The global “political voice deficit matrix”

Abstract

Abstract The present article illuminates something important yet undertheorized about the relationship between democracy, technology, and globalization. That is, that digital technologies are crucial for certain types of cross-boundary interactions between individuals or communities, and that these interactions are crucial for democratizing relations of power and authority established in and by regimes of global governance. The article does so by linking together two related conversations that have yet to take sufficient account of each other: those taking place between law and technology scholars on the democratizing potential of digital technologies, and those taking place amongst international lawyers on the relationship between democracy and globalization. The article undertakes this alchemy by putting forward the theoretical construct of the “political voice.” This construct offers a normative theory that outlines the democratic functions of vertical communications between individuals and public decision-makers within and across boundaries, but also, crucially, explains how these are dependent on robust horizontal, transnational exchanges between individuals or communities. This construct thus offers a lens through which to evaluate the extent to which digital technologies live up to their democratizing potential, and allows for a normative conceptualization of the possible consequences of their failure to do so as a problem of global governance.