Time for Democracy 2.0? The Launch of the Manifesto For A Global Democracy

After decades of democratization across Eastern Europe and Latin America and now the democratic elections taking place in countries like Egypt and Libya in the wake of the Arab Spring revolutions – one could be forgiven for thinking that the world is fast becoming a remarkably democratic place.

Sadly, however, this is not the case. Democracy may have grown in form, yet it is retracting in substance. Citizens of many countries have fought so hard for democracy in its traditional sense of free and fair elections and representative politicians, only to discover that, meanwhile, the world has changed so much that this type of democracy - Democracy 1.0 - no longer makes much sense in the globalized, interconnected, borderless world in which we now live.

As Argentinean writer and former politician Fernando Iglesias recently declared – "everything has gone global except democracy." We have a global marketplace, global communications, global institutions, global risks like climate change, and a global financial crisis.