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C h a p t e r 2

THE LIMITS OF GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETYNeera Chandhoke

The Three Sector Fallacy

There is something about modern modes ofanalysis—a propensity to analyse phenomena interms of discrete categories perhaps—which

attracts theorists to additive modes of social science.Thus, they first subdivide areas of collective life intoseparate spheres, endow these domains with theirdistinct logics, distinguish them from each other, andthen add them together to form a whole. Witnesshow modern social theory first separates the publicand the private, views each of these spheres aspossessing a different logic of thought and action,and then adds them together to form an entity called‘society’. The point is that, whereas in the process thepublic becomes the field of the rational, the privateis conceptualised as the site of unreflective emotionsand affections.

Now on the face of it there is nothing wrong withemploying this strategy as a heuristic device. There isabsolutely nothing wrong in conceptualising thedifferent ways in which people make their ownhistories even if they may not make those historiesvery well. The idea that whereas the state is stampedmainly by the logic of coercion, the logic of themarket is that of competition, is perfectly acceptable.We can also agree that there is a difference betweenthe community and civil society. Community as socialanthropologists tell us, represents personalised andface-to-face interactions. Relationships in civil societyon the other hand are contractual.

What is problematic is the assumption thatappears to underlie theorising in this mode, namely,that these domains of collective existence do notinfluence each other, or that they do not affect eachother, or indeed that they do not constitute in thesense of shaping each other (Chandhoke 2001). Thisis something that additive social theorists tend toignore. They should read Copernicus, who was towrite about the astronomers of his day thus: ‘Withthem it is as though an artist were to gather thehands, feet, head, and other members for his images

from diverse models, each part excellently drawn,but not related to a single body, and since they in noway match each other, the result would be a monsterrather than man’ (Kuhn 1962: 83). The same problemseems to bedevil additive social science, for in thisgenre no one category influences let alone constitutesothers, no category is central to human life, and nocategory determines how we approach othercategories of activity. The questions that immediatelyconfront us in this connection are the following: docategories of collective existence not constitute eachother? Equally, does not a single logic, that of power,underpin these categories and bind them together?

To put it plainly, the separation of collectivehuman existence into mutually exclusive spheres ofthought and action elides the way in which each ofthese domains is constructed by power, which spillingover arbitrary boundaries underpins the whole.Consider the feminist critique of the public-privatedichotomy: if we conceptualise the household as thesite of affection and emotions as different from thepower-driven state or from the competition-riddeneconomy, we end up actually legitimising patriarchalpower. For, as a microcosm of society, the householdcannot but condense the tensions of the socialformation, it cannot but be permeated by power.

Of course, power manifests itself in and throughdifferent avatars that apparently have nothing to dowith each other. For instance, globalisation, which islegitimised by its defenders as the rationalisation ofeconomic life, may seem diametrically opposed to,say, fundamentalist movements. On the face of itfundamentalist movements look as if they are a knee-jerk reaction to the globalising project and thuspossessed of a different logic. But note that both ofthese projects manifest different forms of power,simply because both limit the endeavours of humanbeings to make their own lives with some degree ofautonomy. This admittedly is difficult to fathom,simply because various forms of power not onlyappear as contradictory, oppositional, and diffused,but also happen to operate in invisible and intangible

ways that escape the human gaze. Today theorists tellus and practitioners claim that it is difficult todecipher power since it does not originate from asingle point. We have learnt that we can locate nometa-discourse but only the micro-politics of a powerthat is heterogeneous, dispersed, and even un-predictable. Nevertheless, power binds ostensiblyautonomous institutions and practices in a myriad ofways, all of which constrain human autonomy andcreativity and limit political initiatives. Power, inother words, produces identifiable effects eventhough its various manifestations do not always actin concert.

It is, however, precisely these insights that are ata discount when theorists suggest that civil societypossesses a discrete and distinct raison d’être whichmarks it out as different as well as autonomous bothfrom the state and from the market. Thus, civil societyin contemporary political theory is often posed as analternative to both the state and to the market. Itsimply emerges as the third sphere of collective life.Gordon White, for instance, conceptualises civilsociety as ‘an intermediate associational realmbetween the family and the state populated byorganisations which are separate from the state,enjoy autonomy in relation to the state and areformed voluntarily by members of society to protector extend their interests or values’ (White 1994: 379).Charles Taylor suggests that civil society is ‘thosedimensions of social life whichcannot be confounded with, orswallowed up in, the state’ (Taylor1991:171). If Axel Honneth (1993:19) thinks of civil society as ‘all civilinstitutions and organisations whichare prior to the state’, Jeffrey Isaac(1993: 356) speaks of the sphere as‘those human networks that existindependently of, if not anterior to,the political state’. Above all, JeanCohen and Andrew Arato in a ratherwell known definition, refer to a‘third realm’ differentiated from theeconomy and the state as civil society(Cohen and Arato 1992: 18). In thehands of these two authors, civilsociety as a normative moral order is diametricallyopposed to both the state and the economy.

