CHAPTER 1
Introducing Global Civil Society
Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary Kaldor
The words 'global' and 'civil society' have become commonplace during the last decade. Yet what they mean and how they come together are subject to widely differing interpretations. For some, global civil society refers to the protestors in Seattle and Prague or Greenpeace's actions against transnational corporations: in other words, a counterweight to global capitalism. For others, the words have something to do with the infrastructure that is needed for the spread of democracy and development: the growth of professional associations, consumer organisations, and interests groups that span many countries. Yet others identify the phenomenon with the efforts of groups like Save the Children or Medecins sans Frontieres to provide humanitarian assistance: global solidarity with the poor or oppressed. Or perhaps the term just refers to the growing connectedness of citizens: Internet chatrooms, networks of peace, environmental or human rights activists, student exchanges, or global media.
It is no wonder that, apart from a few political activists and policy experts, most people, including many social scientists, have little understanding of what global civil society means and implies. It has not yet become what sociologist Zerubavel (1991) calls an 'island of meaning' in the conceptual landscape of modern social science and policy-making. The 'market', the 'state', and, in recent years, even 'civil society' have to varying degrees become such 'conceptual islands' that we use in everyday language as well as for policy purposes and in social science analysis. While we associate certain distinct qualities and characteristics with terms like the 'market' and the 'state', and have at least some notion of the quantitative dimensions involved, no such conventional understanding exists for 'global civil society.
While the 'unfamiliar words', as John Keane puts it in Chapter 2, may have little intuitive meaning, they suggest at the same time, something unconventional, even dramatic. The term takes the perhaps most important social science (re)discovery of the 1990s — civil society —and places it in a framework that
ultimately transcends conventional social science categories. The concept posits the existence of a social sphere, a global civil society, above and beyond national, regional, or local societies.
Our aim in producing a Yearbook was to try to establish an 'island of meaning. We set out to analyse and describe, to map both conceptually and empirically, what we mean when we talk about 'global civil society. We hoped to be able to draw conclusions that would be relevant and useful to the various actors who participate in global civil society. But in producing the first edition of the Yearbook what we think we have learned is where to begin our investigation. Whether we are talking about the debates about the meaning of the concept or the problems of data collection, our end-point turns out to be our starting point. We have learned, at least to some extent, where we need to look to find out more about global civil society and with whom we need to engage to develop the conceptual underpinning of the project. So we are not informing our readers as we imagined, although we hope there is a lot to be gleaned from this first Yearbook; rather we are, in effect, asking our readers to participate in a journey of discovery. As we see it, the Yearbook is itself a part of global civil society: a terrain for developing ideas, investigating issues, and gathering information that does not readily fit existing categories and cannot be found in conventional sources. We invite your reactions, comments, and feedback.
In introducing the Yearbook, we focus on four themes that emerge out of our first efforts. First, we set out three propositions about global civil society that are both initial conclusions and hypotheses for future research. Second, we provide a thumbnail sketch of the evolution of the concept and the competing definitions. Third, we discuss the problem of data collection and the challenge of 'methodological nationalism' (Beck 2000; Shaw 2000; Scholte 1999). In the last section, we summarise the key conclusions for both activists and policy-makers that can be drawn from the studies undertaken for the individual chapters.
3
Three Propositions about Global Civil Society
Proposition 1: Global civil society as a reality
The first proposition is that the spread of the term 'global civil society' reflects an underlying social reality. What we can observe in the 1990s is the emergence of a supranational sphere of social and political participation in which citizens groups, social movements, and individuals engage in dialogue, debate, confrontation, and negotiation with each other and with various governmental actors—international, national, and local—as well as the business world. Of course, there have historically existed elements of a supranational non-governmental sphere. The Catholic Church or Islam have long had 'global' aspirations and maintained far-reaching operations for centuries; colonial empires have come and gone; political entities like the Commonwealth, the UN, and the European Union emerged; international nongovernmental organisations like the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies have operated above the national level for many years, as have political organisations like the Socialist International and the peace and environmental movements. What seems new, however, is the sheer scale and scope that international and supranational institutions and organisations of many kinds have achieved in recent years. The number of organisations and individuals that are part of global civil society has probably never been bigger, and the range and type of fields in which they operate never been wider: from UN conferences about social welfare or the environment to conflict situations in Kosovo, from globalised resistance to the Mutual Agreement on Investments to local human rights activism in Mexico, Burma, or Timor, and from media corporations spanning the globe to indigenous peoples' campaigns over the Internet.
This conclusion is supported by four types of information that have been used in producing the Yearbook: data on international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) (see Tables 1.1-1.3 and Part IV of this Yearbook) and on parallel summits (see Chapter 7), our chronology, and the qualitative information contained in the issue chapters.
INGOs are autonomous organisations that are non-governmental, that is, they are not instrumentalities of government; and non-profit, that is not distributing revenue as income to owners; and formal, legal entities (see Salamon and Anheier 1997). Many
INGOs employ staff and are professional organisations. They can include campaigning groups like Amnesty International or Greenpeace, the famous 'brand names' of global civil society; professional societies like international employers federations or trades unions; charities like Christian Aid or CARE; think tanks and international commissions.
INGOs are not new. They date back to the nineteenth century, but the term itself is of more recent origins, coined during the League of Nations period. The earliest INGO is generally said to be the anti-slavery society, formed as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, although there was a transnational social movement against slavery much earlier. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was founded by Henri Dunant in 1864 after his experiences in the Battle of Solferino. By 1874, there were 32 registered INGOs and this number had increased to 1,083 by 1914 (Chatfield 1997). INGOs grew steadily after World War II but our figures show an acceleration in the 1990s. Around one quarter of the 13,000 INGOs in existence today were created after 1990 (see Table R19 in Part IV). Moreover, membership by individuals or national bodies of INGOs has increased even faster; well over a third of the membership of INGOs joined after 1990. These figures include only NGOs narrowly defined as 'international'; they do not include national NGOs with an international orientation.
What our figures also show is that during the 1990s, INGOs became much more interconnected both to each other and to international institutions like the United Nations or the World Bank (see also Table R21). Thus, not only has the global range of INGO presence grown during the last decade, but the networks linking these organisations are becoming denser as well. In Held's terms (Held et al. 1999), our data suggest that global civil society is becoming 'thicker.
INGOs are, however, only one component of global civil society. Individuals, grass-roots groups, loose coalitions, and networks all play a part in a global public debate. Moreover, since most INGOs are organisationally based in the northern hemisphere near international institutions and donors, the data on INGOs exaggerates the role of northern groups. Another lens through which to view the growth of global civil society is through parallel summits. These are gatherings of INGOs, other groups, and individuals that generally but not always take place in parallel to important inter-governmental meetings.
4
Figure 1.1: Membership growth in INGOs,* 1990-2000
Like INGOs, parallel summits have a long history. At the Hague Peace Conference in 1899, nongovernmental groups organised a parallel salon for diplomats to meet with concerned citizens, various
Table 1.1: Links between INGOs and IGOs*
Type
1990
2000
growth
Total orgs. cited as having links with others**
INGOs   8,690    11,693 35 IGOs    1,769     1,732 -2
	Total	10,459	13,425	28
Total citations	INGOs	35,020	69,922	100
	IGOs	23,191	36,383	57
	Total	58,211	106,305	83
Average citations	INGOs	4	6	48
per org.	IGOs	13	21	60
	Total	5.6	7.9	42
* International governmental organisations
** See Table R21 for further information.
Source: ©Union of International Associations (1990; 2000), presenting data collected in 1989 and 1999 respectively. Data have been restructured from more comprehensive country and organisation coverage in the Union of International Associations' Yearbook of International Organizations.
petitions with numerous signatures were submitted to the official conference, and an independent activist produced a daily conference newspaper (Charnovitz 1997: 196-7). Likewise, there were international congresses of citizens on issues like peace or labour solidarity throughout the nineteenth century. But even in the 1970s and 1980s these were exceptional events. It is only in the 1990s that both international governmental summits and parallel summits gathered pace as a normal way of doing politics. Pianta shows in Chapter 7 that parallel summits increased from around two a year in the period 1988-91 to over 30 a year in the period 2000-1. Participation in these events also increased. Around a third involved more than 10,000 people and several involved tens of thousands, especially in 2000 and 2001. INGOs play an important role in the coordination of parallel summits but, as Pianta shows, there are many different types of groups and individuals also involved.
