If Mayors Ruled the World
* Book: Benjamin Barber. If mayors ruled the world. Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities. Yale University Press, 2013
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Eric Corijn:
"“The challenge of democracy in the modern world has been how to join
participation, which is local, with power, which is central. The nation-state once did the job ,
but recently it has become too large to allow meaningful participation even as it remains too
small to address centralized global power.” (Barber, 2013:5).
The first part of the book delivers the analysis (Why cities should govern globally), whereas
the second part focuses on the pragmatics (How it can be done). Besides the historic argument
on the intimate relationship between cities, citizenship and democracy, the main argument
derives from the central position of cities in the actual globalisation process. Chapter 3 of the
book deals with an historic overview from the independent polis to the interdependent
cosmopolis. Citizenship and democracy originated in place bound territories, in walled cities
opposing feudal rule. Later, regions and estates were unified in territorialised nation-states,
searching for independence. Today the world system and the globalisation process favour
connectivity on a larger scale. That connectivity is not so much obtained through
incorporation of ever-larger territories within a joint border - making bigger countries - but
through a growing importance of nodal connection of networks in a space of flows. The
territorialised political independence of countries is thus deconstructed by trans border
networking and growing interdependence. Chapter 5 explains the deeper reasons for this
interdependence. Globalisation has created a transnational space of flows with cities or
metropolitan regions as interconnected nodes. Barber refers to the work of Castells or to the
author’s own to indicate how “cities undermine national solidarities and favour “glocal”
growth strategies” (Corijn, 2009). That is also why Benjamin Barber created in 2001, after 9-11,
a global Interdependence movement proposing September 12th as Interdependence day in
contrast with the very American 4th of July Independence day commemorating the adoption
of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. This initiative has been a platform of yearly
gatherings discussing matters of governance in a globalising world. In 2008 the Brussels
programme developed the theme “The city as commons in a divided world”. The meeting
discussed the rescaling of the world and the remodelling of the city. And it is there that the
growing importance of cities as (potential) global political actors has come to the fore, under
the condition that urban politics also creates self-awareness of this strategic position and the
responsibility that comes with that position. That is the central focus of Barbers’ book.
In short: inter-national politics do not deliver a democratic and transparent regulation of the
world system and do not seem to be able to deliver an inclusive society overcoming
communitarianism and tribalism. That is why cities should “rule the world”. Because, goes
the argument, the complexity of the urban system is closer to the complexity of the world
system and the pragmatism, the proximity and the sense of urgency in urban governance can
lead to more adequate management of cities and its problems. Barber shows that the existing
state-order, the nation-state and its political order, stands in the way of addressing societal
problems. Both because nation-states lost control over so called internal affairs and are unable
to govern global matters. So the focal question is: how to build democratic political power at
the level of the global agenda? How to democratically regulate the world system? It is here
that the call to mayors comes in: “ It is only to understand that to govern their cities
effectively, they may have to play some role in governing the world in which their cities fight
to survive. In governing their cities cooperatively to give their pragmatism global effect,
mayors need not await the cooperation of the disunited United Nations, the special interest
permeated international financial institutions, private-market multinational corporations, or
centuries old dysfunctional nations.” (Barber, 2013: 338)"
(chapter for upcoming book)