The same kind of thinking is more than visible whenit comes to global civil society. Many theorists seem tobe of the view that global civil society represents a

‘third sector’, which can not only be distinguishedfrom but which is an alternative to both the state-centric international order and the networks of globalmarkets. Lipschutz, for instance, employs the conceptof ‘global civil society’ to indicate a plurality ofagencies such as social movements, interest groups,and global citizens. If the distinguishing feature ofthese organisations is that they defy nationalboundaries, the cornerstone of global civil society isconstituted by the ‘self-conscious construction ofnetworks of knowledge and action, [and] by de-centred local actors, that cross the reified boundariesof space as though they were not there’. Global civilsociety actors, in other words, engage in practices thatcan possibly reshape the ‘architecture’ of internationalpolitics by denying the primacy of states or of theirsovereign rights (Lipschutz 1992: 390). Other scholarsare of the opinion that the anti-state character ofglobal civil society is revealed through its projects, forexample, through the promotion of values from below,which exist in tension with dominant statistconceptions of the state system (Falk, Johansen, andKim 1993: 13–14). Or that global civil society movingbeyond ‘thin anarchical society’ is in the business ofinaugurating a post-foreign policy world (Booth 1991:540).

In other words, contemporary thinking gives us apicture of a global civil society that seems to besupremely uncontaminated by either the power of

states or that of markets. Moreover,many theorists believe that globalcivil society, consisting of trans-national non-governmental organ-isations, political activists, socialmovements, religious denominations,and associations of all stripe and hue,from trade unions to business andfinancial groupings, can neutraliseexisting networks of power byputting forth a different set of values.Global civil society (GCS), it is said,represents ‘a post realist constel-lation, where transnational associ-ational life (TAL) challenges theconceit of the state system . . . GCSis touted as the antidote for the

anarchical structure, inequality, and exclusions ofthe state system’ (Pasha and Blaney 1998: 418).

Now, it is true that global civil society organisa-tions have managed to dramatically expand theagenda of world politics by insistently casting andTH

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Contemporary

thinking gives us a

picture of a global

civil society that

seems to be

supremely

uncontaminated by

either the power of

states or that of

markets

focusing widespread attention on issues such ashuman rights, the environment, development, andbanning land mines. And all theseissues, remember, have traditionallyfallen within the province of statesovereignty. Global civil societyactors have simultaneously chal-lenged the new contours of theworld economic order as mandatedby the World Trade Organisation, theWorld Bank, and the InternationalMonetary Fund: think of the protestsagainst the global economic dis-pensation at Seattle in November1999, at Prague in September 2000,and at Genoa in 2001. But toconclude from this that these actorshave drawn up a blueprint for a newor an alternative global order, orindeed to assume that they areautonomous of both states andmarkets, may prove too hasty ajudgement.

This is not to say that global civil society can bereduced to the logic of the state-centric world orderor to the workings of the global economy. All I wishto suggest is that we should treat with a fair amountof caution the assumptions that (a) global civil societyis autonomous of other institutions of internationalpolitics, that (b) it can provide us with an alternativeto these institutions, or (c) that it can even give us adeep-rooted and structural critique of the worldorder. Global civil society may well reflect the powerconstellations of existing institutions. To put it bluntly,should our normative expectations of civil societyblind us to the nature of real civil societies whethernational or global?

In this chapter I address the concept of globalcivil society by asking two questions. The firstquestion has to do with the perennial preoccupationsof political theorists, i.e., what are the implications ofthe development of global civil society for issues ofrepresentation and political agency? After all, civilsociety in classical political theory is conceptualisedas the space where ordinary men and women throughthe practices of their daily life acquire political agencyand selfhood. Do the organisations of global civilsociety enhance this empowering process or constrainit? The second question that I wish to explore is thefollowing: to what extent can global civil society beautonomous of the state-centric world system and of

the system of markets? In other terms, can global civilsociety provide us with a third and presumably an

alternative way of organising inter-national relations? Or is it bound bythe same logic that characterises theother two systems? Just one pointhere: I take it as given that both theinternational political and theinternational economic order aredominated by the countries ofWestern Europe and by the UnitedStates. Is it possible that actors fromthe same parts of the worlddominate global civil society? Insum, rather than begin with thepresupposition that global civilsociety constitutes a third, alter-native sphere, we should perhapsexplore the context of theemergence of the sphere itself inorder to understand what preciselyit is about. We may well find that it

has thrown up genuine alternatives, or we may findthat global civil society actors work within aparticular historical conjunction: that of the post-coldwar consensus among the powerful countries in theworld. Let us see.