Our chronology of global civil society events covers the decade 1990-9 and we have a more detailed chronology for the year 2000 which we will bring up to date every year. Covering the past from the point of view of global civil society is difficult because global civil society events are much less well reported
5
than global governance or global corporations; we have relied on individual correspondents but the network of correspondents we are building is still patchy. Nevertheless, the chronology shows what the figures both on INGOs and on parallel summits fail to cover: the range of protests relating to global issues, against the activities of governments or multinational corporations on environmental issues, dam- building, social issues, indigenous people's rights, democracy and human rights, or peace. Moreover, it is evident that these take place predominantly outside Europe and North America.
The growth of global civil society has been facilitated by the growth of resources available to civil society. These resources are of two kinds: technology and money. Increases in Internet usage and both mobile phones and land lines has greatly facilitated the construction of networks and has allowed greater access for groups outside the main centres of international power (Chapter 6). Thus, even taking just membership of INGOs, we can see in Table 1.2 that membership of low- and middle-income regions (70 per cent and 98 per cent respectively) has increased
faster than membership in high-income regions (56 per cent). The biggest increases have been for eastern Europe and Asia, although this is not reflected in the membership densities because of rapid population growth. Likewise, there has been a big increase in the economic importance of NGOs during the last decade. Specifically, governments and international institutions have greatly increased the amounts of development funds channelled through NGOs (OECD 1997). In addition, private giving has also increased from both foundations and corporations. In Chapter 8, it is estimated that global civil society receives approximately $7 billion in development funds and $2 billion in funds from US foundations. Figures collected by the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (Salamon et al. 1999) show that the number of full-time equivalent employment in INGOs for France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom alone amounts to over 100,000 and that volunteers in INGOs represent an additional 1.2 million full-time jobs in these countries (Table R24). Even without precise and comprehensive figures, available data
Table 1.2: Membership of INGOs, 1990-2000
Member Member Share of -ship of       -ship    total %
Growth 1990-2000
Member   Member   Share of    Member Member
-ship of       -ship    total %     -ship %
-ship
	INGOs	density*		INGOs	density*		of INGOs	density*
High Income	75,016	93		117,377	135		56	46
Middle Income	47,547	45		94,089	62		98	40
Low Income	25,938	8		43,967	12		70	41
Western Europe	6,547	150	38	85,518	221	33	52	47
North America	6,533	24	4	10,257	33	4	57	41
Oceania	4,042	197	3	6,382	280	2	58	42
Japan	2,347	19	2	3,569	28	1	52	48
East Asia and Pacific	9,255	6	6	16,393	9	6	77	55
Europe and Central Asia	8,940	46	5	35,235	74	14	335	62
Latin America & Caribbean	22,697	52	15	33,565	65	13	48	25
North Africa & Middle East	8,242	35	6	11,964	39	5	45	13
South Asia	5,121	5	3	8,136	6	3	59	30
Sub-Saharan Africa	20,076	39	14	32,763	51	13	63	30
World	148,501	30	100	255,432	43	100	72	42
* Per million of population
Source: ©Union of International Associations (1990; 2000), presenting data collected in 1989 and 1999 respectively. Data have been restructured from more comprehensive country and organisation coverage in the Union of International Associations' Yearbook of International Organizations. See table R20 for fuller information.
990
2000
6
suggest the significant economic scale of INGO activities.
Finally, the three chapters that deal with global issues on bio-technology, global finance, and humanitarian intervention all show in dramatic ways how citizens' groups of various types and persuasion have come to play a crucial role during the last decade in raising public consciousness, taking action, and even influencing public policy.
Proposition 2: Global civil society and globalisation
The second proposition is that global civil society both feeds on and reacts to globalisation. Like global civil society, 'globalisation' is also a new concept with different meanings. In every day usage it tends to refer to the spread of global capitalism. In the social science literature it is usually defined as growing interconnectedness in political, social, and cultural spheres as well as the economy, something which has been greatly facilitated by travel and communication (see Held et al. 1999). It is also sometimes used to refer to growing global consciousness, the sense of a common community of mankind (Shaw 2000; Robertson 1990).
The above proposition applies to all three senses. On the one hand, globalisation provides the bedrock for global civil society, the supply side of the phenomenon that pushes it on. There does seem to be a strong and positive correlation between what one might describe as 'clusters of globalisation' or areas of what Held et al. (1999: 21-5) call 'thick globalisation' and clusters of global civil society. In particular, one of the most striking findings of the Yearbook is that global civil society is heavily concentrated in north-western Europe,especially in Scandinavia, the Benelux countries, Austria, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Thus, for example, 60 per cent of the secretariats of INGOs are based in the European Union (Table R19 in Part IV) and one third of their membership is in western Europe (Table 1.2). In addition, over half of all parallel summits have also been organised in Europe. This area is also the most densely globalised, whether we mean the concentration of global capitalism as measured by the presence of transnational corporations and the importance of trade and foreign investment; or growing interconnectedness as measured in terms of Internet usage or outward tourism; or the growth of global consciousness as
evidenced by the absence of human rights violations, the values of tolerance and solidarity, or—more concretely—the ratification of treaties.
On the other hand global civil society is also a reaction to globalisation, particularly to the consequences of the spread of global capitalism and interconnectedness. Globalisation is an uneven process which has brought benefits to many but which has also excluded many. It is those who are denied access to the benefits of global capitalism and who remain outside the charmed circle of information and communication technology who are the victims of the process and who organise in reaction: the demand pull of global civil society. They are now also linking up with those in the North who form a new kind of solidarity movement. The old solidarity movement supported Southern aspirations for national liberation; members of this new movement seek to revitalise Southern and Northern self-determination by joining the struggle against the disempowerment and social injustice brought about by unbridled global capitalism.
This new form of activism takes place against the background of the 'development industry' and the spread of INGOs in the South for service delivery and development assistance. Together, activism and developmentalism may explain why, after Europe, the figures on INGOs show the greatest membership densities not for other advanced industrial countries but for countries in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa (see Table 1.2). The relatively low membership densities in East Asia, South Asia, and North America are to be explained, in the case of East Asia, by the relatively low degree of INGO organisation in general and, in the case of South Asia (particularly India) and the United States, by the relative lack of interest of local NGOs in global issues.
But is not only the range and density of INGO networks that matter in relationship to globalisation. Our studies of specific global issues show that global civil society is best categorised not in terms of types of actors but in terms of positions in relation to globalisation. All three of the issue chapters in the Yearbook adopt a similar categorisation of global civil society actors, as shown in the Table 1.4.
