Basic question about democracy today is as to how established democracies around the globe are changing under the conditions of globalization of politics? If the 50 states of the Union (USA) lived pleasantly together under a federal constitution and if the forever fighting Europeans could unite in the European Union, what are the rea- sons that the family of all nations of the world can’t do the same? And how can democratic deficits be ameliorated horizontally (in democratic countries) and vertically (in Supra-national regimes). The alternative to the existing world order can only emerge as a result of a new human dimension of reawakening and progress. We envision a revolution of the mind, and new ways of thinking.
The use of force has been disastrous in the 20th and in early 21st centuries and should no longer be an instrument of global politics. The chaos we have seen through- out the 20th century that led to the deaths of approximately 125 million people during that period and ongoing wars and the consequences of wars thus far in the 21st century. The system of sovereign nation- states has promoted nothing but division and falsehood among human beings but from the stand- point of evolution of civilization, the road lies only through genuine and global democracy. Let us think together what we should do to democratize democracy locally and globally in the rest of 21st century.
Globalization, Global Governance and Democracy
We will explore here the ways we can deal with today’s multifaceted global crisis through 21st Century Democratic Renaissance. The insights clearly articulated by many thinkers (Alexis de Tocqueville, Robert Putnam, Jürgen Habermas, Errol E. Harris, Glen Martin, Fatullah Gulen and others) have created substantial theoretical underpinnings for genuine democracy in the light of a more sophisticated 21st century understanding of the human condition. At the heart of their under- standing, as we see is the insight that democracy requires a genuine “public space” where persons can transcend their partisanship, special interests, and individual particularities and engage in communicative discussions that, on some level, transform the participants and allows a higher perspective ever more closely representing the com- mon good of the whole humanity.
In the aftermath of the demise of the Soviet Empire when democratic revolutions swept across Eastern Europe, there were indeed considerable media and scholarly discussions about a new world order and the relationship between strong civil societies and democracy.1 The role of civil society movements at the time, especially in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, were viewed as central to the story on how these former authoritarian regimes were overthrown allowing for a smooth transition to democracy. The literature on this theme. expanded exponentially after the fall of the Berlin Wall including in the area of Middle East studies.2
The writers including Alexis de Tocqueville, Robert Putnam and Jürgen Habermas who have written insightfully and influentially on the subject of strong civil societies and genuine democracy will be dis- cussed briefly here. Finally, we will discuss the precise democratic resurrection including civic contributions the Hizmet movement has been making globally in the public sphere and to the recent process of democratic consolidation locally in Turkey through on-going civic society transformation.
Alexis de Tocqueville was the first to systematically discuss the link between civil society and democracy in his classic book, Democracy in America; he noted that it was America’s propensity for civic associations that most impressed him in the 1830s as the key to their unprecedented ability to make democracy work.3
Likewise, two popular books by Robert Putnam highlighted the link between civil society, social trust, social capital and democracy. In Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy4 where Putmam studied community-based organizations and their effects on the functioning of democracy on a regional and national level. He focused his attention to the importance of civic society communities and their ability to inculcate in their members a sense of civic duty and social trust which consequently lead to a vibrant democracy. In even a more popular book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,5 Putnam draws our attention to the long American tradition of civic engagement, of voluntarism and group activity which he lamented as a passing social phenomenon that was affecting the quality of American democracy in the late 20th century. According to Putnam, “Systematic inquiry revealed that the quality of governance was determined by longstanding traditions of civic engagement (or its absence). Voter turnout, newspaper readership, membership in choral societies and football clubs – these were the hallmarks of a successful region. In fact historical analysis suggested that these networks of organized reciprocity and civic solidarity, far from being an epiphenomenon of socioeconomic modernization, were a precondition for it.” He noted further, “life is easier in a community blessed with substantial stock of social capital. In the first place, networks of civic engagement foster sturdy norms of generalized reciprocity and encourage the emergence of social trust. Such networks facilitate coordination and communication, amplify reputations, and thus allow dilemmas of collective action to be resolved. When economic and political negotiation is embedded in dense net- works of social interaction, incentives for opportunism are reduced….Finally, dense networks of interaction probably broaden the participants sense of self developing the ‘I’ into the ‘we’ or (in the language of rational choice theorists) enhancing the participants’ ‘taste’ for collective benefits.6
Habermas also puts great confidence in the ‘common mind’ operating in what he called the public sphere. ‘Public sphere’ is under- stood to be the arena in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk7. In this context ‘talking’ is the key to dialogue.
