For a World Citizen Movement
Introduction
We are a forum geared to
changing world governance, from local to global. We believe it is time to help consolidate
a World Citizen Movement headed both
toward institutionalizing democratic world governance and toward transitioning
to a more sustainable, solidarity-based world— a post-fossil and post-nuclear
world for some, a post-speculation or post-capitalism world for others.
It is generally considered today that world
governance is in crisis. Citizens are well aware that tensions, conflicts, and
wars have far from ceased. The scale and complexity of issues have overwhelmed
local, national, supranational, and global institutions, made them powerless, and
often limited their role, in various regions of the world, to cushioning the foreseeable
deterioration of populationsf living conditions.
Todayfs wars and conflicts are caused by many
different factors: economic inequality, social conflict, religious
sectarianism, territorial disputes, or control over basic resources such as
water and land. All of these are illustrations of a deep crisis in how the
world is being (or is not sufficiently being) governed: this is what we call
the crisis in world governance.
The failed Copenhagen COP 15 and Rio+20
conferences have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the current world governance
system. Multilateralism is deadlocked. World governance entities such as the
G7, G8, and G20 are not legitimate and even less democratic. Globalization has
produced a world in which territories are all interconnected, in which
societies, cultures, economies, and governments are all interconnected. Todayfs
most crucial ecological, economic, political, and social issues involve all of
humankind and have become tangible throughout the planet.
To meet these global challenges, we believe it
urgent to lay the foundations of new institutions, adapted to the different
scales of power and articulated from the most local to the most global. This is
how we see the new world governance
we are trying to contribute to build by institutionalizing pluralistic neighborhood-to-planetwide
communities as a prerequisite to forming a new system of legitimate,
responsible, and solidarity-based governance, because cultural diversity is an
essential foundation of the global communityfs wealth.
Yes, there have been occasional breakthroughs. We
can see paradigm changes here and there, as well as some economic, social,
technological, and cultural innovations, especially at the local levels. Clearly,
however, they have not been able to reverse the widespread trend of worsening
conflict and sometimes irreversible deterioration of the relationship between
humankind and the biosphere.
This is why we are
striving for new world governance. We need to
invent democratic governance of the world and imagine a social force capable of
promoting it.
To help organize this needed world social
movement, we propose to develop, collectively:
ñ a conceptual reading of the current world system, of the key social and
political issues, as well as of the social
forces likely to lead the project of bringing about democratic,
sustainable, and solidarity-based world
governance;
ñ a strategy for allowing these social
forces to organize into a global social and
political movement, which we have called the World Citizen Movement.
ñ Our Forum can be made available to
contribute to opening a debate on the needed strategy, as well as to coordinate tactical actions in the short
and medium term. A forum will make it possible to articulate and confront ideas
flexibly, with no constraints. It will allow diversity to be expressed and will
discourage dogmatic positions.
Modernity and democracy
About two-and-a-half centuries ago,
the world entered a new phase of its history: both the 1776 and 1789
Revolutions laid the foundations for radical reform of democratic citizenship
by rejecting the old order and building a new order based on the individual, on
equality among all citizens, on liberty, and on individual and collective
happiness.
In the modern conception of history, this liberation is still in a way
affecting our history. We can consider that democratic institutions—the
political leverage of this liberation—are where the dialectics of emancipation
occur in the face-off between the state, on the one hand, and social movements
on the other.
The nation state (the concept is
subject to debate, but we are using this term generically for practical
reasons) is based on the idea of citizenship, which potentially makes everyone
a citizen with inalienable rights, theoretically guaranteed by the state, and
potentially makes the nation the expression of the highest collective identity
and subjectivity on the territory of the national state. In this first stage of
modernity, nation states were regarded as equal entities in the international
system of national states.
Today the inter-national conception of the global political system is unable
to meet the challenges arising in the
trans-national space generated by the successive waves of globalization (which
the League of Nations then the United Nations have attempted to organize). In
this transnational space, the rule of law is at best informal and at worst,
reduced to the law of the strongest. It is precisely the governance of this
transnational space, insufficiently institutionalized (and which has taken on
considerable strategic importance with the advent of globalization, soaring
threats to the environment, and the challenge of managing Humankindfs common
goods collectively), that has become the de
facto collective stake in world history. In other words, the planet as a
whole is both where the main problems of the system are and the next territory where
democracy needs to be institutionalized.
The consequences of industrialization
(particularly on the environment and health), of globalization, and of economic
interdependence have produced, however, another effect on the monopoly of power
and the influence enjoyed not so long ago by the nation state; they have
increased the weight of local activity and the need for supra-national
institutionalization (or governance). We can add that the increasing
interactivity of these three levels of governance (local, national, global, to
which we could also add regional, or even sub- and supra-state regional,
continental and sub-continental) has engendered new situations where the second
level of governance, the national state, can sometimes become sufficiently
marginalized to be unable to meet its dual function as guarantor of individual
rights (rule of law) and as epilotf of (a nationfs) society. Although these
changes do not necessarily entail the—prematurely announced—withering of the
state and the nation state, they significantly change the nature of political
space and therefore require institutions and mechanisms better adapted to these
changes. The dynamics of the nation state, in its role as driver of
modernization, are thus hampered.