The first position is that of the supporters: those groups and individuals who are enthusiastic about globalisation, whether we are talking about the spread of global capitalism and interconnectedness or the spread of a global rule of law as well as global consciousness. They include the allies of transnational
7
Table 1.3: Focal points of globalisation, rule of law, and global civil society					
GLOBALISATION					
Top TNC host countries		Top Internet using countries		Top outbound tourism countries	
Country	Top TNC HQs	Country	Internet use	Country	Outbound
	per million		as % of		tourism
	population		population		per capita
Sweden	0.45	Sweden	56.4	Switzerland	1.72
Netherlands	0.32	United States	55.8	Austria	1.64
France	0.22	Norway	52.6	Sweden	1.29
Finland	0.19	Iceland	52.1	Poland	1.28
United Kingdom	0.19	Denmark	48.4	Hungary	1.22
Australia	0.16	Netherlands	45.8	Singapore	1.18
Germany	0.15	Singapore	44.6	Malaysia	1.16
Japan	0.13	Australia	43.9	Estonia	1.14
Canada	0.10	Finland	43.9	Germany	1.01
United States	0.10	Canada	42.8	Denmark	0.94
Italy	0.07	New Zealand	39.0	Finland	0.92
Venezuela	0.04	Austria	36.9	Lithuania	0.88
Spain	0.03	Belgium	36.3	United Kingdom	0.86
		Korea, Rep.	34.6	Ireland	0.82
		United Kingdom	33.6	Netherlands	0.82
		Switzerland	33.1	Latvia	0.80
		Japan	30.5	Belgium	0.76
		Ireland	27.5	Norway	0.70
		Germany	24.3	Canada	0.58
		Italy	23.3	Lebanon	0.39
		INTERNATIONAL	RULE OF LAW		
Top treaty ratifying countries		Top human rights respecting countries		Top transparent (non-corrupt) countries	
Country	Ratifications	Country	Mention in	Country	Corruption
	22 major		3 major		Perception
	treaties		HR reports		Index 2000
Australia	22	Canada	0	Finland	10.0
Austria	22	Costa Rica	0	Denmark	9.8
Belgium	22	Denmark	0	New Zealand	9.4
Bulgaria	22	Iceland	0	Sweden	9.4
Costa Rica	22	Luxembourg	0	Canada	9.2
Croatia	22	Mali	0	Iceland	9.1
Cyprus	22	Malta	0	Norway	9.1
Ecuador	22	Netherlands	0	Singapore	9.1
Germany	22	Samoa	0	Netherlands	8.9
Greece	22	Sao Tome & Principle	0	United Kingdom	8.7
Italy	22	Slovenia	0	Luxembourg	8.6
Luxembourg	22	Sweden	0	Switzerland	8.6
Netherlands	22			Australia	8.3
Norway	22			United States	7.8
Panama	22			Austria	7.7
Portugal	22			Hong Kong	7.7
Romania	22			Germany	7.6
Slovak Republic	22			Chile	7.4
Slovenia	22			Ireland	7.2
Spain	22			Spain	7.0
Sweden	22				
8
GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY
Top INGO host countries		Top INGO & IGO leaders suppliers		Top tolerant countries	
Country	INGO density	Country of	Leaders per	Country	% citizens
	per million of	nationality of	million of		object to
	population	leaders	population	immigrant neighbours	
Belgium	163.3	Barbados	29.6	Sweden	2.8
Luxembourg	141.5	Belgium	18.6	Iceland	3.0
Barbados	100.0	Luxembourg	18.6	Brazil	3.5
Switzerland	85.1	Iceland	14.2	Australia	4.6
Iceland	49.8	Malta	10.3	Netherlands	5.3
Denmark	46.6	Belize	10.0	Argentina	5.7
St. Lucia	44.9	Switzerland	9.2	Colombia	6.9
Fiji	41.6	Denmark	8.5	Uruguay	7.1
Netherlands	38.5	Netherlands	7.0	Luxembourg	8.4
Trinidad and Tobago	35.4	Finland	5.6	Germany	8.6
Malta	33.4	Norway	5.1	Spain	9.3
Norway	30.0	Sweden	5.1	Latvia	9.8
Sweden	28.7	United Kingdom Fiji	4.6	Switzerland	10.0
Samoa	27.8		3.7	United States	10.1
Austria	24.6	New Zealand	3.6	Peru	10.3
Finland	24.6	Austria	3.5	Albania	10.6
United Kingdom	23.1	France	3.5	Denmark	10.6
Bahrain	22.7	Guyana	3.5	Georgia	10.8
Cyprus	20.4	Ireland	3.5	Russian Federation	11.0
France	20.1	Singapore	3.3	Norway	11.2
Countries occurring in six or more of the categories are shown in bold.
For more detailed information and sources, see Tables R3, R6, R10, R11, R12, R13, R19, R22 and R26 in Part IV of this Yearbook.
business, the proponents of 'just wars for human rights', and the enthusiasts for all new technological developments. These are members of civil society, often, but not necessarily, close to governments and business, who think that globalisation in its present form is 'a jolly good thing' and that those who object just fail to understand the benefits.
The second position is that of the rejectionists: those who want to reverse globalisation and return to a world of nation-states. They include proponents of the new right, who may favour global capitalism but oppose open borders and the spread of a global rule of law. They also include leftists who oppose global capitalism but do not object to the spread of a global rule of law. Nationalists and religious fundamentalists as well as traditional leftist anti-colonial movements or communists who oppose interference in sovereignty are also included in this group. They think all or most manifestations of globalisation are harmful, and they oppose it with all their might. One might also think of this group as fundamentalists, but we rejected this term as being
judgemental. Cohen and Rai's (2000: 2) term 'transformative' was also rejected because what distinguishes these groups is that they tend to want to go backwards to an idealised version of the past rather than transform into something new.
The third position is that of the reformists, in which a large part of global civil society resides. These are people who accept the spread of global capitalism and global interconnectedness as potentially beneficial to mankind but see the need to 'civilise' the process. These are the people who favour reform of international economic institutions and want greater social justice and rigorous, fair, and participatory procedures for determining the direction of new technologies, and who strongly favour a global rule of law and press for enforcement. Reformists are a large category, which includes those who want to make specific and incremental change as well as radicals who aim at bigger and more transformative change. (Pianta believes a further distinction should be made between reformists and radicals; see Chapter 7.)
9
Table 1.4: Global civil society positions on globalisation
	Types of actors	Position on	Position on	Position on	Position on
		globalisation	plant	global finance	humanitarian
			biotechnology		intervention
Supporters	Transnational	Favour global	Favour plant	Favour	Favour 'just
	business and	capitalism and	biotechnology	de-regulation,	wars' for human
	their allies	the spread of a	developed by	free trade	rights
		global rule of	corporations, no	and free	
		law	restrictions	capital	
			necessary	flows	
Rejectionists	Anti-capitalist	Left oppose	Believe plant	Favour national	Oppose all
	social	global	biotechnology	protection of	forms of armed
	movements;	capitalism; right	is 'wrong' and	markets and	intervention in
	authoritarian	and left want to	'dangerous' and	control of	other states
	states;	preserve	should be	capital flows.	Intervention is
	nationalist and	national	abolished	Radical	imperialism or
	fundamentalist	sovereignty		rejectionists	'not our
	movements			want overthrow	business'
				of capitalism	
Reformists	Most INGOs;	Aim to 'civilise'	Do not oppose	Want more	Favour civil
	many in	globalisation	technology as	social justice	society
	international		such, but call	and stability	intervention
	institutions;		for labelling	Favour reform	and
	many social		information and	of international	international
	movements and		public	economic	policing to
	networks		participation in	institutions as	enforce
			risk assessment;	well as specific	human rights
			sharing of	proposals like	
			benefits	debt relief or	
				Tobin tax	
Alternatives	Grass roots	Want to opt out	Want to live	Pursue an anti-	Favour civil
	groups, social	of globalisation	own lifestyle	corporate life-	society
	movements and		rejecting	style, facilitate	intervention in
	submerged		conventional	colourful protest, conflicts but	
	networks		agriculture and	try to establish	oppose use of
			seeking	local alternative	military force
			isolation from	economies	
			GM food crops		
The final group we have called the alternatives: these are people and groups who neither necessarily oppose nor support the process of globalisation but who wish to opt out, to take their own course of action independently of government, international institutions, and transnational corporations. Their primary concern is to develop their own way of life, create their own space, without interference. This manifests itself in the case of biotechnology in growing and
eating organic food, with global capitalism in local money schemes, opposition to brand names, and attempts to reclaim public space, and in the case of humanitarian intervention in making non-military 'civil society interventions' in conflicts.
In other words, one way of defining or understanding global civil society is as a debate about the future direction ofglobalisation and perhaps humankind itself.
