Steven Slaughter

The prospects of deliberative global governance in the G20: legitimacy, accountability, and public contestation

This article contends that the ‘G’ system struggles to play a legitimate and effective role in global governance and argues that the G20 could play a important role if the forum was more publically accountable. This article argues that because of increasing forms of public contestation, the broadening agenda of the G8 and G20 and the uncertain status of global cooperation, that the legitimacy of the ‘G’ system is being questioned. As such, it is appropriate to consider deliberative avenues whereby public views could be considered by the G20 in a systematic way to foster forms of accountability. This consideration is animated by deliberative democracy theory and republican theory which advance a normative agenda which seeks to transform governance structures by enhancing the role of deliberation and public reasoning in political life. The article outlines the development of the ‘G’ systems legitimacy, considers possible modes of accountability and public involvement with respect to the G20 and examines the implications of more formalised public deliberation with respect to the G20.

Reconsidering institutional cosmopolitanism: global poverty and the importance of the state in international political theory

Cosmopolitan scholarship has been at the forefront of efforts to consider political structures capable of realising justice in a more robust manner than prevailing global governance arrangements. In particular, the arguments of Thomas Pogge have contributed significantly to scholarly thinking about global poverty and his scheme of ‘institutional cosmopolitanism’ aspires to institutionalise human rights in the structures of global governance. This essay critiques the capacity of Pogges cosmopolitan approach to productively guide political action in relation to global poverty by questioning whether global institutions generated by human rights are sufficient to address global poverty. The argument in this essay is that a viable guide to political action which alleviates global poverty must also take account of the potential utility of the state. This essays draws upon republican ideas to contend that cosmopolitanism needs to encompass a robust account of local institutions such as the state.

Reconsidering the State: Cosmopolitanism, Republicanism and Global Governance

Cosmopolitan arguments for global forms of democracy and governance have intensified in the last decade because of the increasing significance of transnational interconnections and the increased impact of global problems. However, questions remain as to how cosmopolitan structures are going to be realized in practice, given the continued significance of the state in global politics. This paper advocates the importance of considering republican arguments for redeveloping the state alongside the proposals for global democratic structures advocated by political cosmopolitans such as David Held. It contends that many forms of cosmopolitan thought are too quick to dismiss the state as a potential locus of ethical global governance and that republican conceptions of the state and political practice are important counterpoints to political cosmopolitanism. Consequently, this paper critically considers the assumptions embedded in the literature of political cosmopolitanism in relation to the proposals for global democracy and governance. Then the paper considers republican arguments that developing civically minded citizens and responsive state institutions could be a crucial foundation for transnational forms of governance to be realized in practice. The paper then concludes by considering the practical tensions between republican and cosmopolitan proposals.

The G20 and Global Justice: The Potential of Transnational Deliberative Democratic Theory

The G20’s capacity to promote global justice is up for debate. This article contends that the G20 has both problems and possibilities with respect to helping advance global justice. The potential of the G20 to promote global justice stems from its importance as a site for deliberation of policy ideas and its recent efforts to promote greater outreach and engagement with societal interests and states outside its narrow membership. Ultimately, G20 policy discussions could be more effective if its processes were more deliberative and better considered questions of justice and the perspectives of people affected by its decisions. The article utilises a transnational application of deliberative democracy theory to outline this potential. It attempts to identify this potential by drawing a practical balance between the normative importance of justice and the contemporary reality of the G20’s purpose and function.

The G20's role in legitimating global capitalism: beyond crisis diplomacy?

The rising profile of the G20 in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis has led to various forms of concern about the legitimacy of this forum. While debates about the legitimacy of the G20 are important and ongoing, they overlook the important observation that the G20 is also attempting to perform a key role in legitimating global capitalism. This role of legitimating global capitalism emphasises the importance of the G20 to act, and be seen to act, to normalise global capitalism, to strengthen global economic governance, and also facilitate a political consensus with regard to key policy issues. This essay critically examines the role that the G20 plays in legitimating global capitalism and contends that the G20 is not just a technical forum of international policy-making but also a political forum for creating and performing visible responses to problems which are seen to be socially responsive.

