Global Protesters Versus Global Elites: Are Direct Action and Deliberative Politics Compatible?1

¹ For their stimulating comments on previous versions of this text, I would like to thank Marcos Ancelovici, Charles Blattberg, Julie Chateauvert, Joshua Cohen, Peter Dietsch, Archon Fung, Lazer Lederhendler, David Leahy, Yves Sintomer, and Flore Trautmann. Thanks also to the organizers and participants of the Montreal Political Theory Workshop (McGill University and Université de Montréal, September 2002), of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Workshop of Political Philosophy (November 2002), and of the symposium “La situation deliberative dans le débat public” (François Rabelais University, Tours, May 2003), where preliminary versions of this text were presented. I would also like to thank the Department of Political Science at MIT, where I wrote the first version of this text as a post-doctoral researcher with the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Centre de recherche en éthique de l'Université de Montréal (CRÉUM), where I wrote the present version of this text.

Abstract

In this article I examine the legitimacy of direct action in relation to liberal deliberative norms and global institutions (World Bank, World Trade Organization, etc.). Because the deliberative processes of these institutions are illegitimate according to the theory of deliberative politics, the activists of the movement for global justice are legitimate to confront these institutions. Moreover, confrontational action in itself may have a deliberative value for at least seven reasons: (1) initiating deliberation (agenda-setting); (2) enlarging participation; (3) enlarging representation; (4) disseminating information and arguments (publicity); (5) stimulating imagination; (6) pushing for action; (7) re-opening deliberations. Finally, social movements such as the movement for global justice may be seen themselves as deliberative arenas. Thus, those who seek to evaluate the legitimacy of direct actions need to take into consideration the deliberative nature of the process through which activists decide which means may be more efficient in order to repair defects in the official deliberative process, and promote equality, liberty, and justice.

Notes

¹ For their stimulating comments on previous versions of this text, I would like to thank Marcos Ancelovici, Charles Blattberg, Julie Chateauvert, Joshua Cohen, Peter Dietsch, Archon Fung, Lazer Lederhendler, David Leahy, Yves Sintomer, and Flore Trautmann. Thanks also to the organizers and participants of the Montreal Political Theory Workshop (McGill University and Université de Montréal, September 2002), of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Workshop of Political Philosophy (November 2002), and of the symposium “La situation deliberative dans le débat public” (François Rabelais University, Tours, May 2003), where preliminary versions of this text were presented. I would also like to thank the Department of Political Science at MIT, where I wrote the first version of this text as a post-doctoral researcher with the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Centre de recherche en éthique de l'Université de Montréal (CRÉUM), where I wrote the present version of this text.

² Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970); Herbert Marcuse, “The Problem of Violence and the Radical Opposition,” in H. Marcuse (ed.), Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 83–108; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 319–346.

³ Lesley J. Wood, “Breaking the Bank & Taking to the Streets: How Protesters Target Neoliberalism,” Journal of World-Systems Research 10:1 (2004), pp. 69–70. See also Charles Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

⁴ For a stimulating review of academic debate about the effects of globalization on the state, see Suzanne Berger “Globalization and Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 3 (2000), pp. 43–62.

⁵ Wood, op. cit., pp. 69–89.

⁶ Arundhati Roy, Power Politics (Boston: South End Press, 2001), pp. 18–19.

⁷ Philippe F. Gillham and Gary T. Marx, “Complexity & Irony in Policing and Protesting: The World Trade Organization in Seattle,” Social Justice, 27:2 (2000) pp. 212–236.

⁸ José Bové and Gilles Luneau, Pour la désobéissance civique (Paris: La Découverte, 2004), pp. 203–205.

⁹ Jürgen Habermas, “Three Normative Models of Democracy,” in Seyla Benhabib (ed.), Democracy and Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 24 (emphasis added).

¹⁰ Joshua Cohen, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy,” in James Bohman and William Rehg (eds), Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), p. 72 (emphasis added).

¹¹ Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 86–87 (emphasis added). See also Pablo Gilabert, “Cosmopolitanism and Discourse Ethics: A Critical Survey,” New Political Science 28:1 (2006), pp. 1–21.

¹² Archon Fung, “Deliberation Before the Revolution: Toward an Ethics of Deliberative Democracy in an Unjust World,” Political Theory 33:3 (2005), pp. 397–419.

¹³ Simone Chambers, “Deliberative Democratic Theory,” Annual Review of Political Science 6 (2003), pp. 307–326.

¹⁴ Emmanuel Sièyes, “Sur l'organisation du pouvoir législatif et la sanction royale,” in François Furet and Ran Halévi (eds), Orateurs de la Révolution française, I: “Les Constituants” (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), p. 1025; F. Dupuis-Déri, “L'esprit anti-démocratique des fondateurs de la ‘démocratie’ moderne,” Agone 22 (1999) pp. 93–113.

¹⁵ Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).

¹⁶ Archon Fung, “Associations and Democracy: Between Theories, Hopes, and Realities,” Annual Review of Sociology 29 (2003), pp. 515–539.

¹⁷ Archon Fung, “Associations and Democracy: Between Theories, Hopes, and Realities,” Annual Review of Sociology 29 (2003), pp. 515–539; Erik Olin Wright and Archon Fung (eds), Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance (London: Verso, 2003); Jane J. Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Frank M. Bryan, Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Carol Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

¹⁸ Michael Walzer, “Deliberation, and What Else?” in Stephen Macedo (ed.), Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 60.