10
Proposition 3: Global civil society as a fuzzy and contested concept
Thus, we can conclude that something new and important is happening and that it has a close and multifaceted relation with globalisation, but we are still not able to map its contours satisfactorily and, even more importantly, we are still not able to find an agreed meaning for what it is that is happening. Our third proposition is that global civil society is a fuzzy and a contested concept.
Both the fuzziness and the contested character of the concept can be attributed to its newness. It is fuzzy because the boundaries of the concept are not clearly defined. Even where there is an agreed core of meaning, it is not always clear what is to be included and what is to be excluded. In part, the problem arises because the term has both normative and descriptive content and it is not always possible to find an exact correspondence between the two. But the fuzziness also arises because the concept steps over or outside many familiar social science categories that are frequently caught up with nineteenth-century notions of the nation state that have entered into common parlance. 'Social participation' is taken to mean participation in the context of a national or local society, as are political action and engagement in most social movements. By contrast, we find it difficult to think of social participation in global networks, political action in relation to global events, and movements that take on global rather than national issues. The international relations literature speaks of transnational civil society, yet at the same time there is doubt about the very existence of such a society without the presence of an effective state (Brown 2000). Sociologists identify the emergence of a world society, but many see it as little more than a thinly disguised form of US cultural dominance (Meyer, Boli, and Ramirez 1997). Economists point to the emergence of global markets and institutions for labour, finance, production, information, or e-commerce, yet critics are eager to emphasise the predominance of large corporations and the concentration of decision-making power in a handful of metropolitan areas such as New York, London, Frankfurt, and Tokyo (Hirst and Thompson 1999). Political scientists analysing the spread of democracy around the world proudly anticipate the age of global democracy, only to find that democratic participation is eroding in many countries of the West and that democracy is
frequently made subject to national interests in dealings with countries like China, Indonesia, or Russia (Forsythe 2000).
Global civil society is also a contested concept because it is new and therefore can be interpreted by both practitioners and social scientists as they choose. Or, to put it another way, the term is used differently according to political predilections and inherited understandings. Among policy-makers, especially in the West, there is a tendency to conceive of global civil society as the spread of what already exists in the West, especially in the United States, as a 'metaphor for Western liberalism' (Seckinelgin 2001). The movements that demanded civil society in Latin America and eastern Europe in the 1980s are understood as having wanted to build democracy on a western model. Support for civil society is seen as a kind of political laissez-faire, the political equivalent of neo-liberalism. Civil society is seen as a way of minimising the role of the state in society, both a mechanism for restraining state power and as a substitute for many of the functions of the state. Transposed to the global arena, it is viewed as the political or social counterpart of the process of economic globalisation, that is to say, liberalisation, privatisation, deregulation, and the growing mobility of capital and goods. In the absence of a global state, an army of NGOs performs the functions necessary to smooth the path of economic globalisation. Humanitarian NGOs provide the safety net to deal with the casualties of liberalisation and privatisation strategies in the economic field. Funding for democracy-building and human rights NGOs is supposed to help establish a rule of law and respect for human rights without taking account of the primary responsibility of the state in these areas.
Among activists, however, civil society has a different meaning. It is not about minimising the state but about increasing the responsiveness of political institutions. It is about the radicalisation of democracy and the redistribution of political power. For activists in eastern Europe or Latin America, civil society refers to active citizenship, to growing self-organisation outside formal political circles, and expanded space in which individual citizens can influence the conditions in which they live both directly through self-organisation and through pressure on the state. Transposed to a global level, this definition encompasses the need to influence and put pressure on global institutions in order to reclaim control over local political space.
11
The fact that these same words are understood in very different ways paradoxically creates a shared terrain on which individuals and representatives of organisations, institutions, and companies can communicate with each other, can engage in a common dialogue. Precisely because of these different understandings, the proponents and opponents of global capitalism can come together within what appears to be a shared discursive framework. The Yearbook is one expression of this shared terrain.
Evolution of the Concept of Global Civil Society
Both the term 'civil society' and the term 'global' have a long history stretching back to antiquity. One of the reasons it is so easy to contest contemporary meanings is that it is possible to select different classic understandings of a concept to suit current political and theoretical presuppositions. This is why it is useful to know a little more about the history of the concept, even though our version of history is selective as well.
From Greece to Scotland: civil society vs barbarians
The term 'civil society' has a direct equivalent in Latin (societas civilis), and a close equivalent in ancient Greek (politike koinona). What the Romans and Greeks meant by it was something like a 'political society', with active citizens shaping its institutions and policies. It was a law-governed society in which the law was seen as the expression of public virtue, the Aristotelian 'good life. Civilisation was thus linked to a particular form of political power in which rulers put the public good before private interest. This also very clearly implied that, both in time and in place, there were people excluded, non-citizens, barbarians, who did not have a civil society.
The term is used throughout European history, but it gained more prominence when philosophers began to contemplate the foundations of the emerging nation state in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A key assumption for the concept of civil society was the Christian notion of human equality. At that time, it was linked to the idea of a rights-based society in which rulers and the ruled are subject to the law, based on a social contract. Thus, civil society was contrasted with the state of nature, although conceptions of the state of
nature varied. For Thomas Hobbes, one of the earliest writers on civil society, the state of nature was a 'warre . . . of every man against every man' (1990: 88) and the main benefit of living in a civil society was physical security. For Locke, on the other hand, the state of nature was more prone to war than was civil society but its main characteristic was the absence of a rule of law. Locke was concerned about restraints on arbitrary power; thus the rights enjoyed in civil society also included the right to liberty and to private property.
The Scottish Enlightenment thinkers of the eighteenth century were the first to emphasise the importance of capitalism as a basis for the new individualism and a rights-based society. One of the most extensive treatments of civil society is by Adam Ferguson, in An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Ferguson 1995), first published in 1767. In this book, he tried to resurrect the Roman ideal of civic virtue in a society where capitalism was taking the place of feudalism. In order to have a civil society, men — not women, of course, in that age — need to take an active interest in the government of their polity instead of just getting rich and diverting themselves. That still has some resonance in the present use of the term. But, as for the seventeenth century writers, the dividing line for Ferguson and his contemporaries was still between civil society on the one hand and despotism or 'savage' living on the other. A problem with the modern use of 'civil society' is that we might want to preserve the connotation of non-violent interaction based on equal rights while we disavow the Euro-centric assumption of savages vs civilised people, but the two are historically connected (see for instance Comaroff and Comaroff 1999 on this line of criticism).
Hegel and de Tocqueville: civil society vs the state
Ferguson was widely translated, and made more of an impression in Germany than in Britain (Oz-Salzberger 1995: xxv). Kant and Hegel were among the readers (see Keane in Chapter 2 for a brief description of Kant's thinking on civil society). Hegel had a great deal to say about civil society, not all of which is easily understandable, but one of the most important points for the further development of the concept is that he saw civil society as something separate from, although symbiotic with, the state (Hegel 1991). Civil society for him consisted of men trading and
12
interacting socially, but it was separate from government and purely public activity. This also explains why Karl Marx, strongly influenced by Hegel, had an extremely negative view of civil society (Marx 1975). Hegel thought the pursuit of self-interest by individuals in civil society was balanced by a consciousness of interdependence and also by the role of the state as mediator. But Marx equated civil society, in its German translation 'Bürgerliche Gesellschaft', with bourgeois society, and narrowed it to only economic life in which everyone pursued his own selfish interests and became alienated from his own human potential and his fellow people. If that had remained the prevailing idea about what civil society is, we would probably not be taking such an interest in the concept today.
The other important nineteenth century thinker was Alexis de Tocqueville. In his study of democracy as practised in America, de Tocqueville argued that the guarantee of individual liberties was to be found in what he called 'democratic expedients'; these included local self-government, the separation of church and state, a free press, indirect elections, an independent judiciary, and, above all 'associational life'. In America, he was greatly impressed by the extent of associations in civil life and put forward the argument that active associations were a condition for freedom and equality. As the state took over more and more functions of daily life, as the division of labour became more complex and as demands for the redistribution of wealth increased, an active voluntary sector was necessary to provide a check on state power.
