Globalization

Four OpenDemocracy writers are attending the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. They are blogging about the main developments at the global event for non-governmental organizations. At the same time, other OpenDemocracy writers are participating in the World Economic Forum in Davos and producing this blog. The Davos Conference has it's own official weblog.

Paul Hilder, in his latest essay for OpenDemocracy, proposes a map for 21st century democracy and discusses the challenges for the traditional political party in the context of globalization. Can it reinvent itself in a way that matches transformations of society, technology, and personal identity? He draws on global democratic experimentation to present a vision of the political party for an age of “open politics”:

Our critical imaginations should be sharpened by the awareness that parties as formerly understood may be disappearing. Who benefits, and how?

George Papandreou’s interview in openDemocracy (“Go ahead George, change it all”, December 2004) creates an opportunity to ask this question in a positive fashion. Most party leaders are defensive about the hollowing-out of the organisations they rely on. But Greece’s opposition leader sees the need and opportunity for a profound change if parties, and democracy, are to be renewed in the age of globalisation. Papandreou calls for a new kind of “open party”. That ideal, as yet found nowhere in reality, is novel even as aspiration.

At the beginning of constitutional democracy, the authors of the Federalist Papers, the founding debate of American politics, deplored parties as schismatic factions working counter to the interests of the commonwealth. Two hundred years later, could “open parties” instead bring public life closer to achieving the common good? What could they look like? Are they even possible? Would they depend, in turn, on a new pantheon of sun-god leaders?