(Draft of a book review for work. Please comment.) A growing corporate “transparency movement” and growing global civil society-both enabled by information technology-will pull globalization into the side of the good. So says Ann Florini in The Coming Democracy: New Rules for Running a New World.

Florini likens the current information technology revolution to the revolutions sparked by Guttenberg’s printing press–one that will produce greater democracy and accountability and new forms of governance. “The tools are now available to do at a global level what the printing press helped do for national governance-to decentralize the flow of information, enabling democracy to emerge.” (16)

On the business side of the global political question, “transparency” is Florini’s key note. Previously secretive bodies like the World Trade Organization now release a wealth of information to the public. Dozens of nations have recently passed “freedom of information” laws. Transparency technologies (such as global satellite imaging) allow civil society groups to hold business and government both accountable.

And corporate behavior codes are on the rise. Some codes are aspirational, while others are more compliance based. UN Secretary General has offered his Global Compact–a voluntary code that relies on self-reporting. But the current trend among corporate codes is social accountability reporting, which details how a corporation’s behavior effects its many neighbors.

At times there can be too much information, creating a “fire hose” effect. That’s where global civil society groups come in. The number and work of civil society group has exploded recently, and information technology enables them to monitor and analyze corporate and government reporting. Email and cell phones enable on-the-spot organizing; Florini argues that the scope and scale of the recent anti-war protests are the new rule, not the exception.

More importantly, global civil society is building global social capital. “Only through civil society can the world develop the habits of extensive cooperation, across cultures and issue areas, that constitute social capital.” (142) What this social capital will add up to, says Florini, is global democracy. “In short, world government will not work, a retreat to national borders is impossible, and market forces cannot deal with most collective action problems.” (12) What kind of global democracy, then?

Not one of votes and elections. Florini imagines a world where a dominant ethic of transparency-variously enforced-gives global civil society the upper hand in questions of global importance. What will change, she argues, is not so much the form of international institutions like the WTO or the IMF as the processes they use to make policy. International institutions will increasingly invite the participation of global activists in their decision-making processes as an alternative to disruptive protests. Multinational corporations will likewise find community involvement in their decision-making processes less troublesome than the alternative.

We can rightly ask if this description represents what we would recognize as a democracy. It is participatory, certainly, and tends toward public accountability. But it lacks a written Constitution, instead relying on evolved agreements between government, business, and civil society and on an across-the-board commitment to transparency. Perhaps this is enough.