Teivo Teivainen

The World Social Forum and global democratisation: Learning from Porto Alegre

Being anti-something can be politically useful, but only up to a point. The search for alternative globalisation projects has been central to the World Social Forum process. The first two forums, held in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001 and 2002, provided a wide variety of approaches towards global democratisation. This article analyses the contradictions and prospects of various approaches towards global democratisation that could be found in the meetings, including the organisational aspects of the World Social Forum itself. It simultaneously argues for the political importance of learning from the innovative experiences in the so-called developing countries, such as the participatory budget planning of the Porto Alegre municipality. Without such learning that transgresses the idea of developed/adult/teacher vs developing/child/pupil, global democratisation cannot advance very far.

Critical responses to neoliberal globalization in the Mercosur region: roads towards cosmopolitan democracy?

Thus far, the most articulate political theoretical response to the process of globalization is the theory of cosmopolitan democracy: given our democratic ideals and aspirations, globalization requires us to rethink the political community within which these ideals and aspirations can be realized. The problem of many models of cosmopolitan democracy, such as David Helds, is that they are partially detached from the real world historical processes. In this paper, we take a step towards correcting this bias. In the Mercosur region of Latin America, neoliberal globalization has led and will lead to a variety of critical political responses, some of which carry the seeds of cosmopolitan democracy. In Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil, it seems that there has occurred a dialectical deveopment of political consciousness to tackle directly the real conditions of peoples lives. After defining our basic concepts - globalization, democracy and civic public spaces - we develop a categorization of different trans- and supranational responses to globalization. Our empirical research indicates the need to redefine the conceptual basis for cosmopolitan democracy in political economy terms. For the actors in the Mercosur region, the most pressing priorities have to do with tackling the problems caused by financial globalization and the repressive governance of the globalising economy. However, instead of legalist blueprints, there seems to be a quest for more imaginative and context-sensitive (radical) reforms.

The Pedagogy of Global Development: the promotion of electoral democracy and the Latin Americanisation of Europe

Abstract This contribution uses insights from the field of critical pedagogy to study North–South power relations. It analyses the attempts of the European Union to promote democracy in the ‘developing world’, or Global South. The metaphor of development helps to reproduce the idea that Europe is more adult. It thereby assumes the social function of the teacher whose role is to instruct and guide the more child-like countries towards the path of development. Contrary to the prevalent idea that the developing world is ‘behind’ Europe, the article will argue that, in issues such as cultural hybridization and growth of the informal sector, Europeans could learn about their own futures from their Southern counterparts. To conclude, the article explores the challenges of constructing North–South relations based on the democratic principle of learning together and links these with more general questions of global democratisation.

Occupy representation and democratise prefiguration: Speaking for others in global justice movements

This paper seeks an articulation between Marxist and anarchist approaches to representation in social movements. A generalised dismissal of representational politics leaves power with too many places to hide and sets unnecessary limits to political imagination. Prefigurative politics should not exclude political representation, as the exclusion can imply a class bias. The paper explores two different paths beyond strict assumptions of horizontality. Using mostly Latin American examples, a distinction is made between more classical state-centric paths and less theorised alternatives of non-state representation. Finally, the article approaches global democratisation from a non-state-centric perspective, tentatively called transnational libertarian socialism.

Politics of Intra-firm Trade: Corporate Price Planning and the Double Role of the Arm’s Length Principle

ABSTRACT Intra-firm trade is an emerging issue. One of its key elements is the international shifting of profits, for example, through transfer pricing that big enterprises use to cross-subsidise their subsidiaries, often to avoid taxes. Accounting rules conceal much of the information about transfer pricing, reproducing secrecy and facilitating the use of administered prices. Given the prevalence of administered price setting, a significant amount of international trade cannot be meaningfully analysed as market transactions. This provokes questions about the validity of market assumptions in research on trade in particular and global capitalism more generally. Our specific contribution focuses on the role of the arm’s length principle and the significance of cross-subsidisation and other forms of corporate planning in intra-firm trade. Under certain conditions, price planning by private corporations should be analysed as political rule within the economic sphere. Since the politics of the world economy is not merely related to governmental intervention, corporations should also be theorised as potentially political entities. Crossing the disciplinary boundaries between political economy and normative political theory, we suggest that the politicisation of intra-firm trade opens possibilities for creating more effective responses to price administration and for creating more democratic ways of governing the global economy.

Representation Beyond the State: Towards Transnational Democratic Non-state Politics

Abstract The crises of representative democracy and of state-based politics have been declared many times and ‘participation’ is often advocated as a remedy for the shortcomings of both. While the literature has extensively discussed representative practices in relation to territorial states, we argue in this article that more attention should be paid to the question of representation within transnational social movements striving for a politics that transcends current territorially bounded representative democracy. Analysing the World Social Forum and West African participatory trade policy-making, we find that as transnational social movements aiming at democratic goals deepen their interactions, they can face demanding questions such as: who or what has a right to be made present in a given political process and how is this established? We claim that avoiding the question of representation in transnational non-state-centred politics leaves power too many places to hide.