The Making of Global CivilSociety

The idea of internationalism has, of course, beencentral to working-class politics since the end ofthe nineteenth century. In a parallel development

Henri La Fontaine, who was awarded the Nobel PeacePrize in 1913, created the Central Office ofInternational Associations in 1907 to link up non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in differentcountries. The United Nations institutionalisedprocedures for consulting with these organisations in1945. It is estimated that whereas in 1948, 41 NGOsenjoyed consultative status with the Economic andSocial Council of the UN, by 1968 the number hadrisen to 500. By 1992 we were to see the Economicand Social Council consulting 1,000 or more NGOs.If we add to this number NGOs that interact withother bodies of the United Nations, and which oftenparticipate directly in the proceedings, the numberrises to tens of thousands (Korey 1998: 2). It isperhaps not surprising that global civil society hascome to be dominated by NGOs, even though other TH

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Can global civil

society provide us

with a third and

presumably an

alternative way of

organising

international

relations? Or is it

bound by the same

logic that

characterises the

other two systems?

actors, such as political activists networking acrossborders and anti-globalisation movements, wereplaying an important role in this sphere. It isindicative of the power of the non-governmentalsector that civil society has come to be identifiedwith NGO activism both in influential tomes on civilsociety and in policy prescriptions of internationalinstitutions today. The discussion that followstherefore shifts between NGOs and other civil societyactors, even as it recognises that NGOs play a larger-than-life role in global civil society.

It was, however, at the turn of the 1990s that wewere to witness a veritable explosion of NGOs,which, networking across national borders, propelledcritical issues onto international platforms. Thepower of global NGOs was first visible at the EarthSummit in Rio in 1992, when about 2,400 repre-sentatives of NGOs came to play a central role in thedeliberations (Anheier, Glasius, and Kaldor 2001:326). By putting forth radically different alter-natives, by highlighting issues of global concern,and by stirring up proceedings in general, theseorganisations practically hijacked the summit.Subsequently, they were given a central role in theCommittee on Sustainable Development created by

the Rio Summit. At the 1994 Cairo World PopulationConference, increasing numbers of internationalNGOs took on the responsibility of setting theagenda for discussions. And in 1995 this sectoralmost overwhelmed the Fourth World Conferenceon Women in Beijing. Almost 2,100 national andinternational NGOs, consisting largely of advocacygroups and social activists, completely dominatedthe conference (Anheier, Glasius, and Kaldor 2001:328). Since then we have seen that internationalNGOs either participate directly in internationalconferences or hold parallel conferences, whichincidentally attract more media attention thanofficial conferences. And in the process they havewon some major victories.

One of these major victories occurred when globalNGOs launched a campaign to pressurise gover-nments to draft a treaty to ban the production, thestockpiling, and the export of landmines. Almost1,000 transnational NGOs coordinated the campaignthrough the Internet. The pooling and the coordina-tion of energies proved so effective that not onlywas the treaty to ban landmines signed in 1997, butthe International Campaign to Ban Landmines and itsrepresentative Jody Williams were awarded the NobelTH

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Above: Commemoration of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre inDili. © Irene Slegt/Panos Pictures.Right: Frontline between the army and protesting studentsnear the Indonesian Parliament. © Chris Stowes/Panos Pictures.

Peace Prize. The citation at the award-giving cere-mony spoke of their unique effort that made it‘possible to express and mediate a broad wave ofpopular commitment in an unprecedented way’. Asimilar pooling of energies can be seen in the crusadethat led to the 1998 Rome Statute on an Inter-national Criminal Court (see Chapter 6).

Other triumphs followed in the field of humanrights: in the battle that led to the ousting of Soehartoin Indonesia in 1998, for instance. After the Indonesianmilitary had massacred more than 150 participantsin a funeral procession in Dili, East Timor, in 1991,transnational human rights organisations mobilisedmassively against the political abuses of the Soehartoregime. Under pressure from these organisations,Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands froze economicaid to Indonesia, and the US, Japan, and the WorldBank threatened similar measures. Soeharto appointeda National Investigation Commission, which issued amildly critical report of the incident; and aid wasresumed (Glasius 1999: 252–64). But Soeharto lostcontrol of events as human rights groups in Indonesiaand East Timor mobilised under global human rightsorganisations to criticise and publicise the violation ofhuman rights. Opposition mounted even as Soehartodesignated a national human rights commission, whosereports added to the general discontent. In 1996, evenas the leaders of civil society in East Timor—Jose RamosHorta and Bishop Ximenes Belo—were given the NobelPeace Prize, the Blitzkrieg launched by global humanrights organisations strengthened the generalatmosphere of dissatisfaction, despite the intensifiedrepression launched by the regime. In late 1997 thecountry was buffeted by an economic crisis and massprotests led to the resignation of Soeharto. Trans-national human rights organisations had managed tospectacularly overthrow a regime on the grounds thatit was not respecting the basic rights of its people.