Habermas criticizes ‘representative democracy’ for failing to provide sufficient political participation for the common mind, so that people are not satisfied that their representatives are in fact representing their interests properly. This failure of political participation seems to him to be one of the leading reasons for disunity and conflicts between groups in the modern world. In this regard the public sphere mediates between the private sphere of individual citizens and the ‘sphere of public Authority8, corresponding to governments or ruling elite.
In short, a wide number of influential thinkers from Alexis de Tocqueville in the early 19th century to Robert Putnam in the late 20th century to Habermas and Gulen presently in the 21st century thus far have documented the link between vibrant civil societies, the cultivation of social capital and social trust and how these processes can engender and strengthen the quality of democratic governance leading to both political and economic prosperity – locally and globally
Alexis de Tocqueville, Robert Putnam and Habermas’ approach to societal problem solving and their theoretical concept of ‘the public – sphere’ is thus a very useful way to explain Fetullah Gulen thought and the activities of the Hizmet Movement and what the movement has achieved practically on the ground. Its affiliated organizations are contributing, in the different segments of the public space in which they operate, to the well-being of society by enabling and increasing awareness of issues of concern. and encouraging people on different sides of the issue to meet and talk and look for solutions to those issues in a responsible, civil, collaborative spirit. All of these activities improve the quality of political participation in society and invigorate the processes of informed, responsible and genuine democracy.
Comparing with the above positive democratic tradition and evolving process, we can point out here regarding an analysis of the tradition that has attempted to subvert the legitimacy of democracy throughout the 20th Century West. Beginning with the Nazi legal theorist, Carl Schmidt (1888-1985), we can see the flaws in the thought of the entire anti-democratic tradition that Schmidt influenced: Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), Wilfred Pareto (1848-1923), Freidrich von Hayek (1899-1992), Hans Morgenthau (1904 1980), and Benjamin Barber (born 1939). We can further see the relationship between the flawed thinking of this tradition and the work of Leo Strauss (Leo-con 1899-1973), and the darlingalum of today’s Neoconservatives, especially Milton Friedman (1912 – 2006), who for well over the past decade have wrecked such havoc in Washington DC and the Western world and the ongoing chaos and wars even to this day. We also can certainly point out to the necessary historical background for under- standing the criticism of the work of Strauss’ follower Milton Friedman offered in Naomi Klein’s recent book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.”9
While in the mid-1970s over two-thirds of all nation states were reasonably authoritarian; these numbers have fallen dramatically by now. The number of democracies despite the democratic deficits has been growing steadily – if we understand democracy as a formal structure of a political community where free elections can be held and a minimum standard of political rights is still respected.10 Some neo-conservative political gurus, such as Francis Fukuyama, even had proclaimed after the crisis of 1989/90, the “triumph of liberal democracy,” and along with the “end of history” (Fukuyama 1992).11
As a political and governing sys- tem, democracy is at present the only alternative left in the world. However, we must understand that democracy in its current shape is not an ideal that has been reached but a method and an ongoing process that is being continually developed, revised and improved. Democracy is a system that varies according to the place and circumstances in which it is practiced. 12
The era of 1990s can also be seen as the time United Nations (UN) of important efforts and conferences, where many people participated – not only members of government came together to deliberate about ecological problems, peace, world-wide poverty or questions of gender and human nights without expected outcomes The United Nations emerged as a forum for new forms of global management and order — meaning glob-al politics which deals with global problems that go beyond the borders of nation states and affect people all over the globe. The process of globalization has kicked off a change in the nation state. This process is based above all on the globalization of trade and financial transactions as well as the new phenomena of modern communication networks and information technology. For a while in the 1990s, commentators were talking about really the end of the nation state or a “post-national constellation” (Habermas 1998).13 others have analyzed the new function or role of the state: thus the concept of some kind of needed global order has to emerge. There is an urgent necessity for a world federal process with civic engagement and including a world constitution as the rational, effective, secure and lawful means by which the people and nations of the world can eventually ensure true and enduring global democracy.
