturbance. William Connolly suggests that sometimes “it takes a militant, experimental, and persistent political movement to open up a line of flight from culturally induced suffering.”10 Certainly, democratic participation cannot be fully institutionalized. This is particularly the case in a global context that lacks democratic accountability and intuitions that might anchor and regulate popular participation in decision-making procedures. Regardless of the degree to which any political system has developed democratic procedures, it will necessarily include a structure of exclusion. Public scrutiny ensures the legitimacy of even the most democratically advanced society. This constant revisionist tendency promotes adequate and fair political foundations.

The anti-globalization movement affirms this revisionist tendency because it makes globalization a constant topic of discussion. Protest actions formed around issues like environmental protection and indigenous rights ensure that these issues remain under scrutiny. Anti-globalization protests challenge what Manfred Steger calls globalism: “a political ideology that endows the concept of globalization with market-oriented norms, values, and meanings.”11 Steger argues that the neoliberal approach to globalization rose to such prominence in the 1990s that its fundamental values were beyond contention. Free trade and market expansion were considered politically benign; they were corollaries to globalization’s economic growth. So imperative were neoliberal norms that alternative development models were considered illegitimate, irrational, or even illusory and thus dismissed as protectionist, socialist, or utopian.12

The preponderance of anti-globalization dissenting movements and world media coverage of their activities questions the belief that free market economics produce seamless global development. As society debates neo-liberalist ideology and considers other perspectives on globalization, belief in an alternative model is becoming more and more popular. Consider the charter of the World Social Forum, the loose institutional element of the global justice movement, which describes a set of values and goals that promote to a pacifist path of development.13 Although many people dis-agree with this agenda, the salient observation is that the anti-globalization movement has forced advocates of neo-liberalism to actively justify the ideology’s political foundations.

Towards Global Democratic Accountability

Important as it is, politics of dissent and disturbance are not enough to establish a new, global form of democracy. Yet, how would we justly define norms and prioritize policies when a society lacks a consensus of political opinion as well as a forum for mediating potential conflicts of interest?

Although it may be too early to realistically imagine how democracy could work beyond the realm of the state, a contemplation of this scenario demands consideration of dissent as a positive force of globalization.

What, then, are the practical implications of the conceptual arguments I have presented here? Democratic constituencies must make decision. They need to formulate particular positions and clearly distinguish right from wrong. Often, it is not possible to do so by consensus. Excluding certain views is desirable, even necessary—this is why dissent is inevitable in a democracy. But to keep the decision-making process as fair and transparent as possible, these dissident voices must be heard and taken into account in the deliberation process. Established state-based democracies have well worked out procedures to do so, but such procedures do not yet exist at the global level where power relations are far more prevalent than democratic principles. Multinational companies and international organizations are not run according to traditional principles of democratic accountability. The UN is the only truly global institution where most states have a say, but its decision-making procedures revolve around the veto powers of the Security Council, which is dominated by few powerful nations.

Given the absence of a global institution that could facilitate and implement democratic ideals, dissent becomes an even more crucial tool in the global society. Dissent is often the only way for disenfranchised people to contribute to global affairs, and thus key actors in international politics must be more attuned to integrating outside dissident voices into their deliberations. Take the issue of climate change: The most powerful international actors, such as the United States, the EU, and China, will inevitably shape the types of policies that are being established and implemented in response to the challenges ahead. But the ensuing framework can only be democratically legitimate if the voices of disenfranchised  people—often  those most affected by climate change—are heard in global deliberations. When this is not the case, dissatisfaction grows until it is so widespread that popular resentment erupts in the form of mass protest, revolutionary upheaval, or a terrorist attack. A functioning democratic system, one that listens to and debates grievances and heeds dissident voices, is far more likely to generate political outcomes capable of avoiding such disruptive and often violent scenarios.

Order is a necessary precondition for democracy, the rule of law, the provision of human rights, and human civilization itself.

