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Abstract:The World Social Forum - an open space for international interaction - has brought great opportunities to the development of anti-liberalism social movements within civil society and the discussion of social and political alternatives for global democracy. However, as is argued in this essay, owing to the contradictory nature of this process and certain flaws its organizational structure, negative tendencies are seen to have seriously undermined its mobilizing power of anti-imperialism movements and its culture of openness and diversity as well.
Keywords: Global democracy;Anti-liberalism;Civil society; Global level convergence; Diversity
A New Political Process of Global Democracy - the World Social Forum
The World Social Forum (WSF) is a new social and political phenomenon (Santos, 2004, p.6). As is clarified in its Charter of Principles (consisting of 14 articles referred to as Article 1, Article 2 etc. below), the Forum is not an organization or a movement, nor a world federation, but an undirected space of plurality and autonomy for all anti-liberalism social movements that act within civil society (Article 1&8), where movements and other civil initiatives of many kinds come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for possible actions (Article 1) to transform the existing global order. The Forum does not reach conclusions or produce formal public declarations (Article 5), representing world civil society, as this would undermine the diversity of participants, who would feel bound, in some way, to accept a single position. For the same token, nobody is authorized to express positions on behalf of the Forum (Article 6), even though the Forum functions to facilitate the decisions of the movements and organizations that take part in it.
To gain a better understanding of the opportunities that the Forum brings to the development of anti-liberalism social movements and the alternatives for global democracy, as for the purpose of this essay, I will first examine some distinctive features of the WSF, and then focus on the contradictory nature of this space for global interaction. By discussing the issues related to the structure of this process and its culture of openness and diversity, I will try to make it clear that while the Forum has made possible the discussion of developing 'another world' by building a culture of open debate across conventional geographical and ideological boundaries that has rarely been dreamt of, this new political process of democratization does carry in its nature the internal controversy related to its growth and evolution that give rise to disturbing and negative tendencies such as fragmentation of its organizational design and alienation of minority groups from the decision making process, which could seriously confuse the significance and mobilizing power of this anti-imperialism movement.
A New Stage in the Resistance Against Neo-liberalism
The WSF was originally conceived in 2000 by a committee of Brazilian organizations as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum held annually in Davos, Switzerland (Conway, 2004, p.370), where the world's most powerful business and political figures congregated to discuss global economy. It was this contrast of the world of the global rich with the world of the rest of humanity that gave rise to the very resonant theme of the Forum "Another world is possible" (Bello, 2007). Ever since the first meeting of the WSF in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001, the number of participants in this global forum has constantly increased, from 20,000 people at the inaugural meeting in January 2001 to 155,000 in 2005 (Navaarro & Silva, 2007, p.13), bringing with them a considerable diversity of issues -from war to globalization to communalism to racism to gender oppression to alternatives - all to be reflected upon from different perspectives on the Forum. In this sense, what makes the WSF different from any other movements in history has been the open space it constructed for global democracy, and the opportunity for world civil society "to recreate and reaffirm solidarity against injustice, against war, and for a world that was not subjected to the rule of empire and capital" (Bello, 2007).
With its success and growth, the WSF is progressively incorporating new subjects, actors, movements and topics (structural adjustment policies on Argentinean Forum, the Middle East conflict on Palestinian Forum and the struggle against violence and war on Colombian Forums, to name a few), manifesting itself in different contexts (the European, Asian, African, and the Hemispherical Forum of the Americans), and has moved geographically (Mumbai, India for the 2004 WSF; Caracas, Venezuela, Bamako, Mali and Karachi, Pakistan for the 2006 WSF; Nairobi, Kenya for the 2007 WSF while the eighth was planned to be organized globally) and thus offered a vivid scene of the convergence of global democratic struggles. Though the polycentric approach of the latest versions of the Forum is criticized by some activists and observers as losing focus of publicity and resources and the momentum to counter the neo-liberal globalisation, others find these regionalized thematic gatherings attractive because they give voice to many previously silenced constituencies and nourish confidence among poorly represented regional groups that other worlds are possible.(www. forumsocial mundial. org.br)
In this respect, it can be argued that the strength of the WSF lies in its capacity to make a heterogeneous group of actors - from across social, cultural, and geographical spectrums - believe in themselves and in the possibility of transforming and reconstructing the world. Through the WSF, ordinary people rediscover their fundamental value as members of the human co-mmunity and as citizens who build societies, cultures, polities, and economies. (Grzybowski, 2006). Everyone experiencing this interactive process for thinking about a different possible world is affected by it - by new questions, new presences, and the possibility provided for generating new democratic political cultures, which in turn feed their democratic imagination. This is the space where new forms of political participation, deliberation and popular power are being produced and where hegemonic regimes of many kinds are being contested by the WSF social movements, claiming for the right to have rights (Conway, 2004, pp.373-374).
