DEMOCRATISATION

DEMOCRATISATION

Despite the doubling of the number of multi-party democracies since the 1980s, formal liberal democracies everywhere are in crisis. Social fragmentation and the rise of communal politics suggest the need for a more pluralistic approach to political representation. At the same time, increasing citizen demands for greater transparency and accountability in governance - as well as explicit examples of revolt against neo-liberal transformation of the state and economy and the rise of corporate power - point to a desire for a more substantive form of democracy being expressed both at the local level, as well as at regional and global levels. New information technologies are proving a boon in connecting movements internationally, publicising struggles and mobilising solidarity. Globalisation is both the context for these new struggles, and the condition for the newly emerging international civil society.

TNI's Programme on New Politics is concerned with how to achieve substantive democracy and participatory development in the context of current trends of globalisation. The aim is to stimulate innovative thinking on participatory governance, the future of states and political parties, and the role of coalitions of social organisations operating from local to global levels in forging new democratic politics and policies.

The programme has three working groups:

• Real-world experiences and prospects of empowered participatory governance. This working group is analysing the current trend towards democratic and participatory politics pushed by progressive parties and movements around the world. It is reviewing existing, emerging and past experiences (both successful and failed) of progressive and participatory governance developed by left-wing organisations around the world, such as the cases of participatory budgeting in Brazil or democratic decentralisation in Kerala, India. The debates within this group will be linked to other similar projects developed in recent years, such as the Real Utopias initiative promoted by the Havens Center at the University of Wisconsin, USA.
  For more information, contact Daniel Chavez.
• New political thinking. This group is analysing the current situation of the left across regions and the ideological debates taking place in different social, cultural and political contexts. The group does not intend to develop a whole new paradigm for the left. Instead, it will propose a new agenda for international ideological debate and will promote both the exchange of political thinking across regions and language barriers and the production of radical progressive thinking from a plural perspective.
  For more information, contact Hilary Wainwright.
• New forms of political engagement and collective action. This working group deals with the new identity of social movements at different levels of action (local, regional, and global) and the changing relations among movements, NGOs, parties, trade unions and other socio-political actors engaged in national struggles against neo-liberalism and in the global justice movement, more broadly. It is also looking at changing strategies and tactics, victories and defeats.
  For more information, contact Brid Brennan.

GLOBAL ECONOMY

For decades, TNI research and advocacy has been geared to challenging the legitimacy of a system which puts profits before people, serves the interests of elites at the expense of the majority of people, widens the gap between haves and have-nots within and between the North and South, and creates a climate of socio-economic and environmental insecurity with profound consequences for justice, peace, democracy and the viability of the planet. The hegemony of neo-liberalism, however, is finally cracking under the strain of the contradictions it has produced, through dissent from within and organised pressure from a burgeoning transnational movement for global socio-economic justice. Institutions, such as the WTO, World Bank and the IMF, that have served the Washington Consensus so well are now mired deep in a legitimacy crisis. At the same time, the battle is not yet won. The major challenge for activist-scholars now is to help sustain the momentum by translating the vision implicit in the critiques of neo-liberalism into a workable alternative around which a new consensus can be built. This is the goal of TNI's current Global Economic Justice Programme.

Current projects include:

