Page 244 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

230 Globalization and Democracy

claim that it effectively threatens rather than strengthens democracy in

South Africa, by overruling decisions that reflected the people ’ s will, and
also by discouraging investment in impoverished states that may have
less than perfect human rights records but which nevertheless need devel-
opment (Joseph, 2004 ).
There is a danger that, precisely because campaigns underpinned by
the principle of conditional globalization target over - represented and
over - developed internationalizing states, they risk losing touch with those
they are supposed to be helping to strengthen their democratic voices in
developing countries. They may become insular, focused on their own
activities, and neglect building strong transnational networks with people
in the places they are targeting. In this way, there is always the risk that
such campaigns may not improve, they may actually worsen, democratic
conditions in other states. As the Make Poverty History campaign became
more popular in the UK, for example, it certainly lost touch with trans-
national networks established largely through churches and unions in
Africa on which GCAAP was building. Although the campaign did educate
large numbers of people in issues of global political economy concerning
aid, trade, and debt relief in Europe and North America, these voices were
not heard at all in the mainstream media during the campaign. In fact,
the representations of those the campaign was supposed to help were
patronizing and self - absorbed (Stevenson, 1999, 2007 ).
Even more problematically, however, neither the GCAAP demands, nor
those of ATTAC have made much progress at all as a result of these
campaigns. Some argue that this is because it is na ï ve to expect wealthy,

large states to give up the benefits of their over - representation in IGOs to
smaller, poorer states (Monbiot, 2005 ). However, any campaign to
democratize international structures would be faced with the same
problem: how could some kind of international democracy possibly be
achieved except by privileged states giving up at least some of their privi-
leges? In this sense, Make Poverty History activists are correct to say that

persuading those who profit from the misery of others to stop is like trying
to abolish slavery or to end apartheid. Campaigns for global democratiza-
tion can only ever be effective by putting pressure on the strongest and
wealthiest states in international political institutions. The principle of
conditional globalization involves working through the electorates of
these states to prevent or reverse international policies that make post -
colonial states less democratically accountable to their citizens. It is surely
a promising strategy in terms of democratic legitimacy. How successful
it may be in practice is another question.