Expansion of Contacts and the Tendency of Fragmentation
However, in recent years, with the Forum's geographical expansion and its adoption of a polycentric approach, doubts and criticisms have grown around the functions and the efficacy of the WSF in coordinating with the divergent approaches, theories, strategies and aspirations brought to the Forum by activists and political scientists all over the world. It is observed that whether it is held as a global-level convergence for civil society representatives to reject globalization in its current form or as polycentric regionalized meetings "to accommodate the cultural and political characteristics of the host country" (Conway, 2004, p.372), the WSF carries within itself the tension between the tendency to expand contacts and links between the actors involved in 'transnational opposition' and the tendency towards conflict and fragmentation promoted by the significant diversity of the actors placed into interaction with each other (Navaarro & Silva, 2007, p.10), a dilemma that will undoubtedly dispute the growth of the WSF and limit the scope of alternatives promoted by activists and political scientists on this space.
As many others have pointed out, despite all its other virtues, the Forum has become a place of a thousand events on as many different issues, attended by millions of people with the diverse directions they are coming from and heading towards, but with too few transversal connections, and no real interaction across participating movements and organizations. This structure of fragmentation is closely related to the way the WSF decision making structure functions. From Seattle onwards, the principle has prevailed that decisions are taken in assemblies open to all and on the basis of consensus with the underlying assumption that the WSF is "not a deliberative body or actor that would take political stands and thereby need rigorous decision-making procedures" (Teivainen, 2002, p.626). As is elaborated by Callinicos and Nineham (2007), this method of decision making did have some advantages in the early phase of the Forum's development. Giving everyone a veto helped to build trust in a new coalition involving actors from very different backgr-ounds and it bypassed the problem of deciding how to weigh the votes of different organizations, which would have been raised by a system of delegate democracy. Nevertheless, it is observed that, in the absence of formal structure, informal elites emerge to ensure that the movement actually functions, which would inevitably result in the domination of large organizations as in many European Social Forums, and risk the alienation of minority groups from the decision making process.
The fragmented structure can also be seen in the organization of a series of 'regional' and 'thematic' Forums - the Asian Social Forum, the European Social Forums, the World Social Thematic Forum - on a broad range of issues, ranging from environmental degradation to the plight of indigenous peoples.While it is good to see and understand this flowering as a manifestation of the globalization of the WSF, what undermines the significance of such a space is that each event is taking place in an isolated way, "closed in on themselves, without the non-participating public and the organizers themselves at least being aware of their contents and results (not to say a greater integration between activities and between these and the 'official' part of the WSF)" (Navaarro & Silva, 2007, p.23). The broadening and concentration of the Thematic Spaces created a dynamic opposed to that of initial editions: the dispersion of participants to spaces marked and restricted by specific interests, due to the lack of integration mechanisms for the whole of the activities and themes. Some activists even criticize the Forum as becoming too loose a network with its annual events scattered globally, turning out to be a mere celebration of diversity.
Keywords: Global democracy;Anti-liberalism;Civil society; Global level convergence; Diversity
A New Political Process of Global Democracy - the World Social Forum
The World Social Forum (WSF) is a new social and political phenomenon (Santos, 2004, p.6). As is clarified in its Charter of Principles (consisting of 14 articles referred to as Article 1, Article 2 etc. below), the Forum is not an organization or a movement, nor a world federation, but an undirected space of plurality and autonomy for all anti-liberalism social movements that act within civil society (Article 1&8), where movements and other civil initiatives of many kinds come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for possible actions (Article 1) to transform the existing global order. The Forum does not reach conclusions or produce formal public declarations (Article 5), representing world civil society, as this would undermine the diversity of participants, who would feel bound, in some way, to accept a single position. For the same token, nobody is authorized to express positions on behalf of the Forum (Article 6), even though the Forum functions to facilitate the decisions of the movements and organizations that take part in it.
To gain a better understanding of the opportunities that the Forum brings to the development of anti-liberalism social movements and the alternatives for global democracy, as for the purpose of this essay, I will first examine some distinctive features of the WSF, and then focus on the contradictory nature of this space for global interaction. By discussing the issues related to the structure of this process and its culture of openness and diversity, I will try to make it clear that while the Forum has made possible the discussion of developing 'another world' by building a culture of open debate across conventional geographical and ideological boundaries that has rarely been dreamt of, this new political process of democratization does carry in its nature the internal controversy related to its growth and evolution that give rise to disturbing and negative tendencies such as fragmentation of its organizational design and alienation of minority groups from the decision making process, which could seriously confuse the significance and mobilizing power of this anti-imperialism movement.
A New Stage in the Resistance Against Neo-liberalism
The WSF was originally conceived in 2000 by a committee of Brazilian organizations as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum held annually in Davos, Switzerland (Conway, 2004, p.370), where the world's most powerful business and political figures congregated to discuss global economy. It was this contrast of the world of the global rich with the world of the rest of humanity that gave rise to the very resonant theme of the Forum "Another world is possible" (Bello, 2007). Ever since the first meeting of the WSF in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001, the number of participants in this global forum has constantly increased, from 20,000 people at the inaugural meeting in January 2001 to 155,000 in 2005 (Navaarro & Silva, 2007, p.13), bringing with them a considerable diversity of issues -from war to globalization to communalism to racism to gender oppression to alternatives - all to be reflected upon from different perspectives on the Forum. In this sense, what makes the WSF different from any other movements in history has been the open space it constructed for global democracy, and the opportunity for world civil society "to recreate and reaffirm solidarity against injustice, against war, and for a world that was not subjected to the rule of empire and capital" (Bello, 2007).