This means turning away from forms of policy-making and traditional top-down approaches to an appropriate bottom-up global governance. Some thinkers have used the term global governance to denote the regulation of interdependent relations in the absence of an overarching political authority or world government (Rosenau, Czempiel 1992)14 while others have proposed federal constitutional world government15 Global governance in general is used to signify the transformation of politics from a hierarchical, state-based order to dynamic, multi-level networks. The term points towards the emerging structure of an international system beyond Westphalia. (The term Westphalian order refers to the establishing of nation states in Europe. It characterizes a system of sovereignty of states, legal equality of states and non-intervention in the internal affairs of one state by another, as originally embodied in the Peace pact of Westphalia, 1648). The new architecture of institutions,’ rules’ and procedures as well as the cooperation between governmental and non-governmental actors on an international level indicates a new and desperately needed mode of global political and social order.
The Democratic Deficits & Global Governance
In the context of globalization, democracies even at national level have to deal with various problems. There are already crises of representative democracy as period of “post-democracy” according to some has arrived. All this relates to a political process in which elections are held, but where election campaigns are becoming nothing more than huge spectacles where competing teams and lobbies control the public debate and influence the outcomes by means of their campaigns. We can also observe a loss of public confidence in political representatives. No one really knows who is responsible for specific political decisions and where the center of authority really lies. It is not clear what role the national parliaments still have. Are they a place of proper political debates and deliberation or just a place where decisions are rubber stamped? Democracy seems to be located nowhere. As a result we are faced with serious problems of how to politically organize our societies. The global change of politics indicates democratic deficits not only on a domestic but also on a global level. These challenges of democracy in a globalizing world can be summarized as follows:
(a) The globalization of politics
With the globalization of politics and the accompanying change in the nation state, democratic institutions and the democratic processes are changing dramatically and for the worse. Democracy is no longer located within the borders of a single nation state. In a complex interconnected world the idea of democracy can no longer be simply defended as an idea attributable to a particular closed political community or nation state. Deliberative and decision making centers go beyond national borders. The globalization of politics has seen a shift in decision making onto an international level, and the associated loss of democratic control in the traditional democratic institutions such as parliaments.
(b) The Informality of politics
As a result of all this, the new types of policy making are mostly informal and unclear. New networks and actors are often not linked with the official representative bodies. Policy making is increasingly influenced by private interests and has lost its public and civic character and interests. The decision making process is not transparent and lacks legitimacy. Some people still think of global governance as global government, because the domestic analogy is so familiar but there is still absence of ratification of global federal constitution and law. Because on a global level thus far there exist neither a legal authority of power, nor democratic institutions which would be able to control a world governn1e’nt. Even the European Union, which is based on the institutionalization of a regional specific political system, cannot be compared with the constitutional structures of a nation state.
Whether the particular political sys-tem of the EU can be seen as a sys-tem of governance remains a controversial subject. Some say the institutional framework of the EU is closer to the model of network governance than to the classical federal and constitutional model of government (Benz 2004, 125ff.).16 Globally, democracy requires public sphere (demos) which do not yet exist on a global level — a public sphere (demos) in whose name governance could take place. Therefore, democratic world government beyond the nation state faces serious problems still.
In increasingly globalizing and interconnected world nation states have depended more and more on the decisions of international organizations and agreements. New forms of political organization and regulations have emerged as a result of the growing interaction of foreign and -domestic policy and the desire of most states for suit-able forms of international governance and regulation to deal with collective policy problems.