Introduction: Crisis and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century

Recent years have seen near constant reports on the failures of governance and the crisis of democracy. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) from 2008 onwards saw many of the world’s strongest economies and most robust democracies teeter on the edge of collapse. This crisis led to other financial crises such as the European sovereign debt crisis which emerged in late 2009. As governments took unprecedented steps to bail out the financial sector, many began to question the relationship between representative democracy and the global capitalist free market system along with the forms of national and global governance which support this economic model. In response to these crises, a series of popular grassroots movements and protests emerged across both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, the Occupy Wall Street movement attempted to challenge the power of the financial system and levels of economic inequality in advanced democracies, while across Europe anti-austerity protests indicated, among other things, a wide dissatisfaction with EU interference in domestic politics, especially in Greece and Portugal where EU and IMF bailouts were imposed without clear public mandates. These crises and the public responses they produced have forced many scholars, leaders and policymakers to ask difficult questions about the power of governance to trump democracy during times of crisis.

Interpreting civil society engagement with the G20: the qualified inclusion of the 2014 civil 20 process

ABSTRACT The G20 (Group of Twenty) has emerged as an important site of policy coordination of its member governments and has engaged various social sectors via the development of G20 outreach groups, including the Civil 20. The key issue is whether the Civil 20 outreach process has enabled the inclusion of civil society perspectives into the G20 process. In order to analyse whether the Civil 20 process is significant, this article considers how this outreach process operated during Australias presidency of the G20 in 2014. It does so by utilizing an interpretivist approach to identify the prominent narratives involved in the G20 by focusing upon the key policy statements from the outreach groups and interviews with participants of the Civil 20 process. This article argues that the Civil 20 process in 2014 included civil society perspectives more actively than in the past but was a qualified form of civil society inclusion.

The G20 and Climate Change: The Transnational Contribution of Global Summitry

This article examines the prospective role of the G20 (Group of Twenty) in contributing to current efforts to address climate change. This article contends that the G20 has the potential to be a site of policy coordination of economically significant states and transnational policy actors which could support the implementation of the Paris Agreement reached at the 21st conference of the parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015. While this article demonstrates that the G20 and its predecessors have considered the topic of climate change without great success, it articulates the ways that recent developments within the operation of the G20 offers new prospects for addressing this crucial policy issue. These prospects rest primarily upon seeing the G20 as a form of global summitry which is not only an international forum but also a transnational framework of policy makers which offer the possibility that G20 deliberations can be more open to a wider variety of perspectives and more effectively engage with transnational efforts to address climate change.

The Sixth Oceanic Conference on International Studies: transitions in the Asia Pacific

The Sixth Oceanic Conference on International Studies (OCIS) was held in Melbourne, Australia between 9 and 11 July 2014. The conference was hosted by the School of Social and Political Sciences at University of Melbourne and supported by the Australian Institute of International Affairs, Deakin University, La Trobe University, Monash University, RMIT University and Swinburne University. The Sixth OCIS had a broad organizing theme of ‘transition’ focused on the changing balances of power shaping the Oceanic and Asia Pacific regions and related questions of social and political change in this context. Over 200 papers were presented at the conference, reflecting a wide variety of issues in international studies and related fields of scholarship. Amongst this diversity, the conference did have some recurring themes relating to great power rivalry, the influence of China, and the implications of multilateral frameworks and key bilateral relationships on the security and economic dynamics of the region. Significant attention was also devoted to analysing the foreign policies and political institutions for managing problems of peacebuilding, terrorism, gender inequality and sexual discrimination, people movements, climate change and financial instability at the regional and global levels. This special issue of Global Change, Peace and Security reflects these themes of transition in the Asia Pacific and comprises a diverse array of contributions from scholars attending this conference.

Conclusion: The Future of Democratic Governance

This volume has examined how contemporary crises have exposed the tensions between governance and democracy. However, despite the many problems with governance and its problematic relationship with democracy, none of the chapters in this volume advocate the complete removal of governance from modern democracies. In fact, in very different ways, each of the chapters has demonstrated that democracy needs governance in order to manage the complexity of contemporary life. This is even more important during times of crisis — a period in which there is a profound disruption to the existing political, social and economic systems. The key challenge is to consider the ways in which governance can be democratised and used to avert, manage and resolve such crises. This volume does not present one ultimate model of democratic governance, and neither do the contributors argue that democratising governance would be the panacea that resolved each of the crises facing democracy today. However, the contributors do contend that crises open up political spaces and present unique opportunities to apply fresh thinking and innovative action to the nature and scope of governance. Crises demonstrate the willingness of publics, activists, political leaders and scholars to challenge existing systems of governance and thereby develop and promote alternative forms of democracy.