National Council of Women
Conference 8th  June 2009 : Partnering for a More Equitable and Sustainable Future
EMPOWERING CIVIL SOCIETY TO ENGAGE IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
Professor Peter G. Xuereb

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen. Madam Chairman, thank you for the invitation to speak today. The Commonwealth Foundation is a lead player when it comes to democracy and civil society, even if some of its members are not. The achievements of the Commonwealth demonstrates this and  its experience in this field is of value to the whole world.
Another player can be the European Union. I shall comment on this soon.
The theme allocated to me, and which I was happy to agree to, is empowering civil society to engage in the democratic process. Note that it speaks of engaging in the democratic process, and this MEANS also the political process. When we speak of civil society we mean civil and political rights, and also economic and social rights, and indeed human and fundamental rights in particular.  CSOs have many aims and functions, and among these is the aim to help make, shape or change the Law, at national level of course, but increasingly it is found that it is the regional order or the global order that is the proper target for CSOs to aim at. They have a major stake in global regulation or the lack of it, and a particular voice upon this that must be heard.
Of course we know that the sine qua non for all civil society existence and  action is Democracy. Where there is no democracy there is no civil society as we understand it. Look at the Mediterranean for one example. And Human rights are at the basis of democracy. Freedom of association, freedom of speech are KEY conditions for the very existence of civil society.
Who will it be to empower civil society organisations, to allow them to exist, to work, to speak truth to power and to the rest of the population, to demonstrate, to report, to inform their counterparts in other countries, parts of the world? Who will give them the power of independent thought and action where this is lacking? Who will give them the funds they need? Who will ensure they have access to resources, public and private grants, and the freedom to use these as needed provided they do so with due respect to proper accountability etc.
Will it be governments or rulers? Will it be the international community? Which part of the international community might this be?
If democracy and human rights must come first, then who will bring this about? Heroic undergound movements within the state – the precursors of civil society in those states- OR again, the international community.....the Commonwealth, the European Union, all together.
The world is moving, we like to think since the fall of the Berlin Wall, towards Global Democracy – the hegemony of the US or other major blocks, new or old, will no longer be tolerated by the rest of the world.  The international institutions and organisations must change, and the reform of the United Nations is awaited with particular eagerness and impatience by many. I am one of those.
But there is a problem with realising (making real) the idea of global democracy. It is that of fundamental institutional incapacity.
We see this across many fields, most recently in connection with the global financial crisis, and the rather inadequate response, but in the even worse regulatory incapacity that permitted it to come about. We all knew that the rich were getting richer, and in dubious ways, and that the poor were getting poorer but there seemed to be nothing that the world could do to reverse this growing wealth/survival gap. We all knew that were going to have trouble keeping States to the achievement of the Millenium Development Goals, but it seemed there was no way to keep them to their commitments. We all knew that the West’s brand of capitalism and its implicit set of values was alienating and even hurting many fellow human beings, but what alternative wealth creating or sustaining model (for the West or for the Rest)  was there ?
Then one man stepped forward, a politician in the most powerful nation in the world, and proposed a new vision. President Barak Obama has pointed out another way. There is hope of a new USA, and this is significant and may be the vital missing link. Yet there is much to be done.
I have taken a macro (global) approach to my theme for the now clear reason that the world’s interconnectedness, the interconnectedness or complexity of all  ‘problems’ and the inability of any one state however big or powerful to manage any of them, means increasingly that, in this globalised world, much that is crucial to us all is decided at the macro level, or global, level.
It is at this level , then, that we need global democracy, and urgently so because the major threats of pandemic disease, major conflict, life-threatening and migration -forcing climate change and so much else can only be managed at global level. And.... We need civil society there. The problem is that we do not have institutions that are able to mediate well for the wide variety of peoples around the globe.  In the modern Democratic State we do have such intermediate institutions mediating between the state and the citizen; political parties, interest groups, the media – imperfect as they may be. BUT the trouble in international politics is that the institutions of civil society, although growing, by far lack the capacity that would enable them to mediate between the very wide groups in ‘international society’ and international institutions.  Were we to democratise global decision-making then, there would be this GAP....the rulers or decision-making institutions thus created would operate as elites, with few able to challenge or shame them from a truly representative or global community starting point (Dahl, 1999).
