Assessing the Democratic Quality of Deliberation in International Governance: Criteria and Research Strategies

Abstract

In the literature on international governance it is often claimed that deliberation can enhance the rationality and legitimacy of political rule-making beyond the nation state. It is unclear, however, under what conditions such deliberative processes contribute to the emergence of transnational democracy, understood as self-government on a global scale. We address this question and propose a set of criteria that can be used to assess the democratic quality of decision making through empirical research.