As soon as several inhabitants of the United States have taken up an opinion or a feeling they wish to promote in the world, they look for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have found one another out, they combine. From that moment they are no longer isolated men, but a power seen from afar, whose actions serve for example and whose language is listened to . . . Among the laws that rule human societies, there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all the others. If men are to remain civilised or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio as the equality of conditions is increased. (de Tocqueville 1945:117-18)
While de Tocqueville did not use the term 'civil society', his argument about the virtues of associ-ational life continues to inform modern-day thinking about it, particularly in the United States (Putnam 2000).
From Gramsci onwards: civil society between the state and the market
The concept of civil society was rescued for modern use by Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was a member of the Italian parliament and general secretary of the underground Italian Communist Party when he was arrested by Mussolini in 1926 at the age of 35. He spent the next ten years in prison, writing. In his Prison Notebooks, he also discusses civil society (Gramsci 1971). In his interpretation, he goes back from Marx to Hegel, who saw civil society as all kinds of social interaction, not just economic ones. Gramsci then goes a step further, and divorces the notion of civil society from economic interactions. He views civil society as consisting of cultural institutions, notably the church (in Italy the omnipresent church rather obviously got in the way of a purely economic, Marxist view of society), but also schools, associations, trade unions, and other cultural institutions. Gramsci is ambiguous about this civil society of his. On the one hand, it is through this cultural 'superstructure' that the bourgeois class imposes its hegemony, using it to keep the working class in its place. On the other hand, it is a kind of wedge between the state and the class-structured economy, which has the revolutionary potential of dislodging the bourgeoisie. Unlike in Russia in 1917, the revolution would not come suddenly but through a prolonged war of position, and civil society represented the trenches in which and over which this war was fought. So here one has the first germs of the idea that most people now have of civil society as 'between the state and the market. It is important to keep in mind, however, that Gramsci intended this idea of civil society, as the non-state and non-economic area of social interaction, to be only temporary and strategic, a tool in the revolutionary struggle.
The rediscovery of civil society
None of this is stated very clearly in Gramsci. It is stated confusingly, self-contradictorily, and certainly not as one of his central theses. Nevertheless, Gramsci's idea of civil society as the non-state and non-
13
economic area of social interaction, which he himself seems to contradict a few pages later in the Prison Notebooks (see for instance Gramsci 1971: 263), has become the dominant one, perhaps also because of the growing importance attached by sociologists and political thinkers to intermediate associations (Durkheim 1984). There are a few related explanations for the dominance of the Gramscian meaning. The term 'civil society' very nearly died out in west European and American political thought (see Cohen and Arato 1992: 159-74). There were some followers of Gramsci especially in the Italian and Spanish Communist parties but there was little debate or interest. When the term really resurfaces, it is with dissidents against the authoritarian state both in Latin America and in central Europe for whom the idea of civil society as something separate from the state was strategically useful (see Cohen and Arato 1992: 29-82).
In Latin America, the situation of left-wing intellectuals of the 1970s and 1980s was very similar to Gramsci's, fighting fascist dictatorships in which capitalists were by and large colluding with the state but in which, in the words of Fernando Cardoso (1979: 48), 'authoritarianism is still underdeveloped: it [the state] may kill and torture, but it does not exercise complete control over everyday life. In such states there was some room for civil society and, as Alfred Stepan (1988: 5) put it: '"Civil society" became the political celebrity of the abertura', the political opening that evolved gradually in Brazil between 1974 and 1985. Latin American thinkers, first of all in Brazil, appear to have been attracted to the idea of civil society because it was a term that could unify entrepreneurs, church groups, and labour movements in their opposition to the regime and because as a force in society it could be distinguished from political parties, which many felt had been discredited, as well as from the kind of mass mobilisation by skilful populists that had been endemic in various Latin American countries (see Stepan 1988: 3-7; O'Donnell and Schmitter 1986: 49-52; Weffort 1989).
With the central Europeans it was somewhat different. Intellectuals in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, such as Jan Tesar (1981), Vaclav Havel (1985), Gyorgi Konrad (1984) and Adam Michnik (1985) revived the term to mean autonomous spaces independent of the state; their understanding was closer to de Tocqueville's than to Gramsci's. They wanted to emphasise self-organisation, individual responsibility, the power of conscience. Thus, terms like 'anti-politics' , 'parallel polis', 'living in truth', or
the 'power of the powerless were alternative expressions of their concept of civil society (see also Cohen and Arato 1992; Keane 1988; Kaldor 1999 on the importance of these figures). Gramsci wrote (1971: 265) that
A totalitarian policy is aimed precisely:
1. at ensuring that the members of a particular party find in that party all the satisfactions that they formerly found in a multiplicity of organisations, i.e. at breaking all the threads that bind these members to extraneous cultural organisms;
2. at destroying all other organisations or at incorporating them into a system of which the party is the sole regulator.
For intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain, it was precisely the total control over all aspects of every day life that was the target of their efforts (see Arendt 1968; Lefort 1986). While state terrorism was more spectacular in Latin America, with military regimes 'disappearing' thousands of people in each country in a matter of months, civil society in the Gramscian sense was snuffed out more successfully by the longer rule and more totalitarian aspirations of communism in eastern Europe and the USSR. In a totalitarian state, where the distinction between the interests of the people and the interests of the state is categorically denied — hence 'people's republics' — central European dissidents began to believe that conceiving of 'civil society as association between people away from the tentacles of the state was the way to begin resisting the state.
The central European and the Latin American thinkers had several things in common. The way in which they conceived of civil society, it was not just a means to achieve the overthrow of the regime they lived in. They were more interested in 'reclaiming space that the authoritarian state had encroached upon than in taking over the reigns of power (see especially Havel 1985; Weffort 1989; ironically, Vaclav Havel became President of Czechoslovakia and Francisco Weffort became Brazil's Minister of Culture under Cardoso's Presidency). This space had to be kept open and alive as a necessary complement to a healthy democracy, an antidote to narrow party politics, and a bulwark against future threats to democracy.
Thinkers and activists from both regions were also strongly influenced by the idea of human rights, which had gained international prominence with the
14
adoption of US congressional legislation, the signing of the Helsinki Accords, and the entry into force of the two main UN human rights conventions, all in the mid-1970s. In their thinking, individual human rights and civil society together were the complements and guarantors for effective democracy.
Finally, while very much focused on curing their national societies, opposition figures from both regions also learned the value of international solidarity. It was strategically necessary for them to link up with others across borders, with those who could speak up for them in international forums, who could criticise the policy of their own governments towards these dictatorships, and, last but not least, who could fund them (see Keck and Sikkink 1998: 79-120 for the Latin-American networks, and Kaldor 1999 for the European ones).
After Latin America and central Europe, the civil society idea has been spreading like wildfire. On the one hand, it has increasingly occupied the emancipatory space left by the demise of socialism and national liberation. Particularly in dictatorships or countries emerging from dictatorship, people have apparently felt the relevance of the concept: in the Philippines and South Korea, in South Africa, and in the Arab world. It has become equally popular, however, in places that have not recently experienced dictatorship, in western Europe and North America but also in India, for instance. In western Europe and North America this has something to do with concern over the erosion of democracy through the apathy and disillusionment of the electorate. The idea of civil society is seen as a way of revitalising democracy. In recent decades, fewer and fewer people have been joining political parties, and more have joined environmental, peace, and human rights groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, Amnesty International, and the anti-nuclear movement. The name increasingly given to this phenomenon is 'civil society'. Both the leftist great hopes of the all-powerful, all-providing state and the rightist belief that leaving everything to the market delivers benefits to all have lost appeal. While politicians have invented the 'Third Way', many people now seem to be placing their hopes for society in this 'third force'.
