Deliberation and global civil society : agency, arena, affect

The article provides a critical analysis of the role and function of global civil society within deliberative approaches to global governance. It critiques a common view that global civil society can/should act as an agent for democratising global governance and seeks to explore the importance of global civil society as an arena of deliberation. This more reconstructive aim is supplemented by an empirically focused discussion of the affective dimensions of global civil society, in general, and the increasingly important use of film, in particular. Ultimately, this then yields an image of the deliberative politics of global civil society that is more reflective of the differences, ambiguities and contests that pervade its discourses about global governance. This is presented as a quality that debates about deliberative global governance might learn from as well as speak to

The performance of global democracy : parody and/as the political

The article develops a critical analysis of the debate on global democracy. Departing from common post-structural IR critiques of global democracy as (merely) a metaphor of escape that entrenches many of the sovereign logics it claims to contest, we explore what it would mean to engage the discourse of global democracy as an ongoing performative practice. After briefly outlining the relative positions of liberal reformist and cosmopolitan democrats – we argue that more attention can/should be paid to the ontopolitical foundations of global democracy. Drawing from William Connolly and Judith Butler, it is argued that fundamental (democratic) limits of the discourse are overlooked/re-produced, and even in the more ambitious cosmopolitan positions. Ontopolitical closures in relation to a problematic global scale and the universal assumption of individual agency/rights highlight the necessity of democratising ‘actually existing’ discourses of global democracy. We explore these ideas via a discussion of the cultural governance of global trade and resistance to it, especially via the activities of a UK based anarchist group called The Space Hijackers. By deploying parody the Space Hijackers can contribute to the debate on global democracy by provoking reflection upon fundamental assumptions about globalisation and ethics in everyday situations. They therefore problematise and subvert the problematic subjectivity of the ‘global-individual’ in a manner that might (but does not necessarily) allow for the imagination of alternative possibilities. The importance of this argument is that it resists the tendency of poststructural scepticism with regard to ethical discourses of global democracy, while retaining what is so promising: a turn towards singularity and imagination. Parody does not solve all problems, what could? But it does offer a modality within which subjects can imagine and act creatively with regards to the everyday closures of global democrac

Crisis is governance : sub-prime, the traumatic event, and bare life

The article provides a critical analysis of the role of discourses of trauma and the traumatic event in constituting the ethico-political possibilities and limits of the subprime crisis. It charts the invocation of metaphors of a financial Tsunami and pervasive media focus on emotional ‘responses’ like fear, anger, and blame, suggesting that such traumatic discourses constituted the subprime crisis as a singular and catastrophic ‘event’ demanding of particular (humanitarian) responses. We draw upon the thought of Giorgio Agamben to render this constituted logic of event and response in terms of the concomitant production of bare life; the savers and homeowners who became ‘helpless victims’ in need of rescue. We therefore tie the ongoing production of the sovereign power of global finance to broader processes that entail the enfolding and securing of everyday financial subjects. These arguments are illustrated via an analysis of three subjects: the economy, bankers and borrowers. We argue that it was the movement between subject positions – from safe to vulnerable, from entrepreneurial to greedy, from victim to survivor, etc. - that marked out the effective manner of governance, confirming in this process sovereign categories of financial citizenship, asset based welfare, and securitisation that many would posit as the very problem. In short, (the way that the) crisis (was constituted) is governance

Building the normative dimension(s) of a global polity

Globalisation is not what it used to be. Earlier debates over how to read the indicators of economic liberalisation and the impact of technological expansion have now been joined by the increasingly pressing need to explore the social, environmental and political aspects of global change. Earlier discussions emphasised a number of dichotomies within the international political economy – open/closed, state/market and so on. These have proved limited in their ability to inform explanations of change under conditions of globalisation. To these we must now add what we might call the ‘governance from above’, ‘resistance from below’ dichotomy as a popular metaphor for understanding order and change in international relations under conditions of globalisation. But this new binary axis is in many ways as unsatisfactory as those that went before. It too can obscure as much as it reveals in terms of understanding the normative possibilities of reforming globalisation. In this article we wish to suggest that there is perhaps a more useful way of thinking about politics and the changing contours of political life in the contemporary global order. This approach blurs the distinction between governance and resistance by emphasising an ethical take on globalisation

British comedy, global resistance : Russell Brand, Charlie Brooker and Stewart Lee

The article provides a critical analysis of the possibilities and limits of comedy as a form of political resistance. Taking a cue from recent critiques of mainstream satire — that it profits from a cynical and easy criticism of political leaders — the article questions how comedy animates wider debates about political resistance in International Political Economy. The case is made for developing an everyday and cultural International Political Economy that treats resistance in performative terms, asking: what does it do? What possibilities and limits does it constitute? This approach is then read through a historical narrative of British comedy as a vernacular form of resistance that can (but does not necessarily) negotiate and contest hierarchies and exclusions in ‘particular’ and ‘particularly’ imaginative terms. In this vein, the work of Brand, Brooker and Lee is engaged as an important and challenging set of resistances to dominant forms of market subjectivity. Such comedy highlights the importance and ambiguity of affect, self-critique and ‘meaning’ in the politics of contemporary global markets

Satire is (un)dead: how comedy became a language of democratic politics

Like all forms of resistance, comedy can both shore up and legitimate existing political structures, yet it can also, in certain moments, work to encourage revision. Here, James Brassett looks specifically at the critical nature of radical British comedy by the likes of Russell Brand, Charlie Brooker, and Stewart Lee and writes that it raises questions about the nature of resistance and reveals the deeply political nature of the British public

