Global Governance, Trust and Democratic Engagement in Past and Present

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. The 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.

Drawing on insights from History, IR, Political Science and Sociology, the project pursues two major lines of enquiry. First, it examines campaigns that sought to create, reform, transform or abolish international organisations. In doing so, it highlights the democratic potentials and lacunae of international organisations while tracing broader efforts to democratise international relations. Second, the project investigates attempts by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and social movements to enlist the support of international bodies, partly in response to the obstacles they encountered domestically. Such endeavours implied a degree of trust in the ability of international organisations to become tools for positive change. 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.

The project brings together researchers who have made major contributions to the study of international cooperation and citizenship in their respective fields. Working within an international and interdisciplinary team, they will produce an array of academic outputs (including a co-authored monograph, a range of journal articles as well as a special journal issues), run academic events in Canada, Switzerland and the United States, and engage external stakeholders through policy papers and workshops (for instance a knowledge-exchange event hosted by the project team in Newcastle upon Tyne).