DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND POWER IN GLOBAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS

The author starts the article with a discussion of the ideas of deliberation and deliberative democracy in general and then presents some impressions and findings of the ongoing comparative research project on global justice movements. The research tries to answer two main questions: "How do (attempts to) deliberation, participation and decision-making look like in different kinds of groups, different countries (and probably at different levels - from the local to the international)?" and "What factors influence and restrict deliberate/participatory practices?". The presented empirical investigation is mainly based on a semi-structured and full-structured participant observation, complemented by informal interviews in the local and regional groups in six countries and a number of transnational meetings of networks and political campaigns for global justice. The author concludes that global justice groups, though generally putting much emphasis reducing what they perceive as illegitimate forms of power within their own ranks and to deliberate as much as possible, do exhibit quite a number of aberrations from this ideal. Still, the author points out that deliberation, at least at the level of small-scale groups, is not just a dream but actually occurs, and that the majority of these groups are more successful in reducing in their internal communication "hard" power and enabling deliberation than most trade unions, political parties, and big NGOs.