Towards A Global Civil Society? - Challenges

From: http://hiidunia.blogspot.com

Many challenges and obstacles present themselves to the formation of an effective global civil structure. Many modern writers doubt that it can be achieved at all, and point to the wide socio-economic differences dividing nations and nation-based civic groups.

Some argue that global issues which seem to instantly bond civic groups such as Land mines and the environment must not be romanticised, and that with regard to NGOs operating together on the global stage the following questions should be addressed;

• Legitimacy – Who speaks for whom, and how are differences of opinion resolved where individual participants vary in strength and resources?

• Accountability – Who enjoys the benefits and suffers the costs of what the alliance achieves, especially at grassroots level?

• Structure – how does an NGO deal with the challenges of genuinely international governance, decision making and communication?

• Strategy – The need to develop more rigorous arguments and more credible alternatives as a contribution to policy debates.

A difference such as the perceived north-south divide is one such issue that incorporates many of the factors above and this does come to the fore at UN conferences for example. The northern actors, normally the ones with more money and resources are therefore more able to guide the debate and to also set its parameters. Southern actors often feel isolated and excluded from the decision making process at the pre-conference ‘Prepcoms’.

This common split at UN conferences highlights a possible ‘spanner in the works’ of attempting to achieve a global civil society. To what extent national based NGOs can come to a global consensus on issues when differing parts of the world have differing priorities is an important point.

Early international conferences have resulted in large differences being detected between northern and southern NGOs. These differences were particularly pronounced in the area of womans rights, where the distinction with human rights was often blurred. However with the ending of the Cold War and increased connectivity between Northern and Southern groups many of these differences became less detectable. Networking between groups can help prevent isolation and the groups from becoming weak. The World Social Forum is an important actor in boosting the profile and interconnectedness of particularly Southern NGOs.

These networks are not, however, without their faults, and do represent at times another clear challenge to a global civil society. This is because to network requires resources that many organisations do not have. The inability of Southern actors for example to match the resources of the North in terms of communication and travel, amongst other things, causes a global disparity. Differences of opinion and differing priorities exist within the networks too.

Southern NGOs are given limited voice on a global level because donors focus to a large extent on their domestic roles. Therefore southern groups are handicapped to an extent when forging transnational links, limiting international co-operation and in their lobbying potential to the International Organisations. The challenge of building long term constituencies for international co-operation as a prerequisite of global governance structures has also by passed many, in particular northern NGOs with their focus on problems in the developing world instead of structural changes at home.

By the 1990s there was a much more visible and quantifiable common thread of understanding and little sign of the north/south divide which had been evident during much of the time before 1989. Capacity building is more in evidence not only in the north but also particularly in the south, as civil society groups and businesses take on the roles of intermediary NGOs. This sustainability is important to achieve for the southern actors as there is often limited funding and even the record of the northern NGOs is poor in the area of financial sustainability.

In fact, financial sustainability might be exacerbated by the rise of a global civil society. With the proliferation of NGOs and increased levels of government aid spending in the north, especially being given through these organisations, NGO funding is disseminated more and more. Only a handful of governments meet the United Nations recommended 0.7% of GDP, however many argue that international co-operation has increased because of the direct funding of NGOs by governments.

The culture of a state, network or international organisation is an important factor to the composition, size and behaviour of its civil society. For example, though France and Japan are two modern democracies they have comparatively small civil society and NGO networks. In Canada, by way of contrast, civil society organisations are integrated into its taxation and governance systems to large degree and consequently can do more and act differently than other civil societies. The nature to which a state’s culture can permeate its outlook is outlined by Jan Aart Scholte writing for Government and Opposition; “The authoritarian heritage of tsarist and communist regimes has done much to keep civil society at bay in contemporary ‘democratic’ Russia.” Some political cultures have a strong tradition of political activism, whereas in others deference is shown to those in authority. In some states where governments are seen as being corrupt, this view may be extended to those working for civil societies, as all those seen to be in authority may be regarded with suspicion.

Encounters between state-dominated international politics and global civil politics are, however, widespread. As Ann Marie Clark writing in a paper for World Politics notes;

“A well developed civil society potentially influences government in two ways. It enhances political responsiveness by aggregating and expressing the wishes of the public through a wealth of nongovernmental forms of association, and it safeguards public freedom by limiting the government’s ability to impose arbitrary rule by force”

States can still sanction the use of violence within their paradigm. It remains to be seen whether or not global civil society can muster a break from the use of violence. In the paradigm of northern civil society organisations some organisations still sanction violence in order to achieve their goals. Some environmental, animal rights and indigenous rights groups have resorted to violence in the past, impacting to varying degrees upon their internation reputations.