In order to solve these problems, thinkers of global governance look for new actors within a global civil society. These are IGOs (World Bank, IMF and WTO) who are unable to constitute a transnational public sphere where policy-makers are induced to give reasons for their options and where deliberation can take place. They are not the source of legitimacy and counteractive power. The main problem of transnational or global governance concerns the lack of congruence between those who are being governed and those to whom the governing bodies are accountable to. Mechanisms to enhance democratic legitimacy cannot simply be trans-posed from the domestic level onto the international level. SMOs, how-ever are exception to other actors, SMOS being civic actors and apolitical. A brief overview of the function of these new political actors including IGOS, NGOS and SMOS will illustrate some problems and some proposed solutions of democracy on a global level:
1. States continue to be key actors in world politics, although it is no longer reasonable to think of world politics simply as politics among states. New versions of multinational and multilateral politics have emerged, and with them varying processes and styles of collective decision making now exists. The UN, which is unable and weak in many respects, while other international organizations (IGOS) are very powerful. The organizations like the World Bank, IMF and WTO that at the very first glance have only economic functions and self-interests. In fact they all have become very powerful political players strongly influencing global politics. Many states have a privileged position and economic power in IGOS (World Bank, IMF and WTO) because privileged states founded them, constitute their membership, monopolize voting rights, and provide financial support. Of course, states cannot monopolize all the institutions of global governance, but certain states are very powerful and still go on having monopoly. For example: although the Article 1 of the UN Charter says that the people of the world should hold the democratic sovereignty, the national e states and governments control e the agreements and make the important decisions.
Worse than the UN voting system is the distribution of power in IGOS such as the WTO or the IMF. These IGOS depend on the power of the highly industrialized countries of the global north which have the majority of votes. Although international governmental organizations are based on national governments, they have developed their own administrative control systems and therefore a life of their own. As well as the nation states they serve as key actors or agents in global governance, and they have the power to induce states to act. Some individuals such as the president of the World Bank and the executive director of the IMF form powerful global elite.
2- NGOS (Non-governmental organizations) come in many differ- forms. The NGOs grew since the 1990s and some of them have been a major factor in their involvement at all levels nationally and internationally. The majority of them have informal links to large international organizations like human rights or environmental organizations. Most NGOs in particular those which are small and not well organized – have little impact on global politics. In general NGOs tend to become involved when it is a question of avoiding conflict or acquiring information. They are mainly seen as a source of legitimacy although it is sometimes unclear whom they represent, and some are very single issue orientated.
3. In addition to the nation-state governments, not only these new political and private actors are participating in this new global process of decision-making(IGOS ) but also exist wide varieties of transnational lobby and pressure groups like the International Chamber of Commerce( ICC), the Institute of solo International Finance(IIF), or the European Roundtable of Industrialists(ERIs).
4. Another important point is that the relationships between political and economic power have been shifting. Economic powers are no longer regulated within the context of a nation state or international law. The Multinational corporations (MNCs) for example can respond to variations in interest rates by raising finance in whichever capital market is most favorable to them ; they can shift their demand for employment to countries with much lower employment costs; they can move their activities to where the maximum benefits will come. As a result, the autonomy and the decision making power of democratically elected governments has been restricted by the influences of unelected and unrepresentative economic power (Held 1997, 7).17 The dominating economic power of the Multinationals has also brought fundamental changes in our value systems. Instead of democratic values or principles such as participation, emancipation and so on, the economic criteria like effectiveness and efficiency have greater dominance.
The political madness of dividing humanity into about 200 independent political entities is com-pounded by the global economic system of the past five centuries that promotes private greed and self-interest of MCNs at the expense of human cooperation for the welfare and prosperity of everyone. This exploitative capitalism divides people from one another, destroys human mercy and compassion, promotes lying and falsehood in the service of private profit, creates absolute winners and losers, unsustain-ably exploits the natural resources of the globe, and creates ever greater poverty for the masses of humanity. Today, two billion human beings live on less than two U.S. dollars per day while the wealthiest 250 people in the world have assets equal to the combined wealth of the bottom 50 percent of humanity.
The thinkers of global governance focus more on the transformation or the new functions of the state, and not on the democratic modifications within the process of globalization. This leads to the disregarding of the inequality between the actor8f as well as the necessity of the public/civic character of politics. The new forms of decision making within global governance are often located in non-public forums and the actors, such as public-private partner-ships, are not elected or legitimated by a public. The informal politics has been accompanied by the privatization of politics and a loss of a public sphere.
