Reflections on Global Governance and Political Participation

Abstract

According to Daniel Bell "The nation state has become too small for the big problems of life, and too big for the small problems," (D. Bell, 1987) yet, in a Global Era, by means of access to information and economic globalization, people are facing, in their ordinary lives, small and big problems, and it seems that no one is capable to provide an adequate response to them. At National-state level, in many of the developed countries, it seems that Democracy is backsliding as the phenomenon of Constitutional Retrogression is spreading. At a global level, the global governance institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, and alike ones, seem to act on a basis of calculation between benefits and costs. They are captured by economic interests that undermine the needed confidence that bound citizens and politicians and weaken the moral and social values that should be shared by people. One of the results is the increase of populist movements, which could be understood as a response to those threats. In this article, we will address those issues, intending to demonstrate that new mechanisms of political participation are needed to avoid the threats that we are facing.