The issue of violence for forging a global civil society is a problematic one. As these articles have discussed, by the very nature of a diverse global civil society the wide range of groups and norms that it incorporates mean that differences of approach and of methodology can be widespread. If we take as an example the Zapatista movement in the southern Mexican region of Chiapas, we would find a movement which would be recognised as a civil movement in North America and much of Europe, but also an organisation which bears arms and has been in military rebellion against the Mexican state. Despite this method, it is important to include them in the paradigm of global civil society, however, as they do not seek control of the Mexican state nor formal succession from it, and the stated goals of the organisation are that of land rights for the indigenous population of that region.

The support and the sympathy evident for a movement such as the Zapatistas internationally was created largely thanks to the linkages that the movement, with its global outreach, has established globally to many NGO’s and social groups around the world, most of whom would never advocate violence in pursuit of their own goals.

However, in regard to violence there is a vast difference between the normative paradigm of the state and that of global civil society. This is because in most cases the state was formed through violence and lends itself to violence when it can see no other way of establishing its will. As Scott Turner points out; “It is all too rarely noticed that the greatest perpetrators of violence in the world are not street criminals or terrorists, but rather that much taunted source of law and order the sovereign state.”

Some may argue that civil society, given its broadest definition, does use violence as a legitimate tool. The Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, the Zapatistas of Mexico and Hamas in Palestine all, it can be argued, are broadly civil movements which all adhere to violence as well as other means to secure their aims. It is possible, therefore, that different discourses of subjects lend themselves more to violence. The Zapatistas’ struggle with the Mexican state over the issue of land ownership is, some believe, more prone to violent confrontation than, for example, environmentalism. As the mainstream of global civil society is in many respects concerned with redefining the parameters of legitimacy in the long term rather than the short term, so in that case the notion of the use of violence is neither practical nor acceptable by the mainstream. This is because global public opinion is the driver for much of the discourse in global civil society because it is here that the legitimacy of claims is assessed in relation to the contrast of methods.

Public opinion in the vast majority of contexts never condones violence. If violence is perpetrated by some, then others in the same civic movement may rapidly become despondent and either a split in the movement forms or an internal power struggle may take place. Violence used by the anti-globalisation movement at protests in Seattle and in Genoa has led to splits in the movement between those who believe it is acceptable and those who believe it is damaging to the cause.

Violence is still overwhelmingly the parlance of the state however. Scott Turner writting in 1998 provides a useful illustration of the consequences of violence for civil societies with an example of farmers from San Fernando in the Philippines.

“In 1987, they accused Caridad C.Almendras Logging Enterprises of ‘ logging in critical watershed areas’ and ‘cutting undersized logs’, while it had ‘violated it’s obligations under the licensing agreement by failing to plant new trees’. After petitioning the Aquino government and receiving no response, the farmers began blocking logging trucks by sitting in the road. After twelve days, a military detachment arrived and attacked the protesters with baton sticks and reportedly inflicting wounds on 24 of he peaceful demonstrators. Media coverage of the event ultimately embarrassed the government into suspending Almendra’s logging concession in the San Fernando. Despite the state’s use of force against the protestors, they achieved their goal without resorting to violence.”

Because of the methods used by the Philippine government in dealing with the claims of the protesters outlined in the above example, public opinion turned against them. Alternatives to violence obviously exist, and civic movements across the world have become adept at focusing their members and supporters’ energies into non-violent means of getting their message across.

Other than the discourse of violence there may be other problematic areas in which defining a global civil society may be challenging. The rights of an individual, for example, whether it be set by international or national law, may at times clash with the collective rights of the social movement or organisation. In the Chiapas region of Mexico the minority Protestants have found themselves the target of discrimination or even expulsion from majority Catholic villages. This may be a political reaction, a mechanism whereby challenges to village leaders can be neutralised. However it does also demonstrate that the discourses most commonly associated with global civil society, such as the environment, human rights and indigenous rights do sometimes overlap and can act at times as a counter balance to each other.

The realist paradigm of the state is very unlike the one that the emerging global civil society exists in. Unlike the lust for power characteristics of the state, global civil society exhibits, it seems, a commitment to principles.

Global civil society’s ‘trump card’ is that it has the ability to influence public values on a global stage. It is able to bypass or operate around actions and directions as desired by the state. Since the advent of the information age public opinion has become a clear and open battle ground, with the apparatus of global civil society and its ideals often more adept at gaining the advantage over the state. As civil society in its global context is a rich tapestry involving millions of individuals acting on a global stage the consensus to violence is made much less easy to reach.

Links & Resources:

United Nations Research Institute for Social Development - (PDF) Paper looking at any North/South divide affecting NGO's and their work

Posted by Dan