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Globalization and Democracy 227

until the 1970s. David Harvey argues that it is diffi cult to say precisely
why neo - liberalism became dominant as a result of “ gyrations and chaotic
experiments that really only converged as a new orthodoxy with the
articulation of what became known as the ‘ Washington Consensus ’ in the
1990s, ” but economic theories developed and spread by Right - wing
think - tanks played a very important role (Harvey, 2005 : 13 – 31). It is

difficult to imagine, however, that the undemocratic procedures of global
governance that were set up according to statist principles following
World War II might be significantly changed without a similar global

catastrophe.
Deliberative globalization is based on a valid claim to democratic legiti-
macy in attempting to consult widely and to create public consent to
global policy - making. The problem is that, as an ideal, it is too far from
current practice to provide a satisfactory basis for global politics. Indeed,
critics of democratic deliberation argue that the gap between ideal and
real is invariably a problem for this approach (Norval, 2008 ). Legitimation
of the practices of global social movements in terms of deliberative glo-
balization does not, therefore, answer the critics of NGOs as unrepresen-
tative and undemocratic. Ironically, this is especially the case where they
may be successful in altering international regulation, the primary aim of
many NGOs.

Conditional g lobalization

As we noted earlier in this chapter, in the face of the difficulties of democ-
ratizing international political institutions, some have argued that it is
more important to focus on democracy within national territories. In

addition to the democratic deficit of existing international institutions, it
is only the nation that gives enough of a sense of a broad political com-
munity amongst all types of people, not just those engaged in radical
politics, to make democracy effective. Under these circumstances, substan-
tive democracy has been achieved in the past, as exemplifi ed by the redis-
tributive policies of post - war welfare states, and the extension of citizenship
rights to groups previously excluded from the civil sphere (Calhoun, 2007 ;
Turner 2002 ). Allowing for the possibility that such a national community
may be civic rather than ethnic, the main problem with such pragmatic
arguments is that they do not address the unfairness of undemocratic
procedures at the international level which, as we have also seen, impact
far more on people living in some states than on others. Nor do they have
anything to offer concerning how issues that do not stop at territorial
borders might be addressed democratically. They seem to imply a form