In India the power of global civil societyorganisations was revealed in a different way. Soon

after independence, a massive project was inaugu-rated to dam the gigantic Narmada River, which runsthrough the three States of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat,and Maharashtra in western India. The NarmadaValley Development Project consists of 30 majordams, 135 minor dams, and 3,000 small dams. Thelargest dam is the Sardar Sarovar Project, whichultimately will submerge 92,000 acres of land,displacing and affecting more than 300,000 people,a majority of whom are tribals or forest dwellers. Inthe mid-1980s a number of voluntary organisationsbegan to mobilise the tribals for better resettlementand rehabilitation policies, as the existing ones hadbeen found sadly wanting. Even as these organ-isations linked up with international NGOs to pressurethe government of India into granting betterresettlement and rehabilitation for the displaced, in1988 about 20 groups formed the Narmada BachaoAndolan (NBA) or the Save Narmada Movement. TheNBA launched a massive struggle against bigdevelopment projects and for the right of the peoplenot to be displaced. At the same time, internationalNGOs such as the Environment Defense Fund andOxfam began to lobby the World Bank and theJapanese government to withdraw from theircommitments to fund the project. The World Bank,now under public scrutiny, laid down conditions forbetter resettlement policies, conditions that theIndian government refused to fulfil. In 1993 thegovernment decided to ask the World Bank towithdraw from the project rather than face theembarrassment of having the Bank draw back on itsown. Soon afterwards the Japanese government alsoretracted its funding commitments. Whereas mostof the pressure against the dam was generated by theNBA, the matter would not have come to inter-national attention in quite the same manner withoutthe support of international NGOs, which publicisedthe issue and pressurised centres of power in theWest, (Chandhoke 1997). That the Indian government

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Right: Anti-dam activists and tribal men protest against the buildingof dams along the Narmada River as the monsoon waters rise rapidly,flooding land and homes in Domkhedi village, Narmada Valley,Maharashtra, India. © Karen Robinson/Panos Pictures.

has now decided to build the damon its own, after the Supreme Courtauthorised it to do so in a judge-ment delivered on 18 October 2000,may point to the limits of politicalmobilisation in civil society.

However, the most dramaticmanifestation of global civil societyso far was to appear in what cameto be known as the ‘battle forSeattle’. At the end of November1999, massive protests involvingsome 700 organisations and about40,000 students, workers, NGOs,religious groups, and representa-tives of business and finance who were there fortheir own reasons brought the third ministerialmeeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) inSeattle to a halt. The WTO was to set in motion a newmultilateral round of trade negotiations. Collectiveanger at the relocation of industries to the ThirdWorld, at the unsafe and abusive work conditions inthe factories and sweatshops found there, at environ-mental degradation, and at the widespreadexploitation of working people, exploded in a seriesof angry demonstrations. Though large-scale protestsagainst the WTO, the International Monetary Fund(IMF), and the World Bank were not new, what wasnew was both the scale of mobilisation and theintensity of protest. Angry demonstrations by studentunions, environmentalists or ‘tree huggers’, economicand xenophobic nationalists, church groups,anarchists, protectionists, consumer groups, NGOs,and even business and financial groups were hailedby some scholars as ‘globalisation from below’ (Kaldor2000) or as heralding a new internationalism.

There were two aspects of the‘battle for Seattle’ that provedsignificant for the consolidation ofglobal civil society. First, for the firsttime hitherto single-issue groupscoalesced into a broad-based move-ment to challenge the way the worldtrade and financial system was beingordered by international institutions.Second, whereas in the late 1960sprotest groups in the US and inWestern Europe had targeted thestate, at Seattle they targeted globalcorporations and internationaleconomic institutions. The protests

themselves bore the mark of collect-ive ire and resentment at the way inwhich globalisation that had beenset in motion two decades earlier hadexacerbated inequality and injustice.And matters did not stop here. Massprotests have become a regularfeature of annual meetings of theWorld Economic Forum, the IMF andthe World Bank, and the WTO. At thesame time we have seen studentsacross university campuses in the USdemonstrate against the unethicalpractices of large corporations suchas Nike, Reebok, the Gap, and Disney,

which use cheap labour in the Third World. Novelmethods and vocabularies of protests captured theattention of the international media and generatedconsiderable excitement at the idea of renewed politicalactivism. And the phrase ‘global civil society’ became anintegral part of political, corporate, and technicalvocabularies.

In sum, global civil society organisations haveemerged as a powerful and influential force on theworld stage, affecting as they do both domestic andinternational policies, deciding as they do the fate ofsome authoritarian governments at least, and layingdown agendas as they do. They not only have thepower of influencing international public opinionand mobilising it against policies that they considerundesirable, they do so in ways that are sensationallyvisible and therefore effective.

Arguably two factors have strengthened themandate of these organisations. One, the inform-ational revolution, has increased their capacity tocollect, collate, select, and publicise information on a

variety of specialised issues rangingfrom development disasters, to theenvironment, to the effect of WTOpolicies such a patenting, to humanrights violations. In fact, govern-ments often just do not possess thecapacity to gather and assemblespecialised information or mobilisepublic opinion in quite the sameway as NGOs organised on a globalscale can do.