Moreover, be not surprised...Catriona Mackinnon has written that an example of this scenario is.....the EUROPEAN UNION.  In this most developed instance of international decision-making organisations...civil society is still QUITE WEAK!!  Only fledgling Europe-wide political parties. No Europe-wide Unions (despite efforts).  Business interests are well represented, but others not so well. There is a major information-deficit as far as the average Union citizen is concerned, so that the citizen’s influence on outcomes is comparatively negligible. As McKinnon has put it, despite best efforts to remedy this, the European citizens are at sea in an ocean of information without the intermediary institutions that are so necessary to enable them to navigate (i.e. process and use) it.  Many interests and interest groups will be poorly represented as a result.
I am sorry about all this realism on a beautiful Monday in Malta....but I am sure that tackling fundamental issues for our peaceful and prosperous common destiny is what such a meeting as this is about...so..
If we return to the global level, we see these problems that I have mentioned are magnified to frightening proportions. However big our NGO s at this level and there are some rather big ones, such as in the field of human rights, we see them struggle to make an impact...even if just to monitor what is happening in various trouble spots across the globe..
Citizens...except, perhaps and with difficulty, the high profile ones (and the West must take credit for creating such icons)......cannot everywhere at the moment hope, far less expect,  to be given the support that they need to perform their roles as equal citizens in their polities. Very little is likely to be done, as McKinnon has said, in turn to monitor the behaviour of international institutions. Yet redressing the deficit at global level is sure to impact positively also on the citizen within his or her national polity.
Of course, such remarks have most poignancy if one is seeking to replicate at the global level the ideal model of the democratic state. However, we are not (as far as I know) trying to do this even at European level (i.e. no European State..no United States of Europe). While this does not make the problem go away, it helps us to focus more clearly on the direction of a solution. Europe teaches:  wherever decisions are made, there must civil and political rights be, and there must information and consultation and civil society be...... CIVIL SOCIETY IN EUROPE MUST BE MADE MUCH STRONGER BOTH AT MEMBER STATE AND AT EUROPEAN LEVEL........this is, of course, being done. So, THE STATE, AND STATES, feature as main players in the European Union of course. However, they remain the sovereign units that participate exclusively in the global organisational and institutional polity. Yet the European Union model has demonstrated one most important HISTORICAL INNOVATION....it is possible to create a tighter, more inclusive, bond  between nations– even a fledgling SOCIETY -  on the twin pillars of STATES AND PEOPLES.
European Union democracy, imperfect as it is -  is founded on these twin pillars ---- representation of STATES....and representation of PEOPLES!!!! And so also does the Preamble of the United Nations Charter refer  to  "We, the peoples of the United Nations”. Yet, peoples are not yet represented in the UN bodies.
I can think of no more empowering idea for the citizen and for civil society than that we think not only of reforming the international organisations and institutions by reference to their state composition, powers and so on
BUT ALSO
That we provide the world – ourselves -  with a Peoples’ Assembly, as  a check, but also as a forum for the Intercultural Dialogue that is so badly needed  to uncover and resolve  our misunderstandings, injustices, conflicts, artificial differences, mutual simplistic misrepresentations. A Peoples’ Assembly above the state level, at the global level, must be a key development in changing the psyche of each person on this earth in the direction both of individual empowerment and the truly Common Good.
In this forum, I add that I would hope that as many women as men would be elected to such an Assembly, as I hope to see the number of women Members of the European Parliament grow.
Several models for such an Assembly or parliament have been suggested over the years, since the 1920s and well before. Some think of a World Parliament composed of representatives of national parliaments, others of an assembly of civil society representatives. Some would seek for it shared law-making and/or regulatory power, while others see it as being (merely!) consultative and advisory. The counter-arguments have been many and powerful. They mean nothing in the face of the evidence of human history.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the time at my disposal has been short. It has not been possible to detail the position in Malta, Europe or the Mediterranean. The EDRC and my Department have worked on issues of civil society at all these levels. We have published, in collaboration with our colleagues in Europe and the Mediterranean several papers and books on aspects of democracy, civil society and values, as well as the stories of particular groups and peoples. I ask you to refer to these publications.
What I have sought to do today is suggest that one idea, that of a global people’s assembly as part of the United Nations’ Institutional Architecture, is KEY to resolving today’s and tomorrow’s challenges. Not only because these are truly of global dimension. But also because the citizens of the world demand democratic participation in decision-making. States themselves should welcome this participation, not only for reasons of principle, but for the invaluable and necessary contribution  that civil society can make.
I believe that the Commonwealth can drive this idea forward with credibility and influence. I also believe that President Obama, among many others, will see the possibilities inherent in it. And I believe that the member states and peoples of the European Union will lend it their support. The devil may lie in the detail, but the angel lies in those who would try.
Thank you.