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Article Excerpt
In recent years, global "deliberative processes" bringing together government, civil society, and private sector actors have become increasingly common on the global stage. Past work on these processes has either read them as relatively unproblematic consensus-building exercises, or exercises in global corporatism. Using a case study of the World Commission on Dams, this article explores how formal global deliberative processes can be a strategy for global norm formation and legitimation. It suggests that global deliberation can indeed be a vehicle for emergence and propagation of norms, but that these processes face multiple challenges that are structural in nature. Three factors are identified as key elements in understanding norm emergence through global deliberation: the legitimacy of global deliberation linked to questions of representation and democratic procedure; the micropolitics of norm emergence; and the process through which incipient norms are institutionalized by states. Keywords: World Commission on Dams, norms, transnational advocacy networks, global governance, multislakeholder process, global civil society, public-private partnership I assert that we are much more than a "Dams Commission." We are a Commission to heal the deep and self-inflicted wounds torn open wherever and whenever far too few determine for far too many how best to develop or use water and energy resources .. real development must be people-centred, while respecting the role of the state as mediating, and often representing, their interests. We do not endorse globalisation from above by a few men. We do endorse globalisation as led from below by all. a new approach to global water policy and development."
--Kader Asmal, chair, World Commission on Dams
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With these stirring words, the chair of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) positioned the work of his commission as an intervention in the larger debate on global governance. The need for a commission on dams, this comment suggests, stems from a failure of decisionmaking on dams and, by extension, a larger failure of democratic decisionmaking on development.
The debate on dams is but one example of a larger upsurge of global activity by nonstate actors as a potent new force on the global political scene. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), in particular, have typically shaped global politics by probing, questioning, and expressing dissent, often acting through transnational advocacy networks. (1) Scholarship on the role of nonstate actors variously sees them as a new pressure group acting on states, as global actors with an independent political life, and as the solution to a global democratic deficit. (2)
Over time, dissent from outside has been increasingly supplemented by efforts at constructing consent through institutionalized forms of global deliberation. Thus, the past two decades have seen such efforts on landmines, apparel, mining, pipelines, and chemical weapons, to name a few areas. Variously dubbed "multistakeholder process" and "trisectoral network," these deliberative forums are marketed as bridging a "participation gap" and a "legitimacy gap" in global politics. (3) Others are more critical and view these processes as problematic examples of corporatism at the global level. (4)
In this article, I go beyond the simple dichotomy between congenial global conversation and the politics of global corporatism to understand how global norms are shaped through both strategic and discursive content. I argue that the WCD illuminates a niche for global deliberation as a potent means for imagining and articulating new norms and for lending them prominence. At the same time, I suggest that there are several structural hurdles to the legitimacy of global deliberation as a way of furthering global democracy. While a study of the WCD alone will not allow generalization across issue areas, a detailed study does help unearth tensions inherent in global deliberation. What, for example, are the challenges of institutional design? What is the micropolitics of norm formation within these processes? How can the outcome of a global deliberative forum transform a situation deadlocked by entrenched interests?
I first briefly provide the background and context for the WCD. I then locate the WCD within the literature on the emergence of global nonstate actors and its implications for global governance. These two sections provide the backdrop for the body of the article, which is divided into three components: representation and democratic process as a source of legitimacy within the WCD, the micropolitics of norm construction, and norm propagation and adoption. In the concluding section, I return to the larger themes of the article.
An Introduction to the World Commission on Dams
As symbols of national aspiration and state power, dams would appear to be an unlikely vehicle for experimenting with global governance. However, their symbolic status has made dams a magnet for national protest, particularly in much of the developing world. With the growing reliance on international finance--first public and then also private--national struggles coalesced into a loose but increasingly cogent "transnational advocacy network" (5) focused on international financial institutions, particularly the World Bank. De facto control by international actors over national river basin development, argued activists, is a pointed example of a growing democratic deficit in decisionmaking.
As early as 1994, the anti-dams network had called for an independent global commission to review the performance and desirability of large dams. The global campaign skillfully ratcheted up the pressure on the dams industry by using individual project experience to demand changes in the lending policies of the World Bank and other lenders. The campaign then leveraged the gains won on dams-related standards at the international level to force national-level reforms. (6) Over time, large dam projects became increasingly non-bankable even as national governments kept committing to new dams, leading to a stalemate in the debate over dams.
By the late 1990s, the ground was sufficiently fertile that calls by a network of NGOs and social movements for a global commission took seed. During a World Bank-convened meeting attended by NGOs, construction companies, and a few water ministries, the assembled group of stakeholders endorsed the idea of an independent commission. (7) The politics behind the agreement was illustrative of the situation at the time: governments were not paying particularly close attention, the dams industry saw declining confidence in their product and hoped a commission would restore its credibility, and the World Bank was simply too bruised by a decade of bashing over large dams to defend its own credibility. By contrast, civil society organizations had coalesced into a well-knit International Committee on Dams, Rivers and People (ICDRP) to coordinate their advocacy on dams.
The WCD's mandate was to "review the development effectiveness of large dams" and "to develop internationally acceptable criteria, guidelines and standards" for dams. (8) It was composed of twelve commissioners, selected to bring expertise and integrity and to represent diverse perspectives in the debate; a consultative group or "forum" consisting of sixty-eight stakeholders, intended to be a sounding board for the commission; and a professional secretariat to assist the commission with its work. The commission reached its conclusions through a process of research and deliberation over two years consisting of public hearings, studies of dams and related themes, a sample survey of dams, and open submissions by the general public.
The final report of the WCD laid out a complex framework for decisionmaking around dams, emphasizing procedural safeguards in the decisionmaking process. It also embedded decisions about dams, typically seen as an issue of economic infrastructure, within a larger human rights framing. The report was controversial. While the activists embraced the findings, industry was more reserved and many developing countries offered serious objections. The extent to which the WCD's recommendations have had an impact on actual dam construction continues to be debated.
As this brief history suggests, a decade and more of civil society organizing at both national and global levels is central to understanding the WCD. In this article, I build on past work on the debate over dams but limit my focus to the WCD's structure, functioning, and impact as an instrument of global governance. I begin, however, with a brief discussion of the role of deliberative processes in global governance.
Understanding Global Deliberation: Toward an Analytical Framework
Global activists see themselves as balancing a perceived "democratic deficit" arising from the transfer of decisionmaking from democratic states to nondemocratic multilateral agencies and private self-regulatory bodies. (9) One approach to doing so, often but not always spurred by global activists, is to create "non-hierarchical modes of...
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