Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

6-28-2002

Publication Source

Reframing the International: Law, Culture, Politics

Abstract

Richard Falk and I have proposed that the time is ripe for global civil society to take the lead and initiate a popularly representative Global Peoples Assembly (GPA).1 The tremendous growth in the commitment to, and practice of, democracy in domestic settings2 juxtaposed against globalization's large-scale transfer of political decision making to international institutions3 has made the almost complete lack of democracy at the international level the most glaring anomaly of the global system today.

Because states are unlikely to initiate the democratization of the international order, the task of beginning the drive for the first GPA necessarily falls to civil society.4 In taking up this cause, civil society could employ various strategies for bringing about such an assembly. For example, it could establish an embryonic assembly composed of representatives of civil society organizations with the goal that this body evolve into a popularly elected assembly. Alternatively, a very hopeful approach might be to enlist a relatively small core of like-minded states to create a treaty-based electoral assembly to which other countries could over time be persuaded to join. Falk and I have suggested that with the help of any willing states civil society could itself organize elections and establish the GPA.

Inclusive pages

83-106

ISBN/ISSN

9780415931755

Document Version

Published Version

Comments

This chapter has been made available for download by permission of the publisher. Permission is given on a one-time, non-exclusive basis. Future uses of the material must be applied for.

Copyright © 2002 from Reframing the International: Law, Culture, Politics, edited by Richard Falk, Lester Edwin J. Ruiz, and R.B.J Walker. Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group, a division of Informa plc.

Permission documentation is on file.

Publisher

Routledge

Place of Publication

New York, NY

Link to published version

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