Moreover, the unprecedentedand phenomenal revolution ininformation and communicationsoften described as the ‘thirdTH

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As the upholders of an

ethical canon that

applies across nations

and cultures,

international actors in

civil society now define

as well as set the moral

norms …

… they command this

kind of attention

because they have

access to the

international media,

they possess high

profiles, and they put

forth their ideas in

dramatic ways

industrial revolution’ has allowed organisations tonetwork across the world through the fax, the e-mail, the Internet, and teleconferencing. Looselystructured movements have used the Internet to setup web sites that inform prospective participantsabout the timing of the meetings of internationalinstitutions, on the organisation of protests, andabout transportation and accommodation. In factwe have witnessed a new phenomenon bursting ontothe political scene: cyber-space activism. Via thisform of activism, members of a group who may neversee each other come together, through cyberspace,around issues that they consider important.Informational networks have allowed concernedorganisations to gather and put together data on, forexample, violations of human rights, muster opinionand activism around the issue, publicise informationthrough the international media, and pressurise bothnational and international organisations to changeboth their mind and their manners.

The revolution in communications and informationhas allowed NGOs to form coalitions, as for instancethe Conference of Peoples Global Action Against FreeTrade, that held its first meeting in Geneva in May1998, the Third World Network, which as a union ofThird World NGOs is based in Malaysia, and theformation of the International Federation of HumanRights, a Paris-based transnational NGO, whichconsists of 89 human rights groups in 70 countries.In fact, the revolution has also facilitated a newphenomenon: the development of intermediaryNGOs, which act as ‘facilitators’ to help voluntaryorganisations to find funds from donor agencies suchas Action Aid (India) or Charity Aid Foundation (UK).Intermediate organisations are, in other words,involved in the channelling of money and infor-mation from one NGO to another or from donoragencies to NGOs.

Second, global NGOs have become influentialsimply because they possess a property that happensto be the peculiar hallmark of ethical politicalintervention: moral authority and legitimacy. Andthey possess moral authority because they claim torepresent the public or the general interest againstofficial- or power-driven interests of the state or ofthe economy. Though the idea that they are trulyrepresentative can be challenged as I suggest below,this is not to deny that NGOs have raised normativeconcerns in the domain of global civil society. As theupholders of an ethical canon that applies acrossnations and cultures, international actors in civil

society now define as well as set the moral norms,which should at least in principle govern nationaland international orders. To put it differently, globalcivil society actors legislate and mandate a normativeand thus a morally authoritative structure for thenational and the international community. Becausethey lend moral depth to the agenda of globalconcerns and because they articulate a global andethically informed vision on how states should treattheir citizens, global civil society actors commandthe kind of attention that normally does not accrueto political activism within states. And they commandthis kind of attention because they have access to theinternational media, they possess high profiles, andthey put forth their ideas in dramatic ways.

This as a matter of course has significant implica-tions for our traditional concepts of state sovereignty.Traditionally states, pleading sovereignty and statesecurity, have resisted any intervention by outsideagencies,. Today global civil society actors act as theguardians of a morally informed consensus on theminimum that is due to human beings. As the keepersof a moral conscience that applies across borders,global civil society organisations question themonopoly of the nation state over the lives of itspeople. But they also challenge the workings ofinternational institutions such as the World Bank,the IMF, and the WTO, as well as opposing theworking of giant economic corporations. If thedemonstrations at Seattle questioned the viabilityof economic arrangements set by internationalinstitutions, the charting of norms for, say, thebanning of child labour, or exploitation of resources,or environmental protection, has mediated theoperations of powerful economic corporations.

The Historical Context for theEmergence of Global CivilSociety

The two factors set out above have certainlyfacilitated as well as legitimised the advent ofglobal civil society actors as influential players

on the world stage. However, the causes of thisphenomenon have to be sought elsewhere, in thedeeper structural changes that have occurred in theinternational political and economic order in the lasttwo decades. And the major change that has takenplace in the world system since the 1980s is of courseglobalisation. Now globalisation is difficult tocharacterise as it consists of a number of overlapping TH

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and even conflicting projects. However, though it isincreasingly difficult to define globalisation, theimplications of this process—or, rather, of this series ofprocesses—are increasingly clear. Globalisation has,for one, enabled the transmission of capital acrossthe world as if national boundaries were non-existent.Correspondingly, through the processes of global-isation natural and national resources have beenappropriated in the cause of capital. Local knowledgesystems have been harnessed and patented for thesame purpose. And flows of information and messagesthat tell people how they should think and what theyshould think have legitimised the process itself.

