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Global Democratization, eighth in a ten-part series on Global Constructs

© Donna L. Quesinberry

Global Democratization-increasingly, through formal and informal email, is assisting relationships in transcending national frontiers. Universal email in the United States with abundant international connections is helping spread seeds of democracy to nondemocratic lands. Global democratization is important to the future of democracy in America. According to scholars such as Samuel P. Huntington (1984) and Charles S. Maier (1994), the prospects for democracy in the United States are inexorably linked to the state of democracy worldwide and the national commitment to global democratization.

It's an interesting and surprising fact of the modern world that liberal democracy has become the single most accepted model for organizing and controlling state powers. Democracy has been consolidated (albeit in significantly impaired versions) in North America, Western Europe, Australia, large parts of Latin America, and in important parts of Asia. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the governments formed in the aftermath of Communism have committed themselves, with varying degrees of sincerity, to the establishment of liberal democratic institutions. Even in South Africa, the two sides of bitterly contested racial divides have agreed on the desirability of liberal democracy as the most appropriate means for constituting political power and resolving conflict.

It may be hypothesized that people in less democratic nations will use Internet newsgroups as a "safe" form of political discussion and perhaps protest. Nationals of these countries will potentially use newsgroups to discuss politics in nations where they couldn't otherwise do so. Currently, there are over 150 newsgroups devoted to individual nations, or one newsgroup for almost every country on the planet. Therefore, sources of grassroot democracy have pundits never before imagined and one would desire to find evidence of the positive email political impact outside of the United States. It can be said that newsgroups devoted to countries with lower levels of democratization have a much higher content of anti-government messages than the newsgroups about nations that are more democratic.

This will remain a topic of interest in the future as it is further researched. Works cited:

Life After Capitalism

World Social Forum India

National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights

National Unions of Students in Europe

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