Global governance often goes along with a concept of weak democracy — and not that of a more demanding participatory democracy, such as that which advocates of deliberative democracy have put forward (Losch 2005).18 It is clear that global democracy cannot be organized in the same way as representative democracy within the nation state. However, given that democracy depends on the participation of people, it needs to be located not in informal arrangements among various actors but in global public structure which will guarantee legal control, transparency, legitimacy and a process of deliberation
5. The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) , global trade of weapons and ongoing military conflicts and new geostrategic politics contribute to global instability and have motivated calls for a new era of world order. Contrary to what had been hoped in the 1990s, world politics failed to undergo a change that was to result in greater democracy and peace. The objectives of the global civil society such as unity, peace, finding solutions to ecological problems, supporting sustainable development and reducing or eliminating ignorance and poverty now seem even less attainable than in the previous years. While the decade of the 1990s was marked by enthusiasm generated by the UN World Conferences, and the perception that significant progress was being achieved has today been replaced by a sense of utter disappointment.
6. Hizmet—type global social movements ( SMOs ) are exceptionally a different breed being (non-political, social-cultural , educational, service-projects , and altruistic in action ) with local and global impact and are transformative of public sphere through gross root & bottom-up approaches involving in local and global education, charitable works and peace making concerted harmonizing efforts through interfaith ,intercultural and intellectual dialogues.
Hizmet19 for example is a faith-inspired movement that embraces all nations, religions, races, colors, etc. The reason being that this movement despite having its roots in Turkey has been tremendously successful to have a global out-reach thanks to the education activities it has been engaged in globally now for several decades . The movement and millions of its sup-porters and volunteers follow and treasure Fethullah Gulen’s20 universal principles and values defining themselves as “Hizmet” meaning service to humanity. It has been already engaged around the world from Europe, USA, Australia, Russia, and Africa to Asia and it inevitably has gotten an all-embracing global character. Some other features of the Hizmet movement can be summarized:
First and foremost, Hizmet is a voluntary movement without neatly defined borders, a hierarchy, central headquarters or membership. It is based on hearts, minds, volunteer work, service to humanity and donations by dedicated and a large numbers of humanized businessmen. The Hizmet movement, of course has affiliated institutions, clinics, schools, hostels, charities and media outlets, and they employ professional staff, who are salaried. But they can only represent their own institutions if they are in managerial positions. Writers, columnists, journalists and academics working in these institutions are not engaged in social, intellectual and political life on behalf of the movement. They only represent themselves. Sometimes they may agree on certain issues so that one can deduce the stand of the movement, but this is not definitive or binding for the movement as a whole.21
Secondly, the education activities of the movement have been betting stronger and stronger every year and are now spread to more than 140 countries. Olympiads are organized every year and the number of the participants has been rap-idly growing.22 It is so obvious that the Hizmet movement treasures education the most. According to the basic philosophy of the movement, education is the key to the solution of humanity’s main problems which are ignorance, disunity, and poverty around the world.
Thirdly, the fact that such a movement of volunteers has defined itself as “Hizmet” is an interesting matter that should be pointed out here again. The Hizmet movement has been serving the public sphere in a process of decades of transforming individuals and society since its inception in 1970s. In the last decade it has facilitated and helped consolidate the Turkish democracy after 80 years of militaristic deep-state. As can be recalled, since the day it was founded in 2001, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has also defined its policy as “service” and emphasizing that it is a “service-oriented” party rather than an ideologically oriented one with servant leadership. It is an important point that two major movements, one newly formed Turkish national political party and the other social and global movement in existence for over 4 decades, define themselves similarly through the mission of “service.” Sure, the AK Party’s “service-ori-ented” political approach has been most effective in making it the party of the masses that have been already transformed by Hizmet and creation of what has been called renaissance and golden generation. However, this isn’t a tactical situation but an existential fact. We don’t think it should ever be perceived as a problem that these two movements today stand side by side and parallel, as they have common ideals and goals without any merger of state and mosque. Modern democracies locally and globally should see this as an example where public sphere helped consolidate Turkish democracy and the world should embrace such developments for global democratic renaissance in the twenty-first century.
