Welcome to the Blog of the Network Institute for Global Democratization in North America!

The North American chapter of NIGD (Network Institute for Global Democratization) is an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars doing original research on how local and regional groups of activists in North America are responding and relating to the World Social Forum process. We are interested in the implications of this emerging global process for democracy at local, national, and global levels. The World Social Forums are among the most important political developments of recent years, and systematic attempts to understand its operations and evolution can strengthen theory and practice related to global social change. A key question guiding our research is whether and how the World Social Forum process contributes to the cultivation of skills, knowledge, and normative commitments relevant to the practice of democracy at local, national, and global levels. By expanding the network of scholars working on these themes, we hope to encourage more comparative analyses of diverse local and national contexts in North America, Europe, and elsewhere. The network is designed as a parallel to a similar group of researchers based in Europe and known as the DEMOS project (see http://demos.iue.it/).

The key aims of the network include:

• Providing links to publications and working papers on the WSF process;
• Facilitating dialogues among scholars and encouraging collaborative and comparative work;
• Coordinating research efforts within and across social forums;
• Encouraging and facilitating student and scholar efforts to support the World Social Forum process;
• Facilitating the dissemination of knowledge about the World Social Forum process to diverse academic and public audiences.

The purpose of this blog, therefore, is to provide the space for this group to pursue the above-mentioned goals.
So, we encourage you to share your thoughts and engage in a dialog!