Global Governance, Trust and Democratic Engagement in Past and Present (GLO)

Lead-PI: Daniel Laqua, Northumbria University

Consortium: Carolyn Biltoft, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies; Daniel Gorman, University of Waterloo; Susan Stokes, University of Chicago

Funders: NSF, SNSF, SSHRC, UKRI

 

Summary:

We live in an era of resurgent populist movements that seek to defend national sovereignty against the perceived threat of ‘globalism’. However, mistrust of the existing or potential mechanisms for global governance is not confined to one particular part of the political spectrum, especially when it comes to questions of representation and legitimacy. If citizens lack trust in international cooperation, it can have wide-ranging implications: it risks undermining cross-border efforts to tackle global challenges, for example humanitarian crises, health inequalities and the climate emergency. This project addresses this urgent contemporary problem from a historical perspective: it traces popular engagement with bodies that sought to regulate or resolve global matters, from the aftermath of the First World War to the early 2000s. By recovering the past relationship between political participation, democracy and international institutions, the project enables us to better understand how we might reimagine global cooperative mechanisms in the present.