Globalization and Governance: The Prospects for Democracy

The contours of public law are changing rapidly, and judges, practitioners, and academic writers are anxiously seeking a guide to the new frontiers. Reference has been made by some American observers to the “profound changes brought about by deregulation, commercialization, corporatization, public sector downsizing, privatization and globalization.” At the same time, the courts in many jurisdictions are revising the language as well as the substance of the changing law, often by reference to developments in other countries, and there is renewed concern about the prospects for democracy in a climate of globalization, with issues of democratic governance unsurprisingly achieving prominence in public international law as well as in national law. Democracy “used to be a word that international commentators preferred to avoid,” and it is a term that has often invited skepticism or embarrassment in domestic law. In writing on “The Democratic Character of Judicial Review” Eugene Rostow commented that democracy “is a slippery term,” and it is doubtless wise to avoid a firm definition. The existence of a free, democratic system of government creates, in the words of Ivor Jennings, “an atmosphere of freedom which is more easily felt than analyzed,” and it is possible to speak of parliamentary institutions, of second chambers, of free elections, of fair