Therefore, despite the difficulty in capturing theessence of globalisation, we can accept that its coreis constituted by a distinct phenomenon: capital’srestless and relentless pursuit of profit across theworld and across national borders. Today we seecapital flitting across national borders as if they werejust not there. But note that there is nothing naturalor given in the processes of capital flows that ensurethis much-needed erosion of state boundaries. Inother words, globalisation demanded and demandssustained political intervention for one main reason.

Recollect in this context that the post-Second WorldWar period was to widely disseminate and institution-alise the idea that the state should intervene inmatters relating to the production and to thereproduction of the economy and of society. Theinterventionist state was to take many forms: theSoviet model of the state that commands the heightsof the economy, the welfare state that looks after thebasic needs of its people, the Keynesian state thatregulates the market, or the developmentalist statein the post-colonial world that commandeers bothmaterial and human resources to offset the legaciesof colonial underdevelopment.

Therefore, if capital more often than notoriginating in the West had to cross boundaries inorder to pursue accumulation on the world scale,the state had to be rolled back from its hithertolegitimate tasks of regulating the market as well asproviding social services to the people. In other words,the legitimisation of the ability of the market toregulate itself, as well as to provide for both growthand well-being, demanded the delegitimisation andthe consequent withdrawal of the state from themarket. The state had to be rolled back both toTH

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Above: Children are taught to use an Apple laptop at Gatchi outstation, Arnhem Land, Australia. © Penny Tweedie/Panos Pictures.

encourage the unhindered flow of capital and toenable the market to display its dynamics.

It was precisely this understanding that under-pinned what came to be known as the neo-liberalagenda, or what John Williams termed the ‘Washing-ton consensus’, which reined in the centres of powerin the Western world in the late 1980s. The consensusmanifested itself in the form of tenpolicy recom mendations, imposedon particularly debt-ridden ThirdWorld countries by internationalfinancial and lending institutions.Among these recommendations werethe following: trade liberalisation,clearing all hurdles to foreign directinvestment, privatisation, deregu-lation, strengthening property rights,and tax reforms. If we translate theseeconomic imperatives into politicalterms, we find that the consensusdictated the following: (a) the state,particularly in Third World countries,should withdraw from the socialsector; (b) the market should be freed from allconstraints; and (c) people in civil society shouldorganise their own social and economic reproductioninstead of depending on the state.

Ironically, the idea that people in civil societyshould organise their own reproduction has emergedat exactly the same moment as globalisation hasdrastically eroded the capacity of the same people toorder their own affairs. And reliance on the marketfor this purpose is inadequate, since the market,remember, has room for only those people who havesomething to sell and those who have something tobuy. In other words, the market does not provide forthose people who cannot participate in itstransactions because they have nothing with whichthey can buy, or because they cannot find buyersfor what they sell: labour, for instance. The unleashingof the market simply meant that massive sectionsof the people had to now fend for themselves in thesense of providing the conditions for their socialreproduction.

It was in this particular historical conjunction thatNGOs emerged on the horizon to take over functionshitherto reserved for the state, such as providinghealth and education, instituting income-generatingschemes, creating safety nets, and encouragingpeople to be self-reliant. The space cleared by therolling back of the state came to be known as ‘civil

society’, and NGOs were transformed into theguardians of civil society even as they subcontractedfor the state. To put it in stark terms, the emergenceand the growing power of NGOs whether national orglobal has been actively facilitated by the Washingtonconsensus.

The role of the non-governmental sector has beenfurther strengthened by what camesubsequently to be known as thepost-Washington consensus. Themid-1990s were to witness a sharpswing in the mood of internationaltrade and financial institutions. Forthe rhetoric of these institutions wasto move away from an emphasis ona free and untrammelled market tothe idea that both the market andthe generic processes of global-isation had to be governed. The shifthad largely to do with one mainfactor. Doctrines of free trade andunregulated markets had run intotrouble ever since 1994, when

Mexico was hit by financial devastation. The secondfinancial crisis, which began when the governmentof Thailand devalued the bhat, and which then spreadto the rest of East Asia, Japan, Brazil, and Russia in1997 and 1998, impoverished millions, and generatedrage and discontent. We saw an inkling of thisdissatisfaction when Korean workers rose to defy theIMF. Many scholars saw these economic and financialcrises as a consequence of unfettered globalisation,as a result of the working of the free and unregulatedmarket (Rhodes and Higgot 2000). The neo-liberalagenda had after all failed to deliver the much-promised benefits of greater growth, stabilisation offinancial markets, and political order. Incomedisparities had increased, the number of the poorhad grown drastically, and people had been deprivedof their livelihoods and security of life. A globaleconomic order had been forged throughglobalisation without any prospect of justice, ordemocracy, or redistribution. And this posed problemsfor the defenders of globalisation. For if a system iswidely perceived as unjust, it will necessarily engenderresistance.

