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Greetings
Dear Colleague,
Welcome to the March 2010 edition of the Building Global Democracy programme newsletter. You are receiving this mailing as someone who is known by one or more of the BGD programme conveners to have interests in this area. We hope that you will find these occasional short updates helpful in your research and/or activism on global issues.
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The Building Global Democracy programme brings together academics and practitioners from around the world to advance knowledge and practice for greater public participation and control in global affairs. BGD explores how expanded 'rule by and for the people' can be achieved in respect of global issues such as climate change, financial crises, health concerns, internet links, migration flows, security problems, and trade. The premise is that more democratic governance can encourage more effective and more legitimate responses to vital global challenges.
The thematic projects that make up the BGD programme cover issues such as: conceptualising global democracy; citizen learning for global democracy; including the excluded in global policymaking; resource redistribution for global democracy; and intercultural constructions of global democracy.
The BGD programme is facilitated and coordinated through a convening group of ten persons based in ten world regions, with diverse academic backgrounds and political outlooks. Our administrative office is located in the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick in Britain. Core funding is provided through a generous grant from the Ford Foundation, with co-funding from other sources.
More details about BGD can be obtained on our website, www.buildingglobaldemocracy.org or email us at info@buildingglobaldemocracy.org
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Citizen Learning for Global Democracy Workshop
Preparations are well advanced for the 'Citizen Learning for Global Democracy' workshop which will be held in New Delhi, India on 1-3 September 2010. We now have a slate of specially commissioned papers from around the world.
Authors include: Muhammad Ayish (University of Sharjah); Donatella della Porta (European University Institute, Florence) and Nicole Doerr (Free University Berlin); Honor Ford-Smith (York University, Toronto); T. K. Oommen (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi); Owen Sichone (University of Pretoria); Makere Stewart-Harawira (University of Alberta, Edmonton); Carlos Vainer and Flávia Braga (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro); Elena Vartanova (Moscow State Lomonosov University); Zhu Jiangang (Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou).
Read more
CGD Action Statement Published
The 'Conceptualising Global Democracy' action statement, an outcome of the CGD workshop in Cairo last December, has now been published on the BGD website in seven languages. It draws together the key learning from the workshop and makes concrete suggestions on conceptualising global democracy in today's world.
Read the action statement
BGD Building Links
The BGD Programme has identified, and made links with, many other groups and organisations around the world with related concerns. Developing such a network is one of the primary goals of the Building Global Democracy programme.
If you are working on similar issues to the BGD programme and would like to build links with us, please email the office.
Explore our links page
BGD Materials in Hindi
As we work towards the next workshop in New Delhi, the BGD programme will translate its core website content into Hindi. This hopefully will make the workshop and its content more accessible to Hindi-speaking followers of the programme. We also hope it will encourage local interested parties to attend the public event which will follow the 'Citizen Learning for Global Democracy' workshop on September 4th at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The addition of an eighth language also pursues BGD's commitment to providing a broad intercultural platform for discussing global democracy.
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BGD Workshop in New Delhi
1-3 September 2010
To be held at The Claridges hotel in New Delhi, the 'Citizen Learning for Global Democracy' workshop will, like the Cairo workshop before it, bring together a broad range of researchers and practitioners
Read more about the workshop
BGD Workshop in Rio de Janeiro
13-15 April 2011
BGD will hold a workshop on 'Including the Excluded in Global Policymaking' in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 13-15 April 2011. The meeting will explore ways that constituencies who often lack participation and control in global affairs have gained voice and influence in decision-taking processes. As ever in BGD activities, the workshop will centre on practitioner-researcher exchange.
Read more
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Among the objectives of the BGD programme is to raise awareness of efforts throughout the world to bring greater democracy to the governance of global concerns. To this end each BGD newsletter highlights several academic and/or practitioner initiatives in this area. This time we feature the Global Studies Programme and Egality's 'Give your Vote' project. Please feel free to send suggestions of other features for future newsletters. |
Global Studies Programme
The Global Studies Programme is a two-year Master’s Programme, followed by an optional three-year PhD. The Programme is conducted jointly by the University of Freiburg, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Jawaharlal Nehru University and FLACSO Argentina. Its curriculum comprises of sociology, political sciences, anthropology and geography. Since 2002, more than 200 students from more than 60 countries have travelled to the participating institutions to gain a truly global perspective on globalization, especially from the global South. In 2006, the programme received the label “Top Ten International Master’s Degree Programme” in Germany.
The strength of the programme lies in the intercultural, interdisciplinary and intercontinental study of globalisation. The students not only get to learn various dimensions of globalisation in classroom sessions but also get actual field experience by way of choosing to do their different semesters in different continents/countries, introducing them to different perspectives about the process of globalization.
In order to prepare students for their professional life, an internship of at least ten weeks is a compulsory component of the curriculum. The internship is basically one of the prospective areas of employment. For many students, the internship actually becomes the stepping-stone into professional life. Students of Global Studies Programme normally pursue three main career paths, namely academia, international organisations (such as United Nations or NGOs) and development. Several students also choose to work in the fields of media, coaching, consulting and politics.
Learn more about the Global Studies Programme
Give Your Vote
Give Your Vote in the UK General Election to someone in Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Ghana.
Give Your Vote is a campaign asking people in the UK to give their votes to people abroad affected by UK policies on trade, war and climate change.
Participants in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana will put questions to UK parties and ultimately decide who gets their vote. Their votes will be cast by UK citizens who have pledged to represent their views.
Why are we doing this? Because climate change, migration, poverty and war are global problems that national governments cannot solve in a just or sustainable way.
We agree with our supporter Archbishop Desmond Tutu who believes “we must strive for a global democracy in which everyone – not just the rich and powerful – has a voice”.
Give Your Vote is a way of challenging the global system while also giving a voice to those affected by UK policy abroad. Join us! We launch on 15 March, follow us at: www.giveyourvote.org, facebook.com/giveyourvote, twitter.com/giveyourvote
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The Building Global Democracy Programme seeks, amongst other things, to identify new publications on the subject which may interest our readership. If you would like us to feature a publication in future newsletters, please email the office.
Global Decision Making: Towards a Democratic Process, is a collection of academic essays published by the online nonprofit initiative GlobalVote. GlobalVote allows Internet users to vote and voice their opinions on the policies of the UN and other international organizations. Their book addresses the basic structures of international organizations and presents case studies demonstrating how online networks have increased awareness of international issues. To find out more about GlobalVote, please visit their website, and take a look at their book on Amazon.com.
BGD Newsletter readers might like to check out Globalizations, an action-oriented academic journal with frequent articles that touch upon questions of democratising global politics
Read more about the Globalizations Journal
The Committee for a Democratic UN has issued a new background paper on "The Composition of a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations", written by Andreas Bummel.
Read this publication
Daniel Bray, 'Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism: A Deweyan Approach to Democracy beyond the Nation-State’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 37(3) (2009): 679-715.
Read this publication
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The BGD website includes a Links area with connections to other projects concerned with building global democracy and a Library area with access to online publications on subjects related to building global democracy. Please send your suggested additions for these catalogues to info@buildingglobaldemocracy.org.
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Website: www.buildingglobaldemocracy.org | Email: info@buildingglobaldemocracy.org | Tel: +44 (0)24 7657 2532
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