• The World Trade Organisation and the threat to equitable public service provision. An ongoing project to fill the gap in public information regarding the WTO, to demystify trade and investment liberalistion issues for ordinary people, and to support peasant, small farmer, small business, worker, consumer, environmental and other citizen movements in challenging the exclusive right of big business to shape the global economy in their own interest. A particular focus of the project now, being jointly undertaken by TNI with the Corporate Europe Observatory in Amsterdam, is the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and its implications for the equitable provision of public services, including childcare, education, health, libraries, musea.
  For further information please see GATSwatch.org or contact Erik Wesselius
• Energy and Development. The Energy Project is a global association of progressive NGOs and civic coalitions from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. TNI assumed the co-ordination of the project in 1999, and the network has focused since on research and advocacy activities on areas such as the liberalisation (deregulation and privatisation) of energy and related services; the role of multilateral development banks (MDBs), states and large multinational corporations in power sector restructuring worldwide; and the political and social implications of global negotiations on energy and climate change.
  For further information, contact Daniel Chavez.
• Carbon Trade Watch. A new project begun in 2002, Carbon Trade Watch serves as a research and monitoring group producing in-depth information on developments in the carbon economy from an holistic perspective. The aim is to help those working on climate change to better understand the implications and impacts of the emerging markets in emissions trading and related industries. The project also works to raise awareness in the wider globalisation-critical movement, particularly amoung groups working on trade and investment issues. For further information, please contact the CTW collective.
• Sustainable Energy & Economy Network (SEEN). SEEN, a joint project of TNI and the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, was set up in 1996 as a loose network coordinated from Washington DC. Primarily focused on the role of the US, its aim is to shift Global Energy Policy away from non-renewable energy sources (ie. oil, gas, coal) that significantly contribute to global warming and climate change, and towards policies promoting renewable energy (ie. wind, solar) and prioritising the energy needs of the world's 2 billion rural poor people. SEEN has been exposing the bias in the energy policies and practices of international financial institutions, including the World Bank, towards brokering deals for fossil fuel companies, while neglecting the energy needs of the world's poor and continuing to exacerbate the problems of global climate change. SEEN also monitors the role of Export Credit Agencies in underwriting private investments in big fossil fuel projects in the South, and that of big energy corporations such as the recently collapsed ENRON. Another focus of SEEN's current work is the aluminium smeltering sector.
  For further information, see SEEN.org or contact Daphne Wysham.
• Alternative Regionalisms. As the legitimacy crisis of the neo-liberal globalisation project deepens, there is an urgent need for the articulation of clear alternatives. The Alternative Regionalism programme aims to address the question of alternative economic governance from the perspective of social movements within the currently unfolding regional blocs of Latin America, South and Southeast Asia and Southern Africa. As a consortium of activist research organisations rooted in social movements struggling against the effects of neo-liberal globalisation in their regions, the project is in a strong position to help facilitate cross-regional exchanges of alternative proposals already developed on a range of issues from finance for development to sustainable energy sources, and to identify and help fill research and policy gaps.
  For further information, please contact Brid Brennan.
• Asia-Europe Relations: A People's Agenda. The TNI programme "Asia-Europe Relations: The People's Agenda" has been developed in close co-operation with partner organisations in the East and Southeast Asian region. It aims to:
  (a) Provide critical analyses of significant developments in Asia, including the impact of EU policy on the region
  (b) Strengthen people-to-people solidarity between Europe and Asia
  (c) Develop joint advocacy strategies on issues of common concern to constituencies in both regions.
  The programme conducts research and field visits; organises conferences and seminars; and co-ordinates advocacy and lobby initiatives in both Europe and Asia on a range of issues from human rights and democratisation to disarmament and development. It also publishes articles, briefing papers and books, as well as maintaining a regular e-mail information service, ASEM Watch, which monitors the inter-governmental Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) process, and is available online.
  For further information, please contact Brid Brennan or Pietje Vervest.
• Towards Water Justice. After a decade of sweeping privatisation of drinking water supply around the world, there are now signs that the tide is turning. Local and international opposition is growing rapidly as it becomes increasingly apparent that private water corporations systematically fail to provide clean and affordable drinking water to the world's poorest. As traditional public systems frequently also do not function well, there is an urgent need to further explore the potential of alternative models. This joint project of TNI and the Corporate Europe Observatory was launched at the Kyoto Water Forum in March 2003. It seeks to highlight the role of European transnational corporations in the water privatisation experiences of the South and to showcase alternative water management models.
  For further information, please see Water Justice.org or contact Satoko Kishimoto or Pietje Vervest.

PEACE & SECURITY

TNI's Peace & Security Programme challenges conventional militaristic and nuclear approaches to security. TNI advocates broadening conceptions of security to encompass civilian rather than solely state or geo-political notions of security, and working within a paradigm where state, military or market-driven agendas are replaced with a comprehensive human security framework. This entails addressing such destabilising realities as socio-economic disparities and marginalisation; political exclusion and repression; environmental degradation; forced displacement of people due to large-scale 'development' projects, the War on Drugs; natural resource exploitation by major corporations; and the forced migration that necessarily results from such conditions.

The majority of contemporary conflicts are characterised as being more about resources than ideologies, more about destroying or displacing people than about winning the hearts and minds of people. In some 'fragile states', war has served as a functional way of integrating and organising people for exclusive ends. The result has been a massive increase in the number of civilian casualties, refugees and displaced people, and a marked growth in illegal economies in conflict-ridden areas, including the trafficking of drugs, arms, natural resources and people desperate to migrate to places they hope can offer a better life. Indeed, many contemporary wars have become illegal businesses in themselves. The solution to such internal civil conflicts, TNI believes, does not lie in traditional militarist approaches to achieving peace and security, but in addressing the socio-economic root causes of the conflicts and strengthening democratic institutions.

Current projects include:

• Failed States. A joint project of TNI, Centro de Investigacion para la Paz (CIP, Madrid), Instituto de Estudios Sobre conflictos y Accion Humanitaria (IECAH, Madrid) and the Centre for Social Studies (Lisbon).
  This project is studying failed or failing states in the context of the fundamental shift in global relations that has occurred since the end of the Cold War. Unlike most other studies in this field, this project looks to explain state failure not just in terms of endogenous factors but also in terms of the impact of international factors and context. Furthermore, it looks at the effect of failed states internationally. The project challenges the idea that failed states can be technically rehabilitated without a reshaping of the international system of governance itself. Collaborators are drawn from the African Studies Centre at Leiden University, The Netherlands; the Department of International Relations at Coimbra University, Portugal and the Centre for Peace Studies in Madrid and the Transnational Institute.
  For more information, contact Mariano Aguirre or David Sogge.
• Globalisation & Militarisation. There is a growing awareness that too little attention has been paid to the links between globalisation and war, between neo-liberal economics and the escalation of armed conflicts around the world, between failed economics and 'failed states'. We are starting to see the linkages being made across the peace and global justice movements, particularly in the current context of the war in Iraq. Another recent example includes protests emanating from the peace movement about the role of Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) in underwriting arms sales to conflict-ridden countries, whereas ECAs were previously a focus of attention for those more associated with the global justice movement, particularly environmental activists concerned with subsidies for fossil fuel production and the impact on climate change. Similarly, in the intellectual sphere, the dividing lines between the studies of politics/war and economy/globalisation are blurring. This pilot project aims to map and further explore the linkages, both at the level of peace and socio-economic justice movements, and between these movements and concerned researchers looking at the linkages theoretically and empirically with a view to policy alternatives.
  For more information, contact Wilbert van der Zeijden.

SHADOW ECONOMIES

TNI's Shadow Economy programme looks at the underbelly of globalisation. On the one hand, the illicit survival economies of many parts of the marginalised South and, on the other, the ways in which organised crime profits both from the operational and business opportunities which new technologies, deregulation and privatisation opens up, as well the new reservoirs of desperately poor people which globalisation is generating.

Projects falling under this broad area include:

• Drugs and Democracy Programme. The aim of TNI's Drugs & Democracy programme is to achieve, at all political levels, a reassessment of the conventional prohibitive and repressive drug policy approaches, replacing them with policies and operational directives based on principles consistent with a commitment to harm reduction, fair trade, development, democracy, human rights and conflict prevention. Since 1996, the Drugs & Democracy programme has analysed trends in and the socio-economic impact of the illicit drugs economy and present counter-drug policies. Its work is divided into the following key areas:
• International drugs policy. The aim is to move international drug control away from the unrealistic deadline thinking in which it has become entrapped. UN member states are being encouraged to urgently re-assess current anti-drug policies and challenge the wisdom of the UN drug conventions framework. In particular the unrealistic goal, "...to develop strategies with a view to eliminating or significantly reducing the illicit cultivation of the coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy by the year 2008" contained in the political declaration of the 1998 UNGASS, should be revised. TNI urges the application of the concept of Harm Reduction as the basis for a rational and pragmatic drug policy. This concept has been applied successfully in many countries, especially in Europe, but till now only on the consumption side of the drug chain.
• Drugs and Conflict. A major focus of this work is a joint project on the drugs factor as a catalyst of armed conflicts in Colombia, undertaken with Acción Andina Colombia. Working with peasant communities in Colombia, a proposal for an alternative drugs policy that could enhance prospects for a negotiated peace is being developed with the communities concerned. The project takes up the issue of chemical aerial fumigations and the damage this causes to food and other licit crops, people's health and the environment. It evaluates crop-substitution programmes and the eradication pacts between coca growing farmers and the Colombian government, both doomed by the constant threat of fumigations. TNI argues that "alternative development" programmes are unlikely to succeed unless there is a reconceptualisation of the strategy - delinking alternative development from the threat of forced eradication and law enforcement, and guaranteeing peasants the support required for a sustainable alternative future. TNI also closely monitors the 'post-Panama' restructuring of the US military anti-drugs infrastructure in Latin America and the establishment of Forward Operating Locations in Ecuador, El Salvador and Aruba/Curaçao.

Furthermore, the project has been drawing attention to the need to take account in post-war reconstruction of the importance of the opium economy to Afghanistan and is looking to bringing together peasants, NGOs and policy-makers from Afghanistan, Colombia and Burma to discuss issues of drugs and conflict.
For more information, contact Martin Jelsma.

• Organised Crime. Picking up from what the Human Development Report of 1999 described as the "virulent synergy between globalisation and organised crime", this pilot project aims to examine how criminal networks are able to profit from both ends of the negative effects of the globalisation process. Crime syndicates use the opportunities of new technologies and deregulation, as well as the negative effects of globalisation that force people to "migrate into illegality": peasant farmer communities in the Andes and Central and South-East Asia depending on coca bush and opium poppy cultivation to survive; the slums of major Brazilian cities taken over by violent and competing drug gangs replacing state authority; an army of impoverished drug couriers carrying drugs to the consumer markets in the North, etc. Such "migration into illegality" is the poor's strategy for survival as globalisation pushes them out of formal economic and social structures. They often come to serve as the reservoir from which transnational organised crime can draw and flourish. Initial research will focus on the functioning of the illicit drugs economy across the commodity chain, including a new estimate of the extent of the global industry, its significance as a survival economy and its potential for financial distortions. It is hoped that this project will yield tools useful for looking at other illicit industries, such as the trafficking of people.
  For more information, contact Tom Blickman.