On the other hand, the concept has also been taken up by Western governments and international institutions who understand civil society as 'catching up' with the west and who find the concept useful for implementing programmes of economic and
political reform. After the end of the cold war, ideological objections to cooperation with citizens groups dissolved and it became more difficult to ally with authoritarian governments—something which had earlier been possible under the cold war umbrella. Cooperation with civil society was seen as way to legitimise programmes of economic reform and to stabilise market societies. This also provides a rather more cynical explanation for the spread of 'civil society' in the developing world: since donors have adopted the dogma that strengthening civil society is good for development, using the language of civil society is good for funding applications.
Descriptive and normative conceptions
One thing that helps to explain the present universal popularity of 'civil society' is its very fuzziness: it can be all things to all people. In particular, there is a conflation of an empirical category, which is often referred to as NGOs or the non-profit or voluntary sector, with a political project. In the first meaning, it is simply a label for something that is out there, a category, that is both non-profit and nongovernmental. On the other hand, in the way the central Europeans and Latin Americans were using it, it is more a political project, a sphere through which to resist, pressure, or influence the state and increasingly also the market. This ideal type can have various characteristics, all of which are hotly debated.
First, it is argued that the fact that people are getting together regularly for a variety of purposes, from playing cards to saving the environment, generates trust between people in a society. This is also referred to as 'social capital' (Putnam, 2000; Fukuyama 1995). More politically minded proponents usually insist (like Adam Ferguson) that civil society consists of active citizens who take an interest in public affairs. Also based partly on the classical, eighteenth century notion, civil society can be seen as essentially non-violent and resisting violence, for instance through Gandhian forms of civil disobedience. Finally—and this is a more modern component of the ideal—being part of civil society is sometimes seen as a commitment to common human values that go beyond ethnic, religious, or national boundaries.
The problem with a purely normative definition of civil society is, however, that defending civil society as a 'good thing' threatens to become tautological: civil society is a good thing because it espouses the
15
values we hold. Anyone who fails to hold these values is not part of civil society. And whose values are these? The desirability of absolute non-violence, for instance, is not something everyone agrees about. And are nationalist and fundamentalist movements part of civil society? Where and how do we draw boundaries?
Emergence of global civil society
Until recently, civil society was primarily thought of as a national concept (yet another consequence perhaps, of the methodological nationalism of the social sciences referred to below). In reality, of course, self-organised non-profit associations and social movements have been networking across borders for nearly two centuries, even if this has dramatically accelerated in recent decades. But an important point about the way in which central European and Latin American intellectuals began to talk of civil society is that they made this transnationality a central element in it. This goes quite against Ferguson and his contemporaries, for whom defining civil society was part of building the concept of the nation state. It also differs from the line starting with Hegel, in which an abstract civil society-state dialectic is paramount and the idea of cross-links with other civil societies and other states is not considered. But for those dissidents in the 1980s it was strategically necessary to link up with others across borders. Keck and Sikkink (1998: 13) have described this as the 'boomerang pattern.' When it comes to human rights, the problem is very much national, but the solution lies partly in finding allies beyond one's own dictatorial state. In both Latin America and Central Europe the cold war was understood as a key component of authoritarianism, a way in which repression was legitimised. The Latin American dictators made an ideology of their national security doctrines, while the east Europeans were crushed in the name of the struggle against Western imperialism. Hence, crossing borders to oppose the cold war, especially in Europe, was an important element of the citizens' struggle against dictatorship; this is why in Europe the term 'pan-European civil society' preceded 'global civil society'.
Environmental groups have always stressed the transnational nature of their activism, for a slightly different reason. For them, the problems are global. One Chernobyl, or one state's misbehaviour on CO2 emissions, affects us all. It is perhaps with them that the talk of 'one world' and 'global solutions'
originated (Lipschutz 1996; Wapner 1996). The newer anti-capitalist movement has taken the same tack. In fact, one of its slogans is 'Globalise the resistance. In the 1990s, that deliberate transnationality also takes on more than a strategic meaning, however, it becomes a moral-political statement against ethnic nationalism and religious fundamentalism.
Transnational vs global
Many authors are referring to the new phenomenon we discuss in this Yearbook as 'transnational civil society' (Florini 2000; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Smith et al. 1997). They say that 'global civil society' sounds too grandiose; in the sense of something that really brings together people from every part of the globe, it just isn't there, and it is not inevitably going to be there either. In the empirical sense, they have a point. Some parts of the world are much more linked up than others. There are few links with Equatorial Guinea or Mongolia. We nevertheless prefer to speak of a 'global civil society', for three reasons.
First, while 'global civil society' may overstate what is really out there, 'transnational civil society' understates it. All one needs to be transnational is a single border-crossing. In that sense, as we outlined above, civil society has been transnational for at least 200 years. 'Transnational' does nothing to capture the revolution in travel and communications but also the opening up of many formerly closed societies that has really made civil society much more global in the last ten years than it has ever been before.
Second, only 'global civil society' can be posed as a counterweight to 'globalisation'. Both are just processes. If formal democracy remains confined to the level of the state, while various economic, political, and cultural activities are indeed going global, then only a global civil society can call them to account. While we believe that globalisation has both good and bad sides, representation of citizens' interests becomes a problem when the market and other transnational phenomena take over from the state. Corporations are not democratically elected, and while there are now more democratically elected national governments than ever before, citizens have no direct control over what these governments do at the now all-important international level. A world government with a world parliament is one utopia, of course, but like earlier utopias could easily turn into global totalitarianism. Global civil society, on the other hand, may be a more viable way of 'taming',
16
'humanising', 'calling to account', indeed 'civilising' globalisation.
Third, the term 'global civil society' has a normative aspiration that 'transnational civil society' does not. Just as the term 'human rights' has a universalistic intent that 'civil rights' lacks, global civil society can be seen as an aspiration to reach and include citizens everywhere and to enable them to think and act as global citizens. Some of the literature on globalisation stresses the emergence of a global consciousness, an 'imagined community of mankind' (Shaw 2000; Robertson 1990). In particular, two world wars and the threat of a nuclear war generated this global consciousness; the holocaust and Hiroshima have become global collective memories. In this sense, global civil society is an expression of that consciousness even if the participants cannot travel or even use the telephone.
Definitions
As in the case of national civil societies, part of the attraction of the term 'global civil society' is that different people feel at home with different conceptions of it. This Yearbook reflects that diversity. Rather than providing a definitive definition of global civil society, it has been our intention as editors to offer this and future Yearbooks as a continuing platform for an exchange of ideas about the meaning of 'global civil society'. We have opted for this approach because we believe that debating what global civil society means contributes to the emergence of an animated, open, and self-reflexive global civil society.
For our table programme in Part IV of the Yearbook, 'Records of Global Civil Society', however, we had to operationalise the concept. We have chosen the following, purely descriptive, definition: global civil society is the sphere of ideas, values, institutions, organisations, networks, and individuals located between the family, the state, and the market and operating beyond the confines of national societies, polities, and economies. While we recognise that global civil society is ultimately a normative concept, we believe that the normative content is too contested to be able to form the basis for an operationalisation of the concept. We do give attention to the normative dimensions of global civil society in our table programme, but it would go against our conception of global civil society as an open, contested, and contestable concept to
fill in this normative content in any definite way (see Anheier in Part IV of this Yearbook).
Other authors in this Yearbook have chosen different interpretations. In Chapter 7, for instance, Mario Pianta appears at first to adopt a similar definition: 'the emerging global civil society has to be conceptualised, with all its ambiguities and blurred images, as the sphere of cross-border relations and collective activities outside the international reach of states and markets' (p. 171). However, he then hones in on a narrow, more political and more normative characterisation:
'Despite extreme heterogeneity and fragmentation, much of the activity in the sphere of global civil society consists of what Richard Falk (1999: 130) has termed "globalisation from below", a project whose "normative potential is to conceptualise widely shared world order values: minimising violence, maximising economic well-being, realising social and political justice, and upholding environmental quality"' (p. 171).
