ABSTRACT

Anthropomorphic impacts on the world’s ecology are not being managed; the global governance of military power is dysfunctional; and the massive imbalance in control of wealth is not even on the global agenda. After the military-economic-ethnic catastrophes of World War I and World War II, a plan was put in place to address the governance failures of the day. Today’s governance failures invite a similar response.

Contemporary multistakeholderism, no matter how it is practiced, rests on some highly risky non-democratic features. In addition to the challenges to democracy from multistakeholderism, multistakeholderism has sidestepped a number of crucial governance issues: peace and security matters, global financing, and the instability of a volunteer-based governance system.

The chapter concludes with three possible recommendations for the next phase of democratic global governance: a revamped system of multilateralism, a system based around the four sources of power today, and a system that returns the individual and citizen to the central place in governance.