Raffaele Marchetti

Global Democracy: Normative and Empirical Perspectives

Democracy is increasingly seen as the only legitimate form of government, but few people would regard international relations as governed according to democratic principles. Can this lack of global democracy be justified? Which models of global politics should contemporary democrats endorse and which should they reject? What are the most promising pathways to global democratic change? To what extent does the extension of democracy from the national to the international level require a radical rethinking of what democratic institutions should be? This book answers these questions by providing a sustained dialogue between scholars of political theory, international law and empirical social science. By presenting a broad range of views by prominent scholars, it offers an in-depth analysis of one of the key challenges of our century: globalizing democracy and democratizing globalization.

Conflict society: understanding the role of civil society in conflict

This article analyses the relationship between civil society and conflict. It aims to provide an analytical framework to unpack this complex relationship and assess the impacts which civil society may have on conflict. In a first section, it analyses the implications of context on civil society, namely the implications that statehood, democracy, nationalism, development and international presence have on the nature of civil society. In the second section it examines more specifically the role of civil society in ethno-political conflicts, or as we rename it ‘conflict society’. The final section turns to the identification of different factors determining the impact of civil society on conflicts, including political identities, frameworks of action and political opportunity structures in which civil society actors operate. Accordingly, the different combinations of these determinants lead to the formation of civil society actors and ensuing actions that can either fuel conflict, sustain the status quo, or build peace.

A matter of drawing boundaries: global democracy and international exclusion

This article defends the case for a global extension of democracy by deploying a cosmo-federalist theory. As a response to the current state of international exclusion, the radical project of stretching the paradigm of democratic inclusion to the extreme limits encompassing the whole of mankind, is here presented. The article begins by taking position for a choice-based version of consequentialism that generates a principle of political justice centred on political participation. From this, a political project is developed that envisages a cosmopolitan system where all world citizens are included within a scheme of a direct representative participation under an overarching authority governing the process of democratising world affairs. Crucial in this is the establishment of an all-inclusive authority to legitimately delineate jurisdictional boundaries and a multilayered system of political interaction.

Global Democracy: A Symposium on a New Political Hope

The idea that the values and norms of democracy can also be applied to global politics is increasingly debated in academe. The six authors participating in this symposium are all advocates of global democracy, but there are significant differences in the way they envision its implementation. Some of the contributors discuss if and how substantial changes undertaken by states, mostly in their foreign policies, may also generate positive consequences in global politics. Other contributors address the nature of the international arena and the possible reforms it should undergo starting with the reform of international organizations. The debate combines theoretical aspects with normative proposals that could also be advanced in the political arena and offers a wide range of perspectives on the attempts to achieve a more democratic global political community.

Civil Society-Government Synergy and Normative Power Italy

There is a need for a reassessment of the Italian contribution to international affairs. If a more comprehensive and pluralist reading of Italian action at the international level is developed, an image of normative power Italy may emerge. Italian input has been crucial in a number of transnational campaigns that have had significant impact at the international level. The cases of the peace in Mozambique, the International Criminal Court, the Moratorium on the Death Penalty and, more recently, the Ban on Female Genital Mutilation all illustrate Italy’s contribution to international affairs, especially the politics of norm change. These cases are all characterised by the presence of intense civil society-government synergy. In order to advance the understanding of the processes and impact of transnational mobilisations, this analysis examines the domestic conditions that facilitated such synergy, intended as key conditions for the empowerment of transnational activism itself.

Human Rights as Global Participatory Entitlements

From Plato’s Republic to Rawls’ Theory of Justice, political theory has always been characterized by a predominant consideration of the domestic sphere of socio-political interaction. This stubborn concentration on the individual and domestic domains of justice has perhaps contributed to the reluctance of political thinking to address inter-community normative issues such as universal human rights. Modern theories of political philosophy in particular have traditionally suggested a number of different combinations of legitimate relationships between the individual and the state, but have mainly failed to expand their arguments to the wider frame necessary to realize a consistent theory of universal human rights. The repeated challenges to such limited perspective generated by recent global transformations have, however, put increasing pressure on both the traditional socio-political structure of the nation-state and the conventional political concepts underpinning it. In the last thirty years, an intense debate on global justice has been consequently generated in the fields of international ethics and international political theory as a response to such challenges. Within this debate, the significance of cosmopolitan theories consists in the emphasis they put on both the moral importance of the other major level of political action — the global — and the need to reframe the balance between the differing levels of political analysis.

Civilizationism and the Political Debate on Globalization

The focus of the debate on globalization is the inadequacy of the current institutional framework and its normative bases for a full development of the political sphere at the global level. Traditional political canons anchored in the nation-state and its domestic jurisdiction are increasingly perceived as insufficient, or indeed, self-defeating, in a world where socioeconomical interaction is, to a significant degree, interdependent and multilayered. Acknowledging the limits of this political tension, alternative projects of global politics have been developed in recent decades. What they have in common is their attempt to go beyond the centrality of the sovereign state toward new forms of political participation that allow new subjects to “get into transnational politics” from which they have been excluded. These new would-be or quasi-global political actors are part of the broad category of non-state actors, which includes international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), transnational corporations (TNCs), networks and campaigns of civil society organizations and faith-based groups, transnational social movements (TSMs), transnational criminal networks, transnational political par-ties, regional public institutions,’ international private bodies, and individuals. Despite minor institutional experiments, most of these actors share the characteristics of effectively being excluded from international decision-making mechanisms, and yet being more and more active on the global stage.2 International exclusion constitutes the critical target of most of the alternative projects of global politics that occupy the centre of the public debate on globalization.

Crossing borders. Transnational activism in European social movements

Since the late 1990s, the Global Justice Movement (GJM) has emerged as a major force in the global political arena. It has successfully organized growing numbers of cross border mobilizations on a range of global issues addressing justice, peace, and democracy. How has this surge of cross-border activism been possible? In this chapter we explore the complex factors — both external and internal to social movements — that have put global issues at the centre of transnational activism in European countries (as well as around the world). While the rest of the book addresses the visions and actions of GJMOs and their conceptions and practices of democracy as a fundamental element of their cross-border mobilizations, in this chapter we aim at identifying the key sources and dynamics of transnational activism, and the characteristics of the organizations of major European countries that are most active in cross-border mobilizations.

Italian hybrid diplomacy

ABSTRACT The text offers a new assessment of Italy’s contribution to international affairs. Through a more pluralist interpretation of Italian action at international level it is possible to outline an image of Italy as a normative power able to influence the formulation of the principles that determine what is legitimate at international level. Italy’s contribution in recent decades has been crucial in a series of transnational campaigns that have had a significant impact globally. These cases illustrate the role played by Italy in the politics of changing international norms related to human rights. The mobilisations have been the result of a combination of factors, including the intense synergy that has been established between the actions of the Italian government and Italian civil-society organisations. This study analyses eight cases in which such synergy has been positive, leading to a significant impact of Italian hybrid diplomacy on international politics.

Foreign Policy by Proxy: Democracy and Human Rights Promotion through an Engagement with Civil Society

The European Union (EU) has intensified policy partnerships with civil society organizations (CSOs) in its external action. With regard to democracy promotion and human rights protection in particular, engagement with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has become a crucial issue in schemes such as the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights. However, this ‘foreign policy by proxy’ is becoming increasingly controversial and a number of countries are implementing countermeasures to protect their national sovereignty, such as limits to foreign funding, media censorship, and restrictions to NGO activities. This chapter first explores how the EU engages with CSOs in its foreign actions, and then examines comparatively the main controversies that these policies are generating.