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Democracy and Poverty: a Missing Link? Organized by
Democracy Forum 2000
Stockholm, 8-9 June 2000 Is global democracy the missing link to solve global poverty? Lunch Speech by Troy Davis, President, Your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank International IDEA for inviting me and giving
me the opportunity to address this august group of donors, officials, practitioners and researchers, united, as the IDEA leaflet states by "the sole mandate of making the world a more democratic place." The World Citizen
Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation based in the US, which I have the privilege to lead, has the same goal. Our activities are based on the belief that in a globalizing world, the citizens of that world have the right
to "a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized", as the We all recognize that democracy is valid for local, state or cantonal, national or regional units, and demand it for those levels, but as soon as we
switch to the world level, most of us revert to the old feudal paradigm which is the norm globally and we forget all the democratic principles we otherwise cherish. We must stop being schizophrenic and applying a double standard.
We do not do it because we think world democracy is a bad idea. We do it because we haven't really thought about it, or because we are mental prisoners of an obsolete paradigm where nation-states reign supreme, at the same time
that we see that absolute national sovereignty is crumbling. We witness giant companies growing so large that they dwarf all but the largest states, but we fail to see the obvious: that only a global democracy can solve global
problems which individual nations cannot. What is the connection to poverty? This is a good time to correct the title of my speech in the programme which should read: Is global democracy the missing link to solve
global poverty ? To eradicate world poverty was one of the reasons we developed the world democracy campaign in the first place, because eradicating world poverty is one of the conditions for sustainable world peace. The other
condition is creating global democratic institutions to give a voice to the now voiceless. So the topic of this year's Democracy Forum is perfectly timed for us. The reasoning is simple: the original goal is to create the
conditions for a world at peace, as peace is the precondition for human happiness. But the world can only be at peace if endemic global poverty is eradicated, as continuing poverty eventually creates strife and disease, which in
today's world cannot be swept under the rug anymore. And the evidence shows that peace can only be sustainable in a democratic regime as war is costly and no woman likes to see her son or husband leave for war to possibly never
come back. The greatest opposition to the Chechen war were ordinary Russian women clamouring for their sons. Ordinary people have more opportunity in a democracy to put the brakes on war. The more truly democratic a country is, the
more successfully will citizens be able to oppose war. It does not always work but it works better than in a non-democracy. The second condition to prevent war, as France did successfully with Germany since World War II, is to
anchor potential belligerents in a supra-national structure which eventually has enough moral and legal authority that war becomes unthinkable. Coming from Alsace which has seen 3 major wars between France and Germany in the space
of 70 years (1870 to 1940), I know this quite well. Today, war between France and Germany is indeed unthinkable, an incredible achievement if one remembers the visceral hatred between these countries just a short time ago, and the
80 million dead of the two world wars. Wars and the preparations for war which absorb so many resources make a mockery of any poverty-reduction programme. We see it today in Ethiopia, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo,
Sierra Leone, and many other countries, not to mention Northern Korea, former Yugoslavia and Chechnya,. This is obvious but it has been mentioned too little so far. And since democracies go to war with more difficulty than
non-democracies, there is here already an obvious link between democracy and poverty alleviation. Putting it all together, world peace is necessary a) to stop direct human suffering b) to stop the waste of resources which
diverts from human welfare and creates indirect suffering The ultimate threat to poverty-reduction programmes, indeed a threat to many other human endeavours, is the threat of a nuclear exchange. As long we do not create a
global security regime which reassures countries, nothing will change. An equilibrium of terror cannot work forever. It must give way to the global rule of law, which will only be respected if it made by a global legislature with
democratic legitimacy. So to reduce global poverty, we need to achieve world peace which will create a real peace dividend all around the world. And this can only be done if we create a world democracy which is by definition
supra-national and will create the necessary trust between peoples. Some people say: it will not be easy to create a world democracy. Or: it is utopian. True. But this is precisely why we need to start early, and all social
progress is utopian until it happens. If Gandhi or Luther King had listened to such defeatist arguments, the world would be a worse place today. The vote of women, the end of slavery, the end of apartheid, the end of fascist or
communist totalitarianism, all these were utopian until they happened. If we want to change the world like Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King did, we must find a way to inspire large numbers of people. We cannot hope to change
the world in a technocratic or elite way. It can only be changed by launching a very broad debate, a global dialogue open to all, relayed by the media, about how to implement a global democracy. Otherwise, both the left-wing
anti-globalisation protests and the right-wing global dictatorship fantasies will continue. If we want to change the world, we must be bold like Muhamed Yunus who persevered against the nay-sayers who said that the project to
bring phone service to poor women in Bangladesh would be a disaster. If we want to change the world, we must have a clear vision of where we want to go: the same vision Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, called for last week
in Berlin "a global and democratic system of political decision-making". If we want to change the world, we must find a way to involve millions of people. We must have a majority "mindshare" of the world's citizens. Because of
modern technology, existing endorsements and future endorsements by celebrities which we are working on, this will not as difficult to do as some imagine. A significant portion of the world's population, estimated at 20-25%, was
already reached 50 years ago by my father Garry Davis who managed to with his call to create a World Constituent Assembly which would set the foundation for a People's World Assembly, or what some might call a World Parliament or