¹⁹ Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (Boston: South End Press, 2005), p. 6.

²¹ Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (Boston: South End Press, 2005), p. 10.

²⁰ Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (Boston: South End Press, 2005), p. 6

²² Marion Gret and Yves Sintomer, Porto Alegre: L'espoir d'une autre démocratie (Paris: La Découverte, 2002); the special issue of Politics & Society 29:1 (2001); and Gianpaolo Baiocchi, “Participation, Activism, and Politics: The Porto Alegre Experiment,” in Fung and Wright, op. cit., pp. 45–76.

²³ Dorothy Kidd, “Indymedia.org: A New Communication Commons,” in Martha McCaughey and Michael D. Ayers (eds), Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp.47–70.

²⁴ See, for instance, Chambers, op. cit., pp. 313–315; David Held and Anthony McGrew (eds), Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance (Cambridge: Polity, 2003); Daniele Archibugi (ed.), Debating Cosmopolitics (London: Verso, 2003); Gilabert, op. cit.

²⁵ Jürgen Habermas, The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), p. 71.

²⁶ WTO website, “What is the World Trade Organization,” < http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact1_e.htm>.

²⁷ WTO website, “10 Common Misunderstandings About the WTO,” < http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/10mis_e/10m00_e.htm>.

²⁸ Ilan Kapoor, “Deliberative Democracy and the WTO,” Review of International Political Economy 11:3 (2004), pp. 522–541.

²⁹ Ilan Kapoor, “Deliberative Democracy and the WTO,” Review of International Political Economy 11:3 (2004), p. 529.

³⁰ Ilan Kapoor, “Deliberative Democracy and the WTO,” Review of International Political Economy 11:3 (2004), pp. 523, 533.

³¹ See the WB website,  < http://www.worldbank.org>.

³² See the WB website,  < http://www.worldbank.org>.

³³ Iris Marion Young, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy,” Political Theory 29:5 (2001), p. 685.

³⁴ Robert O'Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte, and Marc Williams, Contesting Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 24–66.

³⁵ Eddy Fougier, “L'influence des mouvements contestataires,” paper delivered at the symposium “Les mobilisations altermondialistes,” December 3–5, 2003, Paris, unpublished paper.

³⁶ Kapoor, op. cit., p. 530.

³⁷ Roy, op. cit., pp. 24–25. And she adds: “There are plenty of ethical questions to be asked of those who make a professional living off their expertise in poverty and despair. For instance, at what point does a scholar stop being a scholar and become a parasite who feeds off despair and dispossession? Does the source of your funding compromise your scholarship? We know, after all, that World Bank studies are among the most quoted studies in the world. Is the World Bank a dispassionate observer of the global situation? Are the studies it funds entirely devoid of self-interest?” (p. 26).

³⁸ To recall some graffiti I saw in Québec City, during the protests against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), April 2001.

³⁹ Gillham and Marx, op. cit.

⁴⁰ Anonymous, “Bashing the Black Blocs?” Red & Black Revolution 6 (2002), p. 14. The Black Blocs are informal and temporary groups of activists wearing black clothes and masks, who sometimes break windows of multinational concerns and clash with the police.

⁴¹ Marcos Ancelovici, “Organizing against globalization: The case of ATTAC in France,” Politics & Society 30:3 (2002), pp. 427–463.

⁴² Cindy Milstein, “Something Did Start in Quebec City: North America's Revolutionary Anticapitalist Movement,” in Eddie Yuen, Daniel Burton-Rose, and George Katsiaficas (eds), Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement (Brooklyn: Soft Skull Press, 2004), pp. 126–133.

⁴³ Interview by the author.

⁴⁴ David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004), p. 103 (emphasis added).

⁴⁵ Gerardo Otero, “Global Economy, Local Politics: Indigenous Struggles, Civil Society and Democracy,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 37:2 (2004), pp. 325–346.

⁴⁶ Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), p. 123.

⁴⁷ Habermas, Moral Consciousness, op. cit., pp. 86–87 (emphasis added).

⁴⁸ Calhoun, op. cit., p. 479. See also Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 308, 382–384; Éric Weil, Logique de la philosophie (Paris: Vrin, 1996 [1950]), pp. 20–25; Rawls, op. cit., p. 366.

⁴⁹ Interview by the author.

⁵⁰ Richard Cluttbuck, The Media and Political Violence, 2^nd ed. (London: MacMillan Press, 1983); Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making & Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); P. Hocke, “Determining Selection Bias in Local and National Newspaper Reports on Protest Events,” in D. Rucht, R. Koopmans, and F. Neidhardt (eds), Acts of Dissent (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); S. Hug and D. Wisler, “Correcting for the Selection Bias in Social Movement Research,” Mobilization 3:2 (1998), pp. 141–161; Harvey Molotch, “Media and Movements,” in Mayer N. Zald and John D. McCarthy (eds), The Dynamics of Social Movement (Cambridge, MA: Winthrop Publisher, 1979); Gadi Wolsfed, “Media, Protest, and Political Violence: A Transactional Analysis,” Journalism Monographs 127 (1991) pp. 1–61.

⁵¹ Cited in Christian Losson and Paul Quinio, Génération Seattle: Les rebelles de la mondialisation (Paris: Grasset, 2002), p. 156.