EDITORIAL
In recent days, the referendum in the United Kingdom and the alleged attempted coup d’état in Turkey has placed in center stage the problem of every nation-state’s internal democracy as well as its relationship with the international dynamics that involve processes of integration such as those seen in the European Union.
Once again, the relationship between the formation of public opinion in a given political community and the expression of the will of the majority of its citizens seems to be at the heart of the problem. A consideration of the relationship between local democracy and global democracy, even under this lens, is therefore even more apt; with the goal of understanding the different perspectives that present themselves to those interested in reasoning in terms of globalization of democracy and in terms of the democratization of globalization.
Amongst the published essays in this edition of “Glocalism”, some interesting assessments are expressed on two of the crises that are linking the political experiments being conducted through the institutions of the European Union: on one hand, the difficulty in handling the influx of refugees and on the other hand the shortfalls of democracy which characterize these institutions. A sort of short circuit between these two problems has demonstrated itself in these last months, aggravated by a sinister presence both in and around the European Union’s confines. An emergence of an ideological religiosity whose unpredictable manifestations – from New Years’ in Cologne to July 14th in Nice – seem to be uncontrollable. What seems to be clear is that in order to resolve the ever growing number and severity of problems, the powers of State are no more effective as well as the coordination of States is no longer sufficient because it has the defect of behaving according to a hierarchical and territorial logic whichis nearly obsolete.
The question of the relationship between democratic decision making and migrant influxes also involves – as emerges in some of the following articles – even regions such as Australia, where once again the images transmitted through mass media become instrumental in the justification of military intervention in the management of this political community’s confines. In the region which includes Australia and other Pacific Ocean islands, a significant role in handling different problems with effects on commerce, politics and security of the regions involved, is covered by the Pacific Islands Forum. Through diverse public practices, this organization searches to manage both the democratic stability of the region as well as dilemmas regarding the ecological dimension.
Other considerations of the relations between Turkey and the Kurdish population, for instance, in addition to a reflection on the corruption which pervades the African political reality are present in the articles of this edition. Altogether, the articles offer an interesting panorama of the numerous and complex dynamics that the relationship between the global and the local puts on the table also in terms of democratic management in communal decision making. These political decisions are relevant not only for the community called to make them, but also for those communities that are either around or interconnected with it at the global level. Every attempt to democratize globalization without trying to improve the democratic system inside of each local reality is certainly destined to fail. Active citizenship and its education constitutes the conditio sine qua non to every democratic development of global project management, both according to the still persistent territorial dynamics and according to the incipient and increasingly certain functional and reticular dynamics.
