Beyond the democratic state: anti-authoritarian interventions in democratic theory

V. Social Movement Networks in Practice: Two Geographic Scales 
Networks and Global Democracy 
Social movement networks have been primarily theorized in relation to democracy on a 
transnational and global scale. Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) influential 
Activists Beyond Borders
, 
for example, highlights the transnational networks of activists that have organized and operated 
across national borders. The focus on both historical advocacy networks, such as those of the 
anti-slavery and women’s suffrage movements, as well as more contemporary campaigns for 
human rights and environmental protection. While their work usefully challenges “realist” 
conceptions of international relations by arguing that non-state actors have important roles in 
shaping world politics, they see social movements – to return to a distinction made in the 
introduction – primarily as reformers of existing institutions rather than innovators of democracy 
itself. They see them primarily as bringing international leverage to bear on national or 
international institutions. 
In contrast, other theorists that highlight transnational activist networks as innovating 
democratic practice itself are more useful for my project. Hardt and Negri (2004) contend that 
the dispersed network is one of the mechanisms by which “the multitude” – the global, social 
multiplicity – can rule itself. In other words, they see networks as making a radically different 
form of global democracy possible. 
[D]emocracy is confronted today by a leap of scale, from the nation-state to the 
entire globe…And, it is simply not possible to ‘scale-up’ democracy, while 
thinking of it in the same way. [D]emocracy must be conceived and practiced 
differently in this new framework and this new scale (Hardt and Negri, 236). 
They propose that the challenge of global democracy is not to “scale-up” the existing institutions 
that characterize existing nation-states, since even at their existing scale they seem to be failing 
to achieve, or even approach, the democratic ideal. Networks are meant as an alternative 

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conception of global democracy, and as a counter-point to the institutional views of someone like 
Held. Held (1992, 340) presents a “cosmopolitan model of democracy” with several key 
features: 1) the creation of regional parliaments; 2) international general referenda on matters of 
transnational importance; 3) the democratization of international governmental and regulatory 
bodies; 4) the entrenchment of political, social and economic rights; and 5) the formation of a 
truly democratic assembly of all democratic states and societies. As laudable as such a vision is, 
it very much falls prey to the logic of viewing the challenge of global democracy as one of 
“scaling-up” traditional democratic institutions. Hardt and Negri see networks and “the 
multitude” as an alternative to global representative institutions and a global 
demos
. How, then 
is a network structure supposed to function as a form of organization and coordination on a 
global scale? 
To take one example, there is a compelling case to be made that a network form of 
organization was responsible for facilitating what is likely “the largest protest event in human 
history” (Walgrave and Rucht 2010, xiii). On February 15, 2003 millions of people around the 
world participated in coordinated protests against the impending U.S.-led war on Iraq. Estimates 
of the global turn-out vary, with the BBC estimating between six to ten million participants from 
up to 60 countries, though various other sources put the number of participants at between ten 
and thirty million (BBC 2003). Protests occurred on every continent: there were major protests 
throughout eastern and western Europe; in all three North American countries, across South 
America, throughout Asia, with major protests in several Middle Eastern countries, in South 
Africa, Australia, and even Antarctica. Regardless of the specific number, the fact that many 
millions of people participated in coordinated, but decentralized protests throughout the world 
suggests that networked organization can be a quite powerful force.

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The coordination of millions of people from some 60 countries to voluntary participate in 
protests was accomplished without a single centralized authority issuing a command or 
controlling the course of events. Rather, a call for an international “day of action” was issued, 
originally by an anti-capitalist group in the U.K. That call was transmitted through activist 
networks and taken up by others, including the United for Peace and Justice Coalition in the 
U.S., the Cairo Anti-War Conference in Egypt, the European Social Forum in Italy, and the 
World Social Forum in Brazil. Independent groups, associated with these networks, then issued 
their own calls for a “day of action”. As Maeckelbergh (2009, 84) argues: “Although coalitions 
and networks are set up which bring many groups together,