Therefore, whereas in the 1980s and the early1990s free market liberalism had been left to privatecorporations, this strategy had to be rethought sinceit had proved counter-productive. In fact, as early asin 1995 the economist Paul Krugman had suggested TH

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The space cleared by

the rolling back of the

state became known

as ‘civil society’, and

NGOs were

transformed into the

guardians of civil

society even as they

subcontracted for the

state

that the Mexican crisis marked the beginning of thedeflation of the Washington consensus (1995: 31–5).The very idea that globalisation had rationalisedcapitalism came to be questioned because what wewitnessed was the globalisation of a crisis. Con-sequently, the managers of international financialand economic institutions were to realise, somewhatlate, what Marx had argued in the late nineteenthcentury: that there is nothing natural or self-regulating about markets and thatthey unleash their own oppressions.If markets were to endure they hadto be controlled or, in the newparlance of international financialinstitutions, ‘governed’. Alternatively,the dominant approach to develop-ment needed to be rethought, sinceneo-liberal policy prescriptions hadnot only failed, they had intensifieddissatisfaction and hostility particu-larly in the countries of the ThirdWorld.

This realisation led to a radicalshift in the rhetoric of globalisation:the replacement of the language ofthe market by that of governance,accountability, transparency, anddemocracy. And the World Bank,under the influence of the economist Joseph Stiglitz,known for his critique of the unfettered market,moved from a narrow economistic focus ondevelopment to what came to be known as theComprehensive Development Framework. Even aspolicies of structural adjustment were replaced bynotions of partnership between the Bank andborrowing governments, the language of the Bankshifted from macroeconomic theory that focused oneconomic growth to the recognition of the centralityof governance, albeit a notion of governance that wasstripped of politics (Jayal: 1997). The shift was notradical inasmuch as the dominant themes of neo-liberalism continued to dominate the politicalimagination of most, if not all, of the internationalfinancial institutions. But now international financialinstitutions were to cushion neo-liberalism in avocabulary that spoke of the regulation and themoderation of the processes of globalisation. Ineffect, these institutions opted for strategies ofconflict management.

Perhaps the Bank had no choice. For global civilsociety actors in various demonstrations insisted that

‘Fifty Years is Enough’, a slogan that overshadowedthe golden jubilee of the Bank. Even as JamesWolfensohn was appointed President in June 1995,he was faced with the need to restructure the policyof the World Bank in the face of sustained criticismby global civil society. In an attempt to legitimisethe Bank, the President engaged global NGOs indialogue and entered into collaborative ventures toreshape the policy prescriptions of the world body.

The result was the adoption of a newlanguage of sustainable develop-ment, preservation of naturalresources, equitable development,and democratic development.

It is of some significance thatsome global civil society actors, whohad earlier emerged on the politicalscene in and through the politics ofprotest, now became partners indecision-making activities. NGOsnow attend the annual meetings ofthe World Bank and the IMF asspecial guests. In 1982 the WorldBank had created a discussion forumin the shape of an NGO-World BankCommittee, which ensured the activeinvolvement of the non-govern-mental sector in implementing

projects. Now NGOs came to be involved in policyformulation. In 1996 the WTO General Counciladopted guidelines that provided for increasedcontacts between the Secretariat and the NGOs. Thisof course raises an important methodologicalquestion: can we continue to call agencies thatbecome a part of global decision-making structures‘civil society organisations’ that supposedly challengethe workings of the global order? But more of thatlater.

In sum, in marked contrast to the earlier two decadesthat focused on the opening up of national borders tothe free flow of global capital and the doctrines of freetrade, the post-Washington consensus concentrates onthe governance of these activities. For decision-makersrecognised that the deep tensions that had beenengendered by the processes of globalisation had to bemanaged if they were not to spiral out of control. To putit bluntly, international trade and financial institutionsrealised that the processes of globalisation could not belegitimised if they were left to private agencies such ascorporate houses or to some ‘invisible hand’ of themarket.TH

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The idea that

globalisation had

rationalised capitalism

came to be

questioned. If markets

were to endure they

had to be controlled

or, in the new

parlance of

international financial

institutions,

‘governed’

The post-Washington consensus was therefore tofocus on three issues. First, globalisation was tooimportant to be left to the unrestricted corporateworld and should be mediated through ‘governance’that ensured transparency, account-ability, capacity building, and safetynetworks. Second, the state neededto be replaced not so much by themarket as by civil society organ-isations that represented the aspira-tions of the people and thatstrengthened democracy. This ofcourse meant that the fields of themarket and of non-market trans-actions were, in policy prescriptions,separated. Third, the new consensusopined that only a strong civilsociety under the guidance of NGOscan further democracy. Note,however, that this avatar of civilsociety is not marked by democraticcontestation but by the building of ‘social capital’ and‘trust’ among the inhabitants (Harriss: 2001). In effect,the earlier move away from the state to the markethas now been replaced by a move away from thestate to civil society based on networks of trust.

