Suchergebnisse

This article calls for greater attention to global cities in the study of world affairs so as to promote a more holistic reading of global governance as a multiscalar set of processes composed by overlapping spheres of authority. The article shows how international studies have been insufficiently sensitive to the strategic role of global cities and how they are capable of acting on the global stage by exerting network power. This sheds light on the multilayered governmentality of global governance from an urban perspective. Looking through a lens of global cities, it is argued, will enable theorists to connect macro processes to micro dynamics across a far wider spectrum of governance and political agencies.

Many authors have issued anxious warnings about a disturbing "backlash against democracy"—this in spite of the growing affirmation of democracy as an international standard against which other systems are measured. This article considers the role of democracy promotion, which is understood as activities aimed at assisting in consolidating, disseminating, and advocating democratic governance in this context. The theoretical framework in which the promotion debate occurs is highlighted in order to show how the concept of "democracy" is socially constructed and interpreted in different ways by the various promoters. The article examines the main targets of this activity (state structures and civil societies) and compares two major supporters of democracy (the European Union and the United States). On this basis, claims about a "democratic rollback" are challenged by reference to hybrid regimes that contrast the idea of democracy with that of civilization. The backlash is better understood as resistence to some of the methods of promotion and some promoters, rather than as being against democracy itself, and the article holds that the best way to promote good governance worldwide is through an oblique, cosmopolitan or European-style democracy that fosters the multiple and processual grounds on which democratic polities can flourish.