7. Democratic systems are con-fronting the increasingly powerful role of the media in politics. In this mediatization process over recent decades, the mass media have been moving from being merely a public watch-dog, a channel of communication to being a major actor in the political arena. This has been problematic for decades now as the media are able to influence the entire decision-making process and they can assign political relevance and importance to societal problems according to their own logic.
Democratizing of Democracy and news t hope for the World
Well-functioning a democratic processes and institutions constitute the backbone of political legitimacy, social stability, economic growth and prosperity. However, these days democracy is faced with serious challenges as discussed here.
The process of globalization has undermined the problem-solving capacities of the world. Nation- states governments no longer have the degree of control that they once had, and their decisions are increasingly affected by decisions made elsewhere. At the same time, international institutions to which political authority is increasingly transferred lack democratic legitimacy. Furthermore, the process of extending democracy into unstable countries and regions has proven to be more difficult than expected.
The democratic deficits have added to disunity and divisions. amongst established democracies. Our world is divided into absolute nation states. Democracy requires wholeness, a body politic participating in making the decisions that positively impact the civil society. Democracy in the future can only be universal- protecting universal human rights that belong to every citizen of our earth. There can be no wholeness in a world of international trade, communications, travel and interaction unless it is whole- ness of humankind under a single democratic constitution. Democracy cannot fully exist within nations since governments in a world of international insecurity and chaos must function in secret, which is the demise of democracy. Democracy cannot exist within nations when global capitalists not only have the power to control governments but have the freedom and ability to travel elsewhere should any governments attempt to control or limit their destructive and greedy practices. But the Earth already has its charter for wholeness and democratic integrity. The Constitution for the global Federation23 has been ready since 1991 waiting for ratification by the people and nations of the world. It is publicly available on the World Wide Web.
The first dimension of our present disunity is a global economic system that is based on absolute winners and losers. This system allows vast concentrations of wealth have and power that, we have seen, immense capacity to exploit and enslave people around the globe in the service of ever greater wealth and power. We have seen that money is power, under this system, to buy the votes of legislators, to buy high priced attorneys to evade the law, to buy lucrative military con- tracts, to buy human beings as sex slaves, to buy untold millions of poor and starving people as wage slaves. The Constitution for this Federation is designed on the wholeness of humanity and initiates a new economic order that replaces schisms with the rule of democratically legislated law protecting the most vulnerable from victimization by the rich and powerful and regulating economic life for the benefit of the global environment and the welfare of our future generations.
The second dimension of our disunity today is our world divided into some 200 “absolutely” sovereign territorial nation-states. This makes people think of their national self-interest before the good of humanity. It makes people think of “them versus us,” of developing military and intelligence secrecy, of low and high intensity struggles against other nations conceived of as enemies. It puts one nation at odds with other nation and creates a world order where military power and not justice determines the out- come. The Constitution for the Federation globally if ratified binds all the nations into a whole, a federation -under a duly elected Parliament comprised of a House of Peoples and a House of Nations. For the first time in human history, a governmental authority can represent interests of all peoples and nations fairly within the whole of a democratic world order. Nations’ rights are preserved to the extent that every nation may choose its own economic, political and social order consistent with the universal human rights guaranteed by the global Constitution. But nations will be demilitarized and disputes settled by the world court system under the equitable rule of law applied to all. Economic might and military power no longer will dominate and destroy the weaker in pursuit of their alienated self-interest.
The third dimension of disunity in today’s world involves the chaos of partial identities and group egoisms preventing people from recognizing others around the globe as fully human and deserving of equal treatment before the law. Racist, sexist, religious, ethnic, class and nationalistic hatreds and conflicts go on tearing our world apart. It is easy for people who identify with one race or nation to bomb darker skinned people, to ignore the misery of yellow skinned people, to stereotype the religious faith of Muslim peoples, etc. The Constitution for the global Federation not only makes all this illegal but it also creates unity of all persons as citizens of the World Federation for the first time in human history. For the first time, there will be enforceable legal and moral category of universal human economic and political rights, protected by law, police, the executive, the parliament and the world judiciary. People will now have an incentive to identify with the diversity and rich multiplicity of all others on the planet, for those different from themselves no longer have to use power to threaten or destroy them. Wholeness supersedes divisions and genuine global democracy will be made possible for the first time in human history.