In Chapter 2, on the other hand, John Keane takes a much more holistic approach. He thinks the trend, beginning with Gramsci, to consider commercial life as not part of (global) civil society, has been a mistake. Other authors oscillate between these and other definitions, emphasising different aspects of global civil society such as its struggle against unbridled global capitalism (Desai and Said, Chapter 3), its attempts to understand, resist, or democratise a new science like biotechnology (Osgood, Chapter 4), its responses to the challenge of violent conflicts (Kaldor, Chapter 5), its pioneering of information and communications technology (Naughton, Chapter 6), and the way it gets funded (Pinter, Chapter 8).
Describing Global Civil Society: The Challenge of Methodological Nationalism
The concept global civil society is not only difficult to define and to fit into conventional social science terminology, it is also difficult to measure using standard systems of social and economic accounts. By and large, all these systems tend to be territorially bounded.
To see how national and international statistical offices find it difficult to think about a world that is
17
no longer made up of national societies and domestic economies as major building blocks,1 let's consider the economic statistics and the System of National Accounts (SNA) (United Nations 1993). This example illustrates both the problem and the potential strategy towards a solution for the purpose of measuring global civil society.
Adding the gross national product of all national economies of the world's 180 plus countries would yield the approximate monetary value of global economic activity. Yet this value would not be the same as the size of the globalised economy, nor would it be identical to the value of the total international economy. The national economy would be conceptualised and measured with the help of the SNA; the international economy would be indicated, on the assumption that the national economy is the unit of analysis, by import-export statistics and the rest-of-the-world accounts in the SNA. Yet the SNA is of little help when it comes to the globalised economy, which involves integrated finance, production, and distribution systems across many countries and spanning different regions and continents. Such globalised elements of the economy emerge from the integrated economic activities of separate or joined-up businesses across countries, and it is these elements that go unnoticed in conventional economic statistics. Thus, the term global economy is outside the SNA's conceptual and empirical space.
What becomes clear in the case of the SNA could be demonstrated with many other statistical systems. It is basically the insight that the sequence 'national — international — global' is not a linear extension of the same data. The sequence contains an important qualitative difference that escapes international statistical systems—a difference that becomes fundamental once the nation state or the national economy is no longer the frame of reference for what is to be measured. Three very different examples might help illustrate the gap in information about the emerging institutional infrastructure and values of global civil society.
1. In recent decades, international NGOs have become an important relay in funding flows from OECD countries to developing countries and the transition economies in central and eastern Europe (Anheier and Salamon 1998; Smillie 1995; Pinter 2001). These funding flows involve bilateral and multilateral aid in addition to private philanthropic and other non-profit contributions as well as
corporate finance. Yet no international statistical agency collects systematic information on the full network in financial intermediation of NGOs, including the role of grant-making foundations (Anheier and List 2000). Data focus on either the country origin or the recipient country, leaving the intermediary role of NGOs unspecified (see OECD 1997; also Chapter 8 by Frances Pinter). The state-to-state view of statistical reporting prevails, thus ignoring the fact that an increasing portion of aid flows via private organisations.
2. The rise and continuing expansion of multinational corporations, international organisations, and international NGOs brought with it growing numbers of professionals who increasingly spend large parts of their working lives in organisations, working environments, and cultures that may have little connection with their specific country of origin. While these 'international professional migrants' may be less numerous than the mass of low-income workers moving from the South to the North, their numbers are even less systematically recorded despite their immense economic importance and impact on an emerging global culture.
3. The 'small world' experiments in sociology have shown that a randomly selected number of citizens in OECD countries could with some degree of probability reach any other randomly selected fellow citizen in fewer than five steps by going through a sequence of personal contacts (Kochen 1989; Wasserman and Faust 1994: 53-4). Numerous other studies in social network analysis have demonstrated the importance and implications of 'connectedness' for the functioning of local communities, for getting jobs, for social mobilisation, and for the spread of information and innovations of all kinds (Powell and Smith-Duerr 1994). Increasingly, with greater mobility and migration, and better and cheaper technology, these contacts reach across borders and people's life takes place in networks that span different countries, cultures, and continents (Castells 1996). Yet this global connectedness, crucial for social cohesion, political mobilisation, the flow of information, and, particularly, economic and cultural change, remains uncharted by official statistics and only superficially explored by the social sciences.
There are some parallels between today's situation and the struggle in the late Middle Ages encountered with the concepts and imagery of the emerging modern world of the Renaissance, so aptly described by historians like Huizinga (1954) and Crosby (1997) and sociologists such as Elias (1982).
18
Although we could add more, these examples should suffice to show the growing awareness about the emergence of an economic, social, political, and cultural sphere above and beyond the confines of national economies, societies, polities, states, and cultures. At the same time, this awareness is accompanied by some unease and sometimes even defensiveness: many conventional concepts and terminology based on the nation state and national economy and society fall short in their ability to capture global civil society. Given the lack of adequate conceptual development, theories are few and better explanations continue to be frustrated by a paucity of systematic data and empirical information that can be used as evidence. Simply put: existing statistical systems are based on the notion of the nation state—a unit that seems ill-suited for the kinds of data and information needed for mapping and measuring global civil society.
Once fully developed, however, the information included in the Yearbook is to provide the beginnings of a systematic profile of the contours, composition, and developments of global civil society. It is our hope that over time the data presented in the various chapters and the tables and chronology in Part IV, updated annually, will become a central reference point for empirical and theoretical work on global civil society. We also hope that this information will be of use to policy-makers and practitioners.
Chapter Conclusions
Apart from the three general conclusions that have emerged from this book, set out above, some powerful specific conclusions can also be drawn on the basis of the different chapters.
In Chapter 2, John Keane draws attention to the role of global civil society as an antidote to violence and hubris. While global civil society can occasionally be helpless in the face of violence and can be hubristic itself, its strength lies in its ability to call power-holders to account, thus inching the world towards greater parity, openness, and humility.
In Chapter 3, Meghnad Desai and Yahia Said describe how formerly marginal anti-capitalist movements from different regions and with different priorities have come together to form a cacophonous but loud and consistent call of protest. Global capitalism must either learn to seriously engage with these protests and join in the attempt to civilise
globalisation, or prepare for more massive and more violent protests ahead.
In Chapter 4, Diane Osgood points out that, in the debate on plant biotechnology, lack of a common language and hence of agreed priorities has prevented trusted leaders from emerging, and that this problem is likely to be exacerbated as the technology develops. Civil society leaders need to 'speak science' and scientists need to learn to 'speak society'. A more respectful dialogue must take the place of the scaremongering on the one side and contempt on the other, which has characterised too much of the debate so far.
In Chapter 5, Mary Kaldor describes how, largely due to the efforts of global civil society, the notion of humanitarian intervention has taken the place of a state-centred ideology in which sovereignty overruled all humanitarian and human rights considerations in international relations. She goes on to discuss how, as the international community blundered its way through a number of conflicts in the 1990s, global civil society has remained deeply divided over the questions whether, how, and when military force should be used for humanitarian purposes. The most viable form of humanitarian intervention in the future may be a long-term international presence in conflict-prone areas that includes civil society actors, international agencies, and international peace-keeping troops on a much larger scale than has been the case so far, coupled with a readiness to risk the lives of peacekeeping troops to save the lives of others where this is necessary.
In Chapter 6, John Naughton describes how global civil society has taken to the Internet with its libertarian ethos, its decentralised architecture, and its low operating costs like a duck to water over the last decade. However, these characteristics of the Internet are not intrinsic: they are man-made and they can be changed. States are adopting legislation to restrict freedom of expression on the Internet, and corporations are inventing technology to undermine the anonymity of the Internet in the interests of e-commerce. Global civil society needs to wake up to these threats and respond to them in two ways. First, it must begin to consider Internet freedoms as an advocacy issue instead of as an instrument it can take for granted. Second, it must stay one step ahead of governments and corporations in helping to develop and adopt new advances in the technology that can reinforce its subversive, liberating character.
