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CHAPTER 6. Global Civil Society: Transforming Sovereignty and Building Democracy?
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C H A P T E R 6 Global Civil Society: Transforming Sovereignty and Building Democracy? In this chapter, we return to our initial queries outlined in chapter 1: does a global civil society exist? If so, has it had an impact on the democratization of world politics, either in the development of an alternative nongovernmental global public sphere or in new global state-society relations? How do changes in global social forces reflect and reinforce changes in statehood and politics at the international level, especially changes in the meaning of state sovereignty ? Having examined six global conferences of the 1990s sponsored by the UN, we offer some conclusions here. The very idea underlying the UN issue conferences is that nation -states cannot and should not try to resolve certain emerging global issues alone, but should do so in the context of collective debate and resolution for action. The format of UN conferences was not designed to mandate the participation of non-state actors, but nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been pushing against the limits on their participation at least since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Certainly by the Rio conference in 1992, states had to understand that calling a global conference among states also issued a shadow invitation to a plethora of non-state actors who would show up in droves to work against nation-state prerogatives and for universal values. Some did so by lobbying governmental representatives, while others preferred to devote their energies to networking among themselves. In these ways, simply calling and participating in a global UN 157 conference posed inherent challenges to the sovereignty and centrality of nation-states. Some states embraced these challenges to varying degrees, while others strongly resisted them. In our investigation we have found the following patterns of participation and responses, which we will evaluate with regard to their broader implications for the developments of global civil society, sovereignty, and democracy. A Global Civil Society? The global dimension of global civil society queries whether NGO participants in world politics are geographically diverse, based in multiple world regions and countries. This dimension is important for assessing the nature of any emerging global civil society . A “global” civil society dominated by just one world region would raise serious questions about the representativeness of this new sector. At the UN conferences of the 1990s, this component was the one that was most nearly achieved. NGOs from all over the world indeed made their way to regional and global preparatory conferences as well as to the final conferences themselves. Total numbers of participants varied, with the largest numbers in Rio in 1992 (18,000) and in Copenhagen (12,000) and Beijing (30,000) in 1995. Few government delegations from any part of the world could hope to avoid pressures from domestic NGOs even as they met far from home, and the parallel NGO fora showcased a diverse array of languages , traditions—and preoccupations. As discussed in chapter 2, Northern NGOs often numerically predominated and took a leading role in lobbying government delegations. But NGOs from other regions also strongly presented their sometimes opposing positions, and the ensuing debates and networks among a wide variety of NGOs provided much of the spark and innovation of the global gatherings. Chapter 3, which focuses on Latin American participation, shows that the increasingly global nature of NGO participation was not accidental and suggests ways in which even more representative participation could be achieved. The overwhelming presence of Latin Americans at the only conference in their region— they formed 40 percent of NGO participants in Rio de Janeiro—endorses the UN strategy of locating its conferences and activities in different parts of the world. In addition, the regional 158 Sovereignty, Democracy, and Global Civil Society [52.90.40.84] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:56 GMT) preparatory conferences were important for early articulations among regional NGOs, who typically went home to recruit more participants for subsequent meetings. Finally, chapter 3 stresses the important role that NGOs from other world regions played in encouraging Latin American NGO participation and in supporting their positions. A variety of governments also supported specific NGO positions or insisted on greater NGO access, which helped legitimize and encourage broader NGO participation. Together, chapters 2 and 3 offer strong evidence against characterizations of global civil society as “heavily concentrated in north-western Europe ” (Anheier, Glasius, and Kaldor 2001:7). The civil component of global civil society is the one that is most focused on...