Dynamics of change and social movement
What, then, becomes of the dynamics
of social movement, especially in its face-off with political institutions struggling
to fulfill their function?
History has shown that social changes
and transformations are born of the dynamics of social movements. Historical
illustrations of this are: the Christian and Buddhist groundswells that swept
away the Roman and the Maurya imperial orders, respectively; the Reformation
that transformed Europe and brought it out of the Middle Ages; or the revolutionary
and workersf movements, and the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist movements
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that upset the worldfs political
system. Changes and transformations have their roots in the dynamics of civil
society, more specifically in political and social organizations, in innovative
ideas put forward by influential intellectuals, in the momentum generated by a
few exceptional cultural, social, or political leaders, and in massively
spreading technological innovations.
The main feature of the dynamics of
civil society is that the organizations at work in it, concurrently, in
complementary and sometimes antagonistic form, revolve around a project for
social change that exceeds the mobilization capability of each of these
organizations: this holistic dynamics is social movement, as we define it here.
It is important to distinguish, from
a theoretical point of view, the movement
(which is virtual) from the civil-society
organizations (unions, NGOs, churches, grassroots movements, etc.) that are
part of the movement. This theoretical distinction has important strategic
implications. If the distinction is accepted, the movement must be understood
as potential force, immaterial dynamics at work within society
to bring about a democratic, sustainable and solidarity-based global society,
that is, something other than the sum of the parts that make it up.
The majority of contemporary
theorists and activists do not make this distinction. For them a movement (in
its broadest definition) is no more than the sum of the organizations it
comprises. It has no independent existence (even virtual and potential). The
movement becomes a sort of coalition, a coordination in marching
order. This has two important implications in terms of strategy: first, the
movement itself becomes a civil-society organization, and even if it is still
called gmovement,h it loses its internal dynamics, which are by definition
contentious. The second is that this umbrella movement can only operate
hierarchically and, over time, bureaucratic trends will develop hand-in-hand
with a growing temptation to pose as the vanguard.
Following up on this definition and
on the prospects that it raises, we will acknowledge that each era of history
has a different type of social movement. For example, the Enlightenment
spawned gdemocratic nationalitarian movements" (aimed at setting up rule
of law/nation states), where the term gdemocratic,h stands for the gone person,
one voteh ideal, and the term gnationalh or gpeoplefsh (nation or people)
conveys the idea that there can be an expressed collective will to determine the
direction in which the state is to lead society. The state is therefore both
the institution of institutions (the legitimacy by law of which it guarantees)
and acts as societyfs gpilot.h Social movements are its opposing mirror image
as regards the direction to be taken by society. The identity of a social
movement is expressed in its challenge to institutional order by virtue of the
deepening, extension, and universalization of the three principles that are
liberty, equality, and solidarity.
A social
movement thus expresses the desire (when virtual) or the will (when it becomes
reality as gpolicyh) to deepen the process of individual and collective
liberation. It occurs not only by freeing itself from the alienations generated
by the social system, but also by claiming to be, individually and
collectively, the subject of its own history.
gProgressivismh
in this sense is to want, all at once, more freedom, more equality, and more
solidarity. In pursuing this quest, compared to institutions, society sometimes
accomplishes leaps in complexity. This is what happened at the end of the
twentieth century, which we call gsecond modernity.h Second modernity is
characterized by more gglobalityh (in the sense of greater interactivity at the
global level) and gcitizenshiph (in the sense in which public space is open to
debates, in which individuals and groups wish to participate more in the
development, implementation, and oversight of public policies, and in which
rights are universalized to women, children, future generations, etc.).
Modernity has
featured two major types of social movements: gnationalitarianh democratic
movements (which may include anti-colonial independence movements and
anti-imperialist national liberation movements) and socialist labor movements
(which can include different types of unions and political parties or
cooperatives). By definition, these types of movements are ggeneric,h but they
are, in cyclical time, highly diverse as such and very different from one institutional
context to the next or from one era to another.
The democratization process today
Defining the
current political movement, the gsecond modernityh one, as a gdemocratic
cosmopolitarian movementh forces us to offer a precise definition—insofar as we
can be precise—of what we mean by democracy. This point begs three observations.
