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Toward Global Parliament

By Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss
January/February 2001
Article Summary and Author Biography

In international politics, transnational interest groups are gaining clout -- but they lack an institution to represent them. Civil society must make its many voices heard. The global era needs a global parliament.

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Andrew Strauss is Professor of International Law at Widener University School of Law.

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CHALLENGING THE DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT

One crucial aspect of the rising disaffection with globalization is the lack of citizen participation in the global institutions that shape people's daily lives. This public frustration is deeper and broader than the recent street demonstrations in Seattle and Prague. Social commentators and leaders of citizens' and intergovernmental organizations are increasingly taking heed. Over the past 18 months, President Clinton has joined with the secretary-general of the United Nations, the director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the president of the World Bank to call for greater citizen participation in the international order.

But to date, these parties have not clearly articulated a general vision of how best to integrate a public role into international institutions. So in the absence of a planned design, attempts to democratize the international system have been ad hoc, as citizen organizations and economic elites create their own mechanisms of influence. In domestic politics, interest-group pluralism flourishes within a parliamentary system of representation. In global politics, interest-group pluralism is growing, but no unifying parliament represents the public interest. This state of affairs cannot last in a world where the prevailing understanding of democracy does not accept the fact that unelected interest groups can speak for the citizenry as a whole. Any serious attempt to challenge the democratic deficit must therefore consider creating some type of popularly elected global body. Before globalization, such an idea would have been considered utopian. Now, the clamor of citizens to participate internationally can no longer be ignored. The only question is what form this participation will take.

DECISION-MAKING GOES GLOBAL

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