the Parliament of Humankind. With the Internet, with globalization a major topic of discussion everywhere, with major battles for public opinion being fought about the type of globalization which is good for us, with a new
Millennium, and with an updated approach, we should surely be able to reach even more people within a very short time. If we do not start now at least talking about the pros and cons, about the practical issues involved in
launching a world democracy, the risk of a world dictatorship arising in a time of global crisis is enhanced. If we do not start broadening the debate beyond the ivory towers of the UN, NATO, the US, the Trilateral Commission, the
Davos crowd, the WTO, the IMF, popular discontent will continue. Indeed, some people already accuse some or all of these groups to run the world in a quasi-dictatorial manner. In a globalizing world, we must find a way to
inspire the world population, including the population of rich countries. We believe that the idea of a world democracy, i.e. creating new global institutions where the people are directly represented, has the potential to create a
global wave of enthusiasm. The insight that democracy is a precondition for economic growth was rewarded with the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics to Professor Amartya Sen. Professor Sen points out for example that "no
major famine has ever occurred in an open democratic country, even when the country is very poor" (Time, 22 May 2000). I will not go into detail in Sen's arguments but in a nutshell,
democracies by being more responsive to their citizens, are forced to adopt policies which mitigate poverty, otherwise the rulers suffer from the popular wrath which authoritarian regimes are insulated from. Today, this idea has
made its way in business magazine as shown by an article in Business Week showing that democracies pay better wages than non-democracies. Certainly that is a factor in poverty reduction. But my main point today is that to remedy
global poverty, by which I mean the "endemic" poverty which a large portion of the world's population still suffers from, we must have a global democracy. In a world where markets can devastate the economy of a country a world
away, and where there is no global safety net, there is no avenue apart from street protests for people to express their grievances. The protective powers of democracy, which rest on a social contract that when one group is
affected by catastrophe, the rest will help out, do not function. Because there is no global social contract, there is no global redistributive function. Such social contracts exist at national levels (and within the European Union
at the European level) but not at global level. There is only charity which makes the recipients feel inferior, or there is debt, which creates an infernal cycle of its own especially if it was contracted by a corrupt elite.
So to break global poverty, we must have two things:
Right now, we have neither. A functioning global democracy is necessary for both. Therefore, if we are to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor, we do not need charity, we need to allow the poor to have a say in the
way the world is run. Since present global structures do not allow this, we need to invent a global democracy which will allow the poor to help shape global rules, so that they can help themselves. Many people argue that the
real cause of poverty in the world and the unequal distribution of wealth is the result of an inequitable system of global governance. The present lack of global democracy allows what is in fact a quasi "law of the
jungle" where the strongest, i.e. the North, uses its might to make the rules and keep the terms of trade to its advantage. The question we need to answer is the same Charles Bassett of the Canadian International Development
Agency asked in his opening speech: "Can we reduce poverty when the very systems which created it remain intact ?" We believe not. Poverty will not be solved sustainably by programmes acting on the local level or even programmes
helping the poor to help themselves as long as terms of trade and global political power is held in a few hands. Present poverty programmes are Band-Aids if at the same time we do not deal with the root cause: rectifying the
balance which now allocates 90% of effective global political power to the North. It is like trying to give blood to a patient while the patient has major open wounds from which blood flows out. The priority is to close the wounds
and therefore allow the natural healing process of the patient to take place Ideally, democracy institutionalizes a way for the powerless to express themselves politically. Democracy was invented to provide a greater political
"bandwidth", to provide a voice to those previously voiceless. The present global political system which is based on diplomatic negotiation is the equivalent of narrowband. Democracy is broadband. In a increasingly
interdependent world, we need to replace narrowband by broadband, to replace diplomatic decision-making by democratic
decision-making. Broadband is even more important at the global level because global institutions are further away from the people. Assuming we want to implement a world democracy, what does this mean? A minimum condition of
democracy is free elections as H.E. the President of Mauritius reminded us. So we need free elections at the global level. At minimum, we need a World Parliament. A global democracy would also make it easier to implement a
Global Marshall Plan, which would be the first realization of a new global social contract. A Global Marshall Plan would be the best investment for world peace and poverty eradication since the first Marshall Plan set the
foundation for a peaceful and prosperous Europe. It would pay itself off rapidly by a real global peace dividend. We could possibly create 15-20 trillion dollars of additional wealth by 2020 if we start now. The excuses about
the unfeasibility of global elections are just that: excuses. The critique that a world democracy would not work because there is too much diversity in the world is mistaken. And the objection that a World Parliament could not work
because of differences between peoples is unfounded. We have today a dozen quasi-World Parliaments in existence, except that they are not elected. They are the general assemblies of the UN, of the specialized agencies, of the
International Financial Institutions, of the WTO. Why if nations surrender their sovereignty to an unelected WTO, would they be less willing to do so to an elected assembly ? It does not make sense. Another common
objection concerns China. The problem of China is not really a problem. It can be solved by agreeing to allow countries to choose their own mode of representation for a transitory period. Proposals like Madeleine Albright's or
George Soros' of a community of democracies, in spite of their feelgood factor, are unrealistic and geopolitically doomed to failure because they would isolate China.