Democracy can
be understood as the expression of the will of a community to assert that there
are no gmeta-socialh instituters: neither God, Reason, Progress, or Destiny, if
they exist, affect the fate of humans; humans themselves are who collectively
prioritize their values, their way of producing, and their way of being governed
and having wealth distributed. Modern democracy ginstitutionalizesh the idea
that the community (the people, the nation) is at the helm. In this sense, democracy
is the expression of shared values, of social balances of power (domination,
exploitation, cultural hegemony or hegemony of values) and of an arrangement of
institutional procedures. We must also take into account the importance of
historicity: that is, the fact that these values, these balances of power, and
these institutional arrangements can be very different from one culture to
another and from one era to another. For two centuries, the arrangement of
values, especially the place taken by gethicsh alongside morals, the more
contractual management of balances of power, and the arrival of participatory democracy as third
institutional basis of democratic practice (alongside grepresentationh and
gdirect votingh) have completely changed the very idea of democracy. Although
it is important to go back to the founding philosophical texts so as not to lose
the gthread of modernityh and its democratic gprogressivism,h it is also
essential today to rethink democracy and give it new foundations by factoring in
the current conditions in which it unfolds, that is, globally in the modern
world system, and locally, as close as possible to individuals and communities.
Helping to consolidate a World
Citizen Movement
As we mentioned in the introduction, we believe it is time to contribute
to consolidating a World Citizen Movement. There are two aspects to this: on the one hand, a democratic
gcosmopolitarianh movement (the term may seem somewhat off-putting at first but
it does define the essence of such a movement which is neither ginternationalh
nor even transnational, but aimed at democratic institutionalization at the
global level), and secondly, a movement for a more sustainable and more
solidarity-based global society.
The latest
major social historical movement, the labor movement, had the potential of a
movement both of social transformation (insofar as it contained promising ideas
of social change on the global level) and cosmopolitarian because it defended
the idea of a global political organization (The International). In fact,
however, it was basically a nationalitarian
movement. The future according to Marx and Engels, then to Lenin and
Trotsky—which included organizing within The International national Socialist and
Communist parties in order to establish, after their taking power in the
worldfs national states, a de facto peoplefs
democracy at the global level—did not pan out. The strategy of establishing
Socialism on a country-by-country basis—supported both by Social Democrats and
the likes of Stalin and Mao—also proved to be a failure at the global scale,
even though at the national level, it brought about, here and there, progress
in the extension of rights and democratization, and made systemic alienation wane
in certain sectors. It also, of course, contributed to establishing
authoritarian and totalitarian political systems, which brought the progressive
social and political democratization process to a dramatic halt.
Conditions for consolidating a World Citizen Movement
Failing
historical precedents that could serve as a roadmap, the central question is: How
do we contribute to consolidating a World Citizen Movement? And, first, how do
we foster the conditions for such a movement to emerge, and particularly to
rise to its own awareness? In addition, how can we participate in its
structuring?
Although our
conception of such a political and social movement has yet to be clarified at
this stage, a few proposals can already be put forward so we can consider its
consolidation with a measure of optimism, if only because the communication means
revolutionizing our world every day are tools allowing millions of individuals
to mobilize around the world practically at the drop of a hat.
Certainly,
five centuries ago, Martin Luther was able to mobilize masses of people within
a very short amount of time. This mobilization, remarkable for the period, was
however restricted to a relatively limited geographical and cultural territory.
For mobilization today, only the planet is the limit, language itself no longer
being a limiting factor (although world governance respecting the principle of
diversity should be conceptually based on cross-linguistic and cross-cultural
dialog). In addition to technology, our growing knowledge on organizing and
mobilizing now allows us to understand the ins and outs of major mobilizing
campaigns.
Above all,
from Rio 92 to Rio 2012, global collective awareness has emerged, providing an
opportunity to rally around a common project: to develop a world-governance system such that the planetwide
collective that is Humankind can manage the planet's problems. Setting up
such a system of governance is vital, and if we want it to be democratic, only
a World Citizen Movement is now able
to make that happen. The logical outcome of such a world-governance system and
its institutionalization, whatever the form of institutionalization, will of
course depend in part on traditional state mechanisms and on the concept of
state inherited from the first modernity, but these concepts and mechanisms
will be definitely updated to the global political system of the second
modernity (gworld-modernityh). Indeed, if state institutions will be part of
this global enterprise of political institutionalization, only dialectics with
a world social movement can generate the energy needed to move toward a (state)
institutional system based on the articulation of sovereignties, from local to
global, i.e., according to our definition, toward a system in which democratic governance is truly global.
While global
problems are accumulating with no solution seeming to emerge, we can no longer
just wait for the G7, G8, G20, the United Nations or the major multilateral
conferences on the future of the planet to provide miraculous solutions. Today,
it is our historical responsibility to react and mobilize by contributing to
expanding and linking together local or sector-based mobilizations that are
part of this progressive second-modernity movement that we call the World
Citizen Movement. We must intensify mobilization, not only to criticize and
fight the existing institutions, but also and more so, to assume our responsibilities
and our humanity by putting a hand into writing the collective destiny of
humankind.