Can Global Governance be Democratically Legitimized? A Critical Reflection on Three Proposals for the Democratic Deficit

Abstract

Global governance actors and institutions suffer from democratic deficit. The paper has examined the three proposals for mitigating the democratic deficit in global governance: Global people’s Assembly (Flak and Strauss, 2000, 2001); Global accountability mechanisms (Grant and Keohane, 2005); and political deliberation (Steffek and Nanz, 2008). I have shown that the proposal for creating global representative institutions is premature since there are no global demos. In addition, the attempt to replicate democratic institutions and procedures at the level of states to the global level will be difficult to realize. I have argued that the proposal for political deliberation can address the problems of democratic legitimacy in global governance since it emphasizes normative democratic values of inclusion, participation, transparency, responsiveness and deliberation

Keywords- Global governance, democratic deficit, accountability, global parliament, political deliberations