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Globalization and Democracy 209

In addition, commitment to human rights is emerging as the common
language that non - state actors use to put pressure on Inter - Governmental
Organizations. It can be difficult to decide whether such uses of “ human

rights ” are legal or moral or both. Human rights are increasingly being
“ mainstreamed ” across the UN and even to some extent beyond it. The
WTO, for example, which is outside the UN system and concerned exclu-
sively with setting the rules of international trade, has come under pres-
sure to consider how these rules conform to human rights principles.
NGOs are lobbying the WTO to look at how international regulation
ensures or damages social and economic rights to which states have com-
mitted themselves in ratifying the International Convention on Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights through the UN (Oberleitner, 2007 : 135 – 9).
This might, for example, involve implementing rules of fair rather than
free trade (for example, ending subsidies on agricultural goods produced
in Europe and the US that result in “ dumping ” surpluses in developing
countries (Tonkiss, 2005 : 76)). Critics of the strategy argue that although
formal rights are attributed to all individuals in human rights law, such
policies are too abstract and distant from what matters, which is what
people make of resources in practice. Insofar as the human rights move-
ment is concerned with outcome , however, simply ensuring that human
rights norms are referred to in bureaucratic documents will not satisfy
demands for action to realize human rights (Gready and Ensor, 2005 ;
Blau and Moncada, 2007 ; Stammers, 2009 ). We will look more closely
at the strategies for democratization of social movement actors in global
civil society in the following section.

Democracy b etween s tates

Although human rights are developed in international political institu-
tions, they are not designed to contribute to their democratization. Except
in the EU, there are no international political institutions that make provi-
sion for political parties to represent individuals in law and policy - making
at this level. Where individuals are the subjects of democratic procedures
within states – each with a vote – at the international level it is represen-
tatives of states who vote. It is nations who are the subjects of democratic
procedures in international political institutions insofar as the offi cials
who carry out state business at the international level are almost invari-
ably either elected in national elections, or appointed by elected govern-
ments. However, although all Inter - Governmental Organizations use