Especially in the 1980s and even more so after the end of the cold war in the 1990s, more and more countries moved from an undemocratic to a democratic political system. But in light of profound challenges for all democracies, some observers are afraid that the best days of democracy may already be behind us. On the other hand, in many democracies a process is going on that can be called localisation and that means that more and more people get involved in the political decision-making process on a local level. In terms of strengthening a democratic political system, this means more direct participation of citizens and as a result a more active democracy. There is a strong incentive for politicians to listen to the people because politicians are elected and re-elected on a local level.
Globalisation poses in that sense two profound challenges to democracy.
First, globalisation threatens democracy as such because democratic political systems are based on the territorial state and this state is being eroded by the process of globalisation. Many of those critics of the WTO demonstrated in Seattle and made Seattle a lively event and at the same time worked hard to make the WTO-conference in December of 1999 in Seattle a failure. They succeeded, but important actors inside the WTO-family are responsible for the Seattle disaster as well. The second problem of democratic legitimacy is the question of how to democratise international organisations like the WTO assuming that this should be done. We are not talking about international organisations with democratic countries as member-states.