Democratizing Global Environmental Governance? Stakeholder Democracy after the World Summit on Sustainable Development

Abstract

One of the most pressing problems confronting political scientists today is whether global governance has democratic legitimacy. Drawing on an analysis of the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002, this article advances and empirically deploys an ideal-typical model of a new approach to key areas of global governance—‘stakeholder democracy’. This work is located in the context of the changing practices of global governance, in which concerns about legitimacy, accountability, and participation have gained prominence. Sustainability is an arena in which innovative experiments with new hybrid, pluri-lateral forms of governance, such as stakeholder forums and partnership agreements institutionalizing relations between state and non-state actors, are taking place. A central argument is that sustainability governance imperfectly exemplifies new deliberative stakeholder practices with general democratic potential at the global level. In examining these governance arrangements, we draw together the nascent elements of this new ‘model’, such as its distinctive takes on political representation and accountability.