In his article ‘Global Democracy: In the Beginning’[1], Professor Robert Goodin presents basis for optimism regarding the future by looking to experiences of the past. He argues that democracy at a world stage might be attained some time in the future, in a similar way to which it succeeded at a national level departing from the Magna Carta (or ‘Great Charter’) of 1215 in medieval England[2], signed ‘in the meadow which is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June, in the seventeenth year of our reign’ and continuing several centuries later with the Declaration (or ‘Bill’) of Rights in 1689[3].
A very important principle was given expression to in the Carta Magna. Nobody (not even the king, at that time John ‘The Lackland’, son of Henry II, ‘Curtmantle’), was above the law. Even the sovereign had to rule under the law. That principle was made concrete, operative, in the Bill of Rights, which among other things required the ruler to give reasons of what he or she had done. The first document aimed at impartiality, the second one at accountability, in government (Goodin, 2008, pp. 7-8).
An analogy could be set between 1215 and 1945 when the United Nations began to exist[4] with the underlying idea to set limits to the superpowers of the time. The world might be walking towards global democracy, towards a ‘world bill or rights’, even if that takes some time. Goodin points out that democratising domestic (national) political institutions (for example the monarchy), even in a very limited manner, set in motion an irreversible process that, in time, expanded democracy from – in that case of the United Kingdom – a few barons in the Middle Ages to everyone today. Global political institutions, like the UN, even though imperfect and sometimes weak in the eyes of many, if democratised, could become even stronger, like in the case of kings and parliaments. That has already happened to a certain extent in the transformation of the GATT to the WTO (Goodin, 2008, pp. 25-26).
[1] Goodin, Robert E. “Global Democracy: In the Beginning”. Aboa Centre for Economics. Discussion Paper No. 30. Turku
[2] English Translation of the original text available at: http://www.constitution.org/eng/magnacar.htm (accessed 23 Jan 09).
[3] Which formal name was: An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown. Available at: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp (accessed 23 Jan 09).
[4] On the 24 October. The United Nations. Available at: http://www.un.org/spanish/aboutun/history/unhistory/ (accessed 23 Jan 09).