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Performing the demos: towards a processive theory of global democracy

Debates on global democracy have tended to focus on the possibility of a global democratic entity based on the feasibility of institutional structures that, however inadvertently, take state-based conceptualizations of democracy as their reference point. More recently, however, some theorists have argued for a more ‘performative’ approach that focuses on the demos rather than the kratos and the capacity of political actors to ‘perform’ a role as members of a global demos (List and Koenig-Archibugi 2010). While advancing global democracy debates, this ‘performative’ approach leans towards an overly mechanical, static account of performativity that defines democratic behaviour in terms of the functional requirements of political systems. Based on the ‘realist turn’ in contemporary political theory, this article argues for an alternative account of performativity. When coupled with a theory of political complexity, this implies a more processive theory of global democracy that is focused more on what it means for a demos to ‘perform’ democratically than the development of specific institutional configurations. A processive theory of global democracy concentrates more on the emergence of multilevel democratic practices that supplement existing state-based democratic procedures rather than conceiving global democracy as a new, fixed institutional configuration to replace existing democratic structures. Understood in these terms, the debate on the possibility or impossibility of global democracy, which takes as its reference point existing state-based institutional structures, deflects attention from the more pertinent and substantive matter of whether particular initiatives and processes in specific contexts are more or less democratic in global terms.