19
In Chapter 7, Mario Pianta has undertaken a survey of global civil society's parallel summits to official summits. He draws the following broad conclusion: official summits that are only framing issues are most likely to be open to dialogue with global civil society as represented in the parallel summit; summits in charge of rule making or setting policy will be less so; and summits with enforcing power tend to be closed to civil society influence. Global civil society is not going to take such treatment from the second and third categories lying down, however. It will continue to contest unaccountable decision-makers by convening parallel summits, if necessary by defying restrictions imposed by local authorities or by convening them in a different place from the official summit.
In Chapter 8, Frances Pinter attempts to chart the primary sources of funding of global civil society organisations and the ways in which different types of bodies get funded. She notes that there is a growing convergence around a handful of core issues among the major donors which can be interpreted variously as evidence of an emerging cultural cosmopolitan consensus or of a move towards a domesticated, donor-led global civil society that is subservient to the dictates of global capitalism. She also concludes, however, that money alone can't buy you global civil society: human, social, organisational, and informational resources are at least equally essential.
These studies are beginning to give us some insight into what global civil society is concerned about, and how it works. In the second Yearbook, these and other cartographers will be mapping further aspects of the 'conceptual island' that is global civil society. This first Yearbook is just the beginning of a process that we hope will enable us to understand and describe this new phenomenon called 'global civil society'.
References
Anheier, H. K. and List, R. (2000). Cross-Border Philanthropy: An Exploratory Study of International Giving in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany and Japan. West Malling, Kent: Charities Aid Foundation, Centre for Civil Society and The Johns Hopkins University.
Anheier, Helmut K. and Salamon, Lester M. (1998). The Nonprofit Sector in the Developing World. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Arendt, Hannah (1968). The Origins of
Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovitch.
Beck, Ulrich (2000). 'The Postnational Society and its Enemies. Public lecture, London School of Economics and Political Science, 24 February.
Brown, Chris (2000). 'Cosmopolitanism, World Citizenship, and Global Civil Society'. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 3: 7-26.
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique (1979). 'On the Characterization of Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America', in David Collier (ed.), The New Authoritarianism in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Castells, Manuel. (1996). The Rise of Network Society. Oxford: Blackwells.
Charnovitz, Steve (1997). 'Two Centuries of Participation: NGOs and International Governance. Michigan Journal of International Law, 18: 183-286.
Chatfield, Charles (1997). 'Intergovernmental and Nongovernmental Associations to 1945', in Jackie Smith et al., Transnational Social Movements and World Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Cohen, Jean L. and Arato, Andrew (1992). Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cohen, Robin and Rai, Shirin M (eds) (2000). Global Social Movements. London: Athlone Press.
Comaroff, John L. and Comaroff, Jean (1999). Civil Society and the Political Imagination
in Africa: Critical Perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Crosby, Alfred (1997). A Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society 1250-1600. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Durkheim, Emile (1984). The Division of Labour in
Society [De la Division du Travail Social] (2nd
edn). Basingstoke: Macmillan. Elias, Norbert (1982). The Civilising Process (two
vols). New York: Pantheon Falk, Richard (1999). Predatory Globalisation: A
Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press.
20
Ferguson, Adam (1995[1767]). An Essay on the History of Civil Society (ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Florini, Ann M. (ed.) (2000). The Third Force: The Rise of Transnational Civil Society. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Forsythe, David (ed.) (2000). Human Rights and
Comparative Foreign Policy. Tokyo, New York:
United Nations University Press. Fukuyama, Francis (1995). Trust: The Social Virtues
and the Creation of Prosperity. London: Hamish
Hamilton.
Gramsci, Antonio (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith). London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Havel, Vaclav (1985). The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe. London: Hutchinson.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1991[1820]). Elements of the Philosophy of Right (ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Held, David, McGrew, Anthony Goldblatt, David, and Perraton, Jonathan (1999). Global Transformations. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hirst, P. and Thompson, G. (1999). Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hobbes, Thomas (1990[1650]). Leviathan (ed. Richard Tuck). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huizinga, J. (1954). The Waning of the Middle Ages. New York: Doubleday.
Kaldor, Mary (1999). Bringing Peace and Human Rights Together (Public Lecture No. 9, The Ideas of 1989 Lecture Series). London: Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics.
Keane, J. (ed.) (1988), Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives. London: Verso.
— (1998). Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Keck, Margaret E. and Sikkink, Kathryn (1998). Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Kochen, Manfred (ed.) (1989). The Small World. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Press.
Konrad, Gyorgy (1984). Anti-Politics. London: Quartet Books.
Lefort, Claude (1986). The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism (ed. and introduced by John Thompson). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lipschutz, Ronnie D. with Mayer. Judith (1996). Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance: The Politics of Nature from Place to Planet. New York: SUNY Press.
Marx, Karl (1975). 'On the Jewish Question', in Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, Marx and Engels 1843-1844 (Collected Works, Vol. 3). London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Meyer, J., Boli, J., Ramirez, F. (1997). 'World Society and the Nation State. American Journal of Sociology, 103: 144-81.
Michnik, Adam (1985). 'The New Evolutionism', in Letters from Prison and Other Essays. Berkeley and London: California University Press.
O'Donnell, Guillermo and Schmitter, Philippe (1986). Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
OECD (1997). Geographical Distribution of Financial Aid to Developing Countries. Paris: OECD.
Oz-Salzberger, Fania (1995). 'Introduction', in Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pinter, Frances (2001). 'The Role of Foundations in the Transformation Process in Central and Eastern Europe', in Andreas Schlüter, Volker Then, and Peter Walkenhorst (eds), Foundations in Europe: Society, Management and Law. London: Directory of Social Change.
Putnam, Robert D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Powell, Walter and Smith-Duerr, Laurel (1994). 'Networks and Economic Life', in Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg (eds), The Handbook of Economic Sociology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Robertson, R. (1990). Globalisation: Social and Cultural Theory. London: Sage.
21
Salamon, L. M. and Anheier, H. K. (1997). Defining
the Nonprofit Sector. Manchester: Manchester
University Press. Salamon, L. M., Anheier, H. K., List, R., Toepler, S.,
Sokolowski, S. W. and Associates (1999). Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Non-profit
Sector. Baltimore. MA: Johns Hopkins University,
Institute for Policy Studies' Center for Civil
Society Studies. Scholte, Jan (1999). 'Globalisation Prospects for a
Paradigm Shift , in M. Shaw (ed.), Politics and
Globalisation. London: Routledge. Seckinelgin, Hakan (2001). 'Civil Society as a
Metaphor for Liberalism. Conference paper for
the International Studies Association, Hong
Kong, July 2001. Shaw, Martin (2000). Theory of the Global State:
Global Reality as an Unfinished Revolution.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smillie, Ian (1995). The Alms Bazaar: Altruism
Under Fire: Non-Profit Organizations and
International Development. London:
Intermediate Technology Publications. Smith, Jackie, Charles Chatfield, and Ron Pagnucco
(ed.) (1997). Transnational Social Movements
and World Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State.
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Stepan, Alfred (1988). Rethinking Military Politics:
Brazil and the Southern Cone. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press. Tesar, Jan (1981). 'Totalitarian Dictatorships as a
Phenomenon of the Twentieth Century and the
Possibilities for Overcoming Them. International
Journal of Politics, 11/1: 85-100. Tocqueville, Alexis de (1945[1835]). Democracyin
America. New York: Vintage Books. UIA (Union of International Associations)
(1905-1999/2000). Yearbook of International
Organizations: Guide to civil society networks.
Munich: K. G. Saur. UN (United Nations) (1993). System of National
Accounts. New York: United Nations. See also
http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/sna/ sna1-en.htm Wapner, Paul (1996). Environmental Activism and
World Civic Politics. New York: SUNY Press. Wassermann, Stanley and Faust, Katherine (1994).
Social Network Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Weffort, Francisco (1989). 'Why Democracy?', in
Alfred Stepan (ed.), Democratizing Brazil:
Problems of Transition and Consolidation. New
York: Oxford University Press. Zerubavel, Eviatar (1991). The Fine Line: Making
Distinctions in Everyday Life. New York: Free Press.
22