The fourth dimension of disunity in today’s world involves the mass media of the world who are inevitably loyal to those corporate elites (1%) that are the source of their livelihood. It is only human (all too human) that the mass media in the United States are loyal to its government and economic system to the exclusion of universal human welfare and the future of the world. It is only natural and all too human that they are complicit in the death of democracy and the destruction of the future of our world which is inevitable under the current system of global disunity. A Constitution for the entire globe would transform all that precisely because genuine democracy will allow people to begin identifying with the good of the whole and not with some elitist groups. The divisive power of great wealth, of territorial governments and of group egoisms will be vastly diminished within the framework of just, democratically legislated law over everybody. A great liberation could take place for the mass media. They could now really begin to fulfill their traditional and theoretical role as watchdogs of democracy and the common good precisely because for the first time in history there would really be a legally recognized wholeness and common good for all of humanity.
The fifth dimension is disunity pertaining to the widening gap between the public sphere and national /supra- national governments. Democratic dis- array both national and global that began over the past four decades since the process of globalization and other associated causes discussed here have undermined the problem- solving capacities of the world. It certainly is also linked to a broad and continuing erosion of civic engagement as can be explained by insightful and influential writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, Robert Putnam and Jürgen Habermas on the subject of strong civil societies and their direct relationship to genuine democracy. This approach to societal problem solving and their concept of ‘the public sphere’ are thus an extremely useful way to understand the activities of the Hizmet type Movement and what they have accomplished have accomplished through their societal transformational works over the decades. High on the national & global agenda along with federal glob- al constitution and law being emphasized here should also urgently include the question of how to reverse these adverse trends in social connected- ness, thus restoring civic engagements, civic trust and healthier federally constituted global democracy.
Civil society is an arena of friend- ships and associations. It provides national and global citizens with opportunities to learn the democratic habits of free assembly, non-coercive dialogue, and socioeconomic initiative. It covers a broad array of organizations that are essentially private, that is, outside the institutional structures of government.
For these reasons the Hizmet type social movements (SMOs) are best described as a civic initiative or civil society movements that are cultural and educational service-projects with social &altruistic action distinct from business organizations. They center on the individual citizenship transformation, individual change and the education of the individual leading to collective societal transformation. Part of this education is also focused on raising consciousness about legality, lawfulness, human rights and one’s constitutionally defined rights. They also work for the consolidation. Therefore, of pluralist participatory democracy and equal rights. They embody the idea or ideal that as individual citizens they have responsibilities not only to them- selves but also to the communities of which they are a part.
In this regard the public sphere mediates between the private sphere of individual citizens and the ‘sphere of public Authority’, [24] cor- responding to governments or ruling elites. There must be an interaction between political authority and the public sphere: the most legitimate governments and policies are those that have listened to and taken into full consideration what the public sphere says on the relevant issue. We can think of the public sphere as a device which increases political participation by functioning as a bridge between society and its ruling elites. As it functions very well (as seen in the last decade in Turkish Republic) it is a best opportunity to enhance democracy in any society nationally and supra nationally.
Under the present world system of irreconcilable divisions, there is no hope either for democracy or the future of our humanity. But for a very logical step forward in our social, moral and intellectual lives as practiced by Hizmet like global civic movements and in collaboration with federal global constitution and law that could transform all that forever. It is a very important step to the next level of human existence on our planet, the level in which we recognize every person on the earth as fully human and for him/her to act legally to protect his/her humanity within the frame- work of a democratic Constitution. The Constitution for the world Federation is the charter of our day. It is a brilliant document, designed by some of the finest minds of our time, and directed explicitly to preserving diversity within a new framework of wholeness and addressing the global crises of the environment, militarism, the population explosion and global poverty, ignorance and misery. In so doing it eliminates the root causes of hatred and terrorism as well as the divisions that induce national arrogance and militarism. For genuine democracy can only exist, as all thoughtful persons know, in a world that combines authentic peace with global justice. Only with a democratic constitution for the entire globe. coupled with local and global public sphere engagements can we resurrect our dying democratic traditions and provide hope for the future of our endangered world.