Private experiments in global governance : primary commodity roundtables and the politics of deliberation

Emerging scholarship on global governance offers ever-more detailed analyses of private regulatory regimes. These regimes aim to regulate some area of social activity without a mandate from, or participation of, states or international organizations. While there are numerous empirical studies of these regimes, the normative theoretical literature has arguably struggled to keep pace with such developments. This is unfortunate, as the proliferation of private regulatory regimes raises important issues about legitimacy in global governance. The aim of this paper is to address some of these issues by elaborating a theoretical framework that can orientate normative investigation of these schemes. It does this through turning to the idea of experimentalist governance. It is argued that experimentalism can provide an important and provocative set of insights about the processes and logics of emerging governance schemes. The critical purchase of this theory is illustrated through an application to the case of primary commodities roundtables, part of ongoing attempts by NGOs, producers, and buyers to set sustainability criteria for commodity production across a range of sectors. The idea of experimentalist governance, we argue, can lend much needed theoretical structure to debates about the normative legitimacy of private regulatory regimes

Cosmopolitanism vs. terrorism? Discourses of ethical possibility before, and after 7/7

The article provides a critical analysis of the relationship between cosmopolitanism and terrorism, via the question of response. Using 9/11 and 7/7 as key moments in the evolution of this relationship, the paper asks: How does cosmopolitanism respond to terrorism? What limits does this response contain? How might we go beyond such limits? It is argued that cosmopolitan responses to terrorism provide an important, but limited, (and sometimes limiting), alternative to mainstream discourses on terror. After 9/11 the possibility for cosmopolitan thinking ‘beyond’ the mainstream view was articulated by a range of authors, including Archibugi, Habermas, Held and Linklater. A brief survey suggests that defending international law, constructing international institutions and alleviating global poverty were seen as good responses, in the context of divisive mainstream politics. However, by engaging a case study of the Make Poverty History campaign, the paper argues that when cosmopolitan ideas were cemented in practice, the distinctiveness of a cosmopolitan response faded. This point was brought into sharp relief by a number of moralising responses to 7/7. Straightforward dichotomies between ‘barbaric terrorists’ and ‘civilised cosmopolitans’ served to construct cosmopolitanism as a coherent, and united, global community. Available tactics, for this ‘community’, were reduced to more-of-the-same – more aid, more global democracy - and assertions of a moral equivalence between Bush and ‘Terror’, such that ‘you are either with cosmopolitans, or, you are with the War on Terror.’ In light of these ethical closures, and drawing from the arguments of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, the paper identifies some cursory ways in which cosmopolitans might think beyond such limits, to (continue to) articulate an imaginative and engaged approach to global ethics

Cosmopolitan ethics in global finance? : a pragmatic approach to the Tobin Tax

The thesis provides a critical analysis of the problems and possibilities for developing cosmopolitan ethics in global finance. With reference to Ideas and debates within the campaign for a Tobin Tax, it is argued that cosmopolitanism is a promising, but limited, agenda for global reform. Extending principles of justice to support the re-distribution of wealth from financial markets towards an expanded program of global welfare provision is laudable. Likewise, the possibility of improving accountability mechanisms and fostering democratic inclusion in the global financial system should be supported. However, the thesis identifies and reflects upon some important ethical ambiguities relating to financial, institutional and democratic universalism. A requirement for capital account convertibility, a cash-based approach to global justice and proposals for state-centric world authority to administer the Tobin Tax infers that the proposal would entrench many of the logics its supporters might oppose. The thesis develops a pragmatic approach to these questions based on the philosophical pragmatism of Richard Rorty. A pragmatic approach acknowledges the historical and cultural contingency of cosmopolitanism, but questions how the ambiguities and tensions that pervade global ethics can be engaged. In this sense, and developing Rorty's concept of sentimental education, it is argued that the Tobin Tax campaign has generated a broad-based public conversation about global finance, increasing sensitivity to the suffering caused by global finance and the ways in which it might be changed. While such conversation may not solve all the dilemmas identified, it does allow for increased awareness of the ambiguity of ethics. The thesis points to a number of instances in the campaign where the constitutive ambiguities of the Tobin Tax have been questioned and alternative practices suggested. A pragmatic approach to the Tobin Tax campaign therefore situates cosmopolitan ideas in the extant dilemmas and indeterminacies of global ethics, looking to suggest alternatives where possible

Globalising pragmatism

The paper outlines a critique and reconstruction of Richard Rorty’s version of pragmatism. While sympathetic to many elements in Rorty’s philosophy, his recent creation of a dichotomy between state-level (read credible) and global-level (read utopian) politics is criticised. Patterns of governance in the global polity simply do not match. Decision-making prowes s within institutional and agent networks transcends exclusively state-centric cartographies and proffers the need to theorise global politics in a non-dichotomised, multi-level fashion. This is not to dispense with pragmatism. Rather, it is to extend it. By drawing on Rorty’s concept of sentimental education, a global pragmatic praxis is elaborated via a narrative of the Tobin Tax and its place in a burgeoning global civil society. In this way, Rorty’s oft-repeated claim that “we should start from where we are” is applied to the plurality of ‘we-groups’ and their multiple activities within an emerging global polity