Appreciating the nexus between dissent and democracy requires rethinking the underlying relationship between order and change.14 Most politicians, diplomats, and philosophers have emphasized the importance of order over the forces that promote change. Existing orders tend to be accepted as good and desirable because they reflect the values and institutions that have emerged slowly over time. Alain Joxe, a fierce critic of current international regimes, asserts, “The most formidable enemy one must face in politics is disorder.” For Joxe, order “is always necessary because it pro-vides protection.”15 Most commentators would agree that order is desirable, if not essential because order is a necessary pre-condition for democracy, the rule of law, the provision of human rights, and human civilization itself.

But the politics of order and the politics of disturbance are more intricate than they might seem. Many injustices, from domestic abuse to torture and genocide, occur not from a lack of order but under an unjust order. The concentration camps of Nazi Germany did not result from the absence of order, but from the meticulous infatuation with an order—which envisioned a racially “pure” state and was determined to pursue its racial agenda with all requisite action.

Dissent can occasionally be required to challenge oppressive orders and to promote a more just global society. Doing so is an ongoing process and of particular importance in the current age of globalization, which witnesses sudden and unforeseen events that challenge and transform norms, identities, and values. Addressing the ensuing challenges demands a politics of order and a dissident democratic element capable of critically evaluating the value of competing orders. Institutionalizing this scrutinizing process is unrealistic. This is why a healthy dose of dissent is a beneficial—even essential—component in the search for global democracy.

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Roland Bleiker is professor of International Politics at the University of Queensland. His pubilcations include Popular Dissent, Human Agency, and Global Politics; Divided Korea: Toward a Culture of Reconciliation; and, as co-editor, Security and the War on Terror. The book Aesthetics and World Politics examines the emotional dimensions of security threats through a range of aesthetic sources, including literature and visual art.

NOTES

1. Thanks to Mark Chou and Emma Hutchison for comments on a This essay is an attempt to con-dense, but also further explore work I have previously presented on this topic, most recently in “Visualising Post-National Democracy,” in The New Pluralism: William Connolly and the Contemporary Global Condition, eds. Mort Schoolman and David Campbell, 121-142. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.
2. Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss, “Toward glob-al parliament,” Foreign Affairs 80 (2001): 212-220; David Held, Democracy and Global Order (Oxford: Polity, 1995), 273; Robert E. Goodin, “Global Democracy: In the Beginning” (The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, March 23, 2008).
3. John Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunika-tiven Handelns (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988).
4. William Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 149, 154; Why I am not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 51, 155; Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (Minneapolis: University of Min-nesota Press, 2002), 195-196.
5. Margaret Levi and David Olson, “The Battles for Seattle,” Politics and Society 3 (September 2000): 325.
6. 6 Vandana Shiva, “This Round to the Citizens,” The Guardian, August 12,1999.
7. Most prominently expressed by Thomas Friedman in The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000) and The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006).
8. Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhi-an Philosophy of Conflict (Berkeley: University of Califor-nia Press, 1967), x.
9. See, for instance, Robert O’Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte, and Marc Williams, Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 7; Mark Rupert, “In the Belly of the Beast: Resisting Globalisation and War in a Neo-Imperial Moment,” in Critical Theories, World Politics and the Anti-Globalisation Movement, Catherine Eschle and Bice Maiguashca, 46-47 (London: Routledge, 2005; Ronald J. Deib-ert, “International Plug ‘n Play? Citizen Activism, the Internet and Global Public Policy,” International Studies Perspectives 1.3 (2000): 255-272; Michael Hardt, “Today’s Bandung?“ New Left Review, 14 (March/April 2002):117.
10. Connolly, Why I am not a Secularist,
11. Manfred Steger, Globalism: Market Ideology Meets Terrorism (Lanhan: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), ix.
12. Steger, Globalism, 8-9.
13. World Social Forum, “World Social Forum Charter of Principles,” http://www.forumsocial-org.br/main.php?id_menu=4&cd_lan-guage=2 (date accessed March 2008).
14. See William Connolly, Pluralism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 121-126.
15. Alain Joxe, Empire of Disorder, Ames Hodges (New York: Semiotext(e), 2002).