Interview with R. Keohane (2014) Five minutes with Robert O. Keohane: “We shouldn’t fool ourselves by believing that global governance will soon be made democratic”, LSE EUROPP, 05 Νοεμβρίου.
Can global governance through organisations such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization ever be made properly democratic? In an interview with EUROPP’s editor Stuart Brown, Robert O. Keohane discusses the problems with establishing global democratic governance, the distinction between liberal constitutionalist achievements and democracy, and why we should be sceptical of claims that a global democracy is just around the corner.
You’ve written on the problems associated with implementing democratic principles in global governance. What specifically prevents us from creating proper democratic structures at the global level?
It’s important to distinguish between liberal constitutionalism and democracy. There has in fact been a lot of progress made in global governance on the legal side. There are more regular adjudication arrangements – most notably in the World Trade Organization, but also in a number of other areas such as human rights – than there were 30 or 40 years ago, providing better ways to settle disputes. Strengthening the rule of law in this way is the liberal side of global governance and there has been remarkable progress in this respect over recent decades.
However the democratic side involves people having an effective voice and feeling connected to their representatives. This is hard enough in any big country because bureaucracies are strong, there are millions of people and there’s therefore a remote connection between citizens and their government. We see this around the world in democracies: in the US, in the UK and with the rise of populist movements in Europe.
These problems are magnified immensely at the global level. This is partly a result of the sheer size of the polity, but it also occurs because there is no national or global identity. The emotional connection that nationalism represents is entirely lacking. As Robert Putnam has shown, democracy requires a degree of civic association: people who interact with each other on a social basis, rather than specifically in the polity. That is not the case cross-nationally. Very few people have these kinds of ties with people in other countries.
So the sociological base and the emotional base for a global democracy simply don’t exist. When you combine that with the huge size of any constituency which would be required, it’s clear that anything paralleling a ‘global parliament’ just isn’t going to happen, at least not for a long time. It’s safe to say the academics who talk about creating such a system haven’t really thought it through.
One of the specific examples you’ve mentioned of the tension between the aims of global governance and democracy is climate change. How does democracy influence attempts to solve climate change?
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- Jassaud, Ν. (2014) “The role of corporate governance in strengthening banks“, VoxEU Organisation, 30 Οκτωβρίου.
- Kreilinger, V. (2014) “The relationship between national parliaments and the European Parliament remains contested in the area of economic governance“, LSE EUROPP, 26 Σεπτεμβρίου.
- Bertoncini, Υ. & Vitorino, Α. (2014) “Reforming Europe’s governance, for a more Legitimate and Effective Federation of Nation States“, New Decision-Makers – New Challengers Project, Notre Europe, Studies and Reports, Σεπτέμβριος.