Secretary of the Global Coalition World Democracy 2010
Lunch speaker, Friday 9 June 2000
Only an intellectually clear application of the fundamental
principles of democracy and the willingness to unflinchingly discuss scenarios will enable us to create a global open society. We must not be overly worried about China in the medium-term. China is changing on the ground faster
than expected and the Chinese government knows that the rule of law is the only way it can govern such a huge country. Its entry in the WTO was in part dictated by the wish of the Chinese leadership to have an external incentive to
do what they realized they must do anyway to survive: implement the rule of law. Now, Beijing will have a convenient excuse for cracking down on arbitrary policies from regional barons by invoking the WTO's big stick. In addition,
the Internet has changed the rules of the game profoundly and created a sense of unity among Chinese in many countries connected in cyberspace. The explosive growth of mobile phones in China (already over 43 million users) and the
advent of Web access by phones means even less control of information in the future. I would not be surprised if within a few years smart Chinese leaders opened their political system to competition and tried to sell themselves
as political reformers and guarantors of stability in a basically free election. They would have all the chances in the world to be re-elected even if the opposition gained 15 to 25% of seats. Once the Chinese leadership grew
comfortable that they could basically retain power even with a legal opposition in Parliament, they will probably go for it as they are above all pragmatists. It would even help them with their problem with Taiwan as they could
claim more democratic legitimacy, even if in a different way than the Western democracies. China could claim with some plausibility to invent its own brand of democracy just as legitimate as the West's. This scenario is very
plausible in a country where stability is valued above nearly anything else, and would be rightly encouraged and applauded by the rest of the world. This scenario is also probably the only way that the present Chinese leadership
will be able to keep some measure of power. The alternative, a mad scramble for power at the occasion of some crisis, whether caused by internal social, environmental or economic problems or a global crisis, is much more dangerous
to the Chinese people and the entire world. After all, how democratic can a World Democracy be if the Chinese are excluded? We must stop being idealists and start to become pragmatists. We must apply a simple maxim:
think big and implement pragmatically. Like Joschka Fischer, Foreign Minister of Germany did recently in his speech about the finality of the European Union, we must set out options clearly, and then muddle through as best we can.
To conclude: Direct global elections will totally change the rules of the game and the expectations of the world's citizens. It will usher in a new paradigm and finally complete the slow democratic revolution started in Greece
thousands of years ago. We need to start seriously discussing how we can create global democratic institutions. If we want to answer the concerns about globalization, we need to make this a broad-based dialogue rather than keep
it to an elite. We need the media to take part. This will only happen if the media sees a broad and diverse coalition supporting such an idea. A good start has been made by the creation in May 1999 of the Global Coalition World
Democracy 2010, a multi-stakeholder coalition to promote a global dialogue on this issue. This coalition is focused solely on promoting a debate about the practical issues involved in peacefully building a world democracy. It
already has 300 member organizations and individuals from all continents, including Christian, Muslim and other religions, right and left, business and NGOs, youth and women, local authorities and parliamentarians, academics and
athletes, as well as the traditional peace groups. We are in the process of inviting national governments, inter-governmental organizations and companies to join this unique and growing initiative to make the world a more
democratic place. You and your institution, whether you are a government, a business, an NGO or an academic or purely as an individual are invited to join this global coalition We invite you to participate to be an agent of
change, to promote this highly subversive but necessary idea: implementing a world democracy for a globalizing world. Thank you.
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