Footnotes and References
[1]Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (New York: Penguin, 1994); John Halled, Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1995) and Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1996) and Peter Burnell and Peter Calvert eds., Civil Society in Democratization (Portland: Frank Cass, 1994).
[2] Augustus Richard Norton, Civil Society in the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 1995). In Iran, for example, the reformist movement during the 1990s was enthralled with the concept of civil societhy (jameah madani) and it was a frequent reference point in political debates and analysis including that of President Muhammad Khatami. In Egypt, the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies has a publication entitled “Civil Society” that examines this concept and its manifestation in the contemporary Arab world.
[3] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated by George Lawrence (New York: Doubleday, 1969), 513-517.
[4] (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994)
[5] (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).
[6] Ibid. [get citation]
[7] Fraser, Nancy (1990), “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy”, Social Text (Duke University Press) 25 (26): 56-80
[8]. Habermas, Jürgen (German (1962) English Translation 1989), the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Thomas Burger, and Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press, p. 30, ISBN 0-262-58108-6
[9] Naomi Klein’s, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. (175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. 2007)
[10]It is true that the number of states in the world which can be labeled as democratic is increasing. However, regimes can also label themselves as democratic when in fact they only pro- vide the minimum of formal democratic processes, such as holding elections without there being true freedom of opinion, or without other fundamental political rights being guaranteed.
[11] Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. London.
[12] Fethullah Gülen, “A Comparative Approach to Islam and Democracy”, in Fethullah Gülen, Towards a Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance (New Jersey, USA: The Light, Inc., 2004), 219- 224, p. 220 (hereafter cited as Gülen, Love and Tolerance). This essay, origi- nally published in SAIS Review, 21:2 (Summer-Fall 2001):133-38, has been also reproduced in The New Voices of Islam: Reforming Politics and Modernity – A Reader (ed.) Mehran Kamrava (New York and London: I.B. Tauris, 2006) pp. 100-104; and in M. Fethullah Gülen: Essays, Perspectives, Opinions, com- piled by The Fountain, (Clifton, NJ, USA: Tughra Books, 2010), pp. 13-20
[13]Habermas, Jürgen. 1998. Die postnationale Konstellation. Politische Essays. Frankfurt/Main.
[14]James N. Rosenau, Ernst Otto Czempiel, Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, Cambridge University Press (1992)
[15] Martin, Glen T. Ascent to Freedom: Practical and Philosophical Foundations of Democratic World Law (Sun City, AZ: Institute for Economic Democracy Press, 2008) –
[16] Benz, Arthur, ed. 2004. Governance Regieren in komplexen Regelsystemen: Eine Einführung. Wiesbaden
[17] Held, David. 1997. Democracy and Globalization, Max-Planck- Institute für Gesellschaftsforschung, Working Paper, 97/5, May 1997. (http://www.mpifg.de/pu/workpap/wp9 7-5/wp97-5.html) accessed January 20, 2012.
[18] Lösch, Bettina. 2005. Deliberative Politik. Moderne Konzeptionen von Öffentlichkeit, Demokratie und politischer Partizipation. Münster.
[19] An overview of the movement, see Yuksel A. Aslandogan, “The Gulen Movement”, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, June 17, 2009, at http://csis.org/files/attach- ments/090617_overview_gulen_move- ment.pdf, [Last access, June 22, 2012].
[20] Fethullah Gülen, “A Comparative Approach to Islam and Democracy”, in Fethullah Gülen, Towards a Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance (New Jersey, USA: The Light, Inc., 2004), 219- 224, p. 220 (hereafter cited as Gülen, Love and Tolerance).
[21] Ihsan Yilmaz, “Hizmet, forming a party and capturing the state”, Today’s Zaman, February February 15, 2012, at http://www.todayszaman.com/colum- nist-271536-hizmet-forming-a-party- and-capturing-the-state.html, access, June 22, 2012].
[22] Turkish Language Olympiads, Wikipedia, [Last at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Langu age_Olympiads, [Last access, 22, 2012].
[23] http://www.w- g.jp/wgi/library/articles-&- mails/wcpa-constitution.htm
[24] Habermas, Jürgen (German (1962) English Translation 1989), the Structural Transformation