With its success and growth, the WSF is progressively incorporating new subjects, actors, movements and topics (structural adjustment policies on Argentinean Forum, the Middle East conflict on Palestinian Forum and the struggle against violence and war on Colombian Forums, to name a few), manifesting itself in different contexts (the European, Asian, African, and the Hemispherical Forum of the Americans), and has moved geographically (Mumbai, India for the 2004 WSF; Caracas, Venezuela, Bamako, Mali and Karachi, Pakistan for the 2006 WSF; Nairobi, Kenya for the 2007 WSF while the eighth was planned to be organized globally) and thus offered a vivid scene of the convergence of global democratic struggles. Though the polycentric approach of the latest versions of the Forum is criticized by some activists and observers as losing focus of publicity and resources and the momentum to counter the neo-liberal globalisation, others find these regionalized thematic gatherings attractive because they give voice to many previously silenced constituencies and nourish confidence among poorly represented regional groups that other worlds are possible.(www. forumsocial mundial. org.br)
In this respect, it can be argued that the strength of the WSF lies in its capacity to make a heterogeneous group of actors - from across social, cultural, and geographical spectrums - believe in themselves and in the possibility of transforming and reconstructing the world. Through the WSF, ordinary people rediscover their fundamental value as members of the human co-mmunity and as citizens who build societies, cultures, polities, and economies. (Grzybowski, 2006). Everyone experiencing this interactive process for thinking about a different possible world is affected by it - by new questions, new presences, and the possibility provided for generating new democratic political cultures, which in turn feed their democratic imagination. This is the space where new forms of political participation, deliberation and popular power are being produced and where hegemonic regimes of many kinds are being contested by the WSF social movements, claiming for the right to have rights (Conway, 2004, pp.373-374).
Expansion of Contacts and the Tendency of Fragmentation
However, in recent years, with the Forum's geographical expansion and its adoption of a polycentric approach, doubts and criticisms have grown around the functions and the efficacy of the WSF in coordinating with the divergent approaches, theories, strategies and aspirations brought to the Forum by activists and political scientists all over the world. It is observed that whether it is held as a global-level convergence for civil society representatives to reject globalization in its current form or as polycentric regionalized meetings "to accommodate the cultural and political characteristics of the host country" (Conway, 2004, p.372), the WSF carries within itself the tension between the tendency to expand contacts and links between the actors involved in 'transnational opposition' and the tendency towards conflict and fragmentation promoted by the significant diversity of the actors placed into interaction with each other (Navaarro & Silva, 2007, p.10), a dilemma that will undoubtedly dispute the growth of the WSF and limit the scope of alternatives promoted by activists and political scientists on this space.
As many others have pointed out, despite all its other virtues, the Forum has become a place of a thousand events on as many different issues, attended by millions of people with the diverse directions they are coming from and heading towards, but with too few transversal connections, and no real interaction across participating movements and organizations. This structure of fragmentation is closely related to the way the WSF decision making structure functions. From Seattle onwards, the principle has prevailed that decisions are taken in assemblies open to all and on the basis of consensus with the underlying assumption that the WSF is "not a deliberative body or actor that would take political stands and thereby need rigorous decision-making procedures" (Teivainen, 2002, p.626). As is elaborated by Callinicos and Nineham (2007), this method of decision making did have some advantages in the early phase of the Forum's development. Giving everyone a veto helped to build trust in a new coalition involving actors from very different backgr-ounds and it bypassed the problem of deciding how to weigh the votes of different organizations, which would have been raised by a system of delegate democracy. Nevertheless, it is observed that, in the absence of formal structure, informal elites emerge to ensure that the movement actually functions, which would inevitably result in the domination of large organizations as in many European Social Forums, and risk the alienation of minority groups from the decision making process.
The fragmented structure can also be seen in the organization of a series of 'regional' and 'thematic' Forums - the Asian Social Forum, the European Social Forums, the World Social Thematic Forum - on a broad range of issues, ranging from environmental degradation to the plight of indigenous peoples.While it is good to see and understand this flowering as a manifestation of the globalization of the WSF, what undermines the significance of such a space is that each event is taking place in an isolated way, "closed in on themselves, without the non-participating public and the organizers themselves at least being aware of their contents and results (not to say a greater integration between activities and between these and the 'official' part of the WSF)" (Navaarro & Silva, 2007, p.23). The broadening and concentration of the Thematic Spaces created a dynamic opposed to that of initial editions: the dispersion of participants to spaces marked and restricted by specific interests, due to the lack of integration mechanisms for the whole of the activities and themes. Some activists even criticize the Forum as becoming too loose a network with its annual events scattered globally, turning out to be a mere celebration of diversity.