Democratizing Global Governance: Stakeholder Democracy at the World Summit for Sustainable Development.

One of the most pressing problems confronting political scientists today is: can global governance have a democratic basis? Picking up one potentially important response, and drawing on original analysis of the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (WSSD) in 2002, this paper constructs and defends an ideal-typical model of a new approach to democracy - ?stakeholder democracy?. In this way, it explores and theorizes stakeholder governance practices and speculates on their uses and the extent of their democratic character. This work is located in the context of the changing vocabulary and practice of global governance, in which concerns about legitimacy, accountability, transparency and participation have loomed increasingly large in recent years. Sustainability and environmental protection is an arena in which innovative experiments with new hybrid, pluri-lateral forms of governance, along with the incorporation of a transnational civil society spanning the public-private divide, are taking place. The paper highlights certain dilemmas confronting efforts to democratize global environmental governance in light of innovative practices at the WSSD. Our central argument is that the WSSD, with all its caveats and limitations, can rightly be seen as exemplifying new deliberative stakeholder practices with general democratic potential at the global level. In examining these arrangements, we draw together the nascent elements of this new ?model?, such as its distinctive takes on principles of inclusion and deliberation of so-called major groups (NGOs, business, youth, women, unions, farmers, science, indigenous peoples, and local government). We take stock of interactive stakeholder forums/dialogues and partnership agreements, which institutionalized relationships between state and non-state actors before and after the Summit. Potential objections to the stakeholder model arising from liberal-reformist, cosmopolitan and critical perspectives on democratizing global environmental governance are pinpointed, and responses are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]