Democracy and the Meta-State: Popular Participation in Global Governance
The varied transformation of Western states and governments during the last three decades was largely in response to the collapse of the post-war settlement in the early 1970s. The ideological onslaught against the welfare state intensified with the collapse of Soviet communism. However, the subsequent debacle of shock therapy in Russia and deepening problems in the industrialised capitalist countries, combined with the continuing desperate plight of many less developed countries, has challenged the crude anti-statism driving many of the reforms, national and international, since the 1970s. Recognition of the damage wrought by over-zealous application of deregulatory policies comes from the World Bank, which speaks of a crisis of state effectiveness. Recent efforts to more clearly define aspects of global governance, including the World Trade Organization=B9s failed meeting in Seattle in November 1999, mark the return of a more measured, conservative approach to the role of states. The neoliberal agenda of globalism cannot advance further without the existence of rules whose effectiveness would depend upon the participation of states in their formulation, implementation and enforcement. The challenge for democrats is how to make these structures and processes publicly accountable and responsive to civic, as opposed to corporate, need. States continue to serve two functions: the facilitation of accumulation, and the legitimisation of the economic system. Globalisation itself poses a challenge to that legitimacy, since countries and communities are less insulated than ever before from the vagaries of international capital movements. By attacking both the legitimacy of the antidemocratic neoliberal agenda and the equally authoritarian manner in which it is legitimised, it is possible to subject the global power elites to greater scrutiny than previously. The alternative to such an internationalist approach is the reactionary fundamentalism of nationalism, racism and religious sectarianism.