However, despite some changes in rhetoric, thepost-Washington consensus continues to retainsignificant elements of the earlier neo-liberalconsensus. For neither was the idea that a free marketencourages democracy put aside, nor was the role ofthe state in institutionalising and realising democracyreconsidered. In the current dispensation, both aminimal state and a free market continue to providethe conditions of a strong and democratic civilsociety. More importantly, the international policycommunity now concentrates on the management ofdiscontent, which has erupted in reaction to theliberalisation and the deregulation process that liesat the heart of globalisation (Higgot 2000: 138)

The post-Washington consensus, in other words,views protest and struggle, which happen to be anintegral part of civil society, as problems that have tobe resolved through managerial techniques. It stilldoes not recognise that a democratic civil society isabout struggling for a better world, that it is aboutpolitics and not only governance, that it is aboutvisions and aspirations and not only aboutneutralisation of tensions. Nor does the presentconsensus address issues such as unequal powerrelations either in the world or within states. And

civil society continues to be identified, as in theearlier version, with NGOs. To put it differently, ifearlier versions of neo-liberalism cleared the space forglobal civil society actors, the present consensus

legitimises their activities. Con-versely, the activities of most if notall NGOs legitimise the post-Washington consensus, for instanceby linking civil society to anapolitical notion of governance. Allthis, as argued below, has depoli-ticised the very concept of civilsociety. This of course requires someelaboration of what civil society isabout.

What Does CivilSociety Mean?

Now civil society has beensubjected to considerableover-theorisation in the post-

1989 era. The concept, never too clear at the best oftimes, has turned into the proverbial will-o’-the-wisp that eludes understanding. It has come to meanmany things to many people: as the space ofsolidarity, as a project of projects, as the area ofassociational life, as a site of contestation, and as athird sector. This may not necessarily be a problem.For, as the editors of Global Civil Society 2001 argue,multiple meanings of civil society can provide a spacefor dialogue (Anheier, Glasius, and Kaldor 2001: 12).On the other hand, when people come to thisoverlapping space armed with their own meanings ofwhat civil society is about, we may find that such adialogue becomes impossible. For any dialogue needsat the least a common referral as a starting point foran exchange of ideas. And such a referral can best beprovided by classical political theory.

If we were to reach back into the annals of politicaltheory to investigate the idea of civil society, it wouldlook something like this. The concept of civil societysignifies both a space and a set of values. As a space itis metaphorically located somewhere between the state,the market, and the family. Here people come togetherin projects of all kinds to make their collective histories.Histories are in turn made through the politics ofaffirmation as well as conflict-ridden encounters, thepolitics of solidarity as well as that of struggle. Civilsociety possesses no one characteristic, no one core,no one essential nature. Civil society is what its TH

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The post-Washington

consensus views

protest and struggle,

which happen to be

an integral part of

civil society, as

problems that have to

be resolved through

managerial

techniques

inhabitants make of it. It is a site where projects overlap,where they reinforce each other, and where theychallenge each other. This is possible, for civil society,unlike pre-modern communities, allows its inhabitantsto make their own lives and their owndestinies perhaps independently,perhaps in concert with others, insome degree of freedom. For thevalues of civil society are those offreedom, accessibility, and publicness.On this ground alone no one is intheory barred from civil society,everyone is allowed entry into thesphere, and everyone—again intheory—is free to link with others tomake their own histories even thoughthese histories are not made, as Marxtold us long ago, in conditions of theirown choice. Thus is associational lifeborn and thus is an activity calledpolitics born.

For arguably, it is only whenpeople in and through social associations translatetheir everyday experiences into expressed vocabu-laries, and it is only when people interpret theexperiential through the prism provided by theexpressive, that we see the birth of politics. Politicsin the first sense is about translating the experientialinto the expressive. As individuals bring their ownworld-views into social associations, they transcendindividual beliefs into socially responsive and respons-ible political projects through dialogue as well asthrough contention. Conversely, politics is aboutinterpreting the experiential in terms provided bythe expressive. Consider, for instance, the women’smovement. The movement was to gain shape andclarity only when some women—and some men—were to express their discontent with patriarchalstructures of oppression in terms of feminism. Inturn, feminist insights gave other women the toolswith which they could interpret the injustice thatwas inflicted on them by patriarchy.

Politics is, in short, a two-way activity. It movesfrom what is experienced to the interpretation ofthese experiences in terms of specifically politicalcategories such as feminism. In turn, politicalformulations allow other people to make sense oftheir experiences. What is important is that theactivity is empowering inasmuch as, when ordinarymen and women engage in political activity, theyacquire agency, they recover selfhood, and they earn

self-confidence. This is politics in the best Aristoteliantradition: politics as self-realisation.

Therefore, for most theorists of civil society, socialassociations are vital to collective life simply because

they allow people to realise theirselfhood through collective action.But note that social associationsare significant only becausemembership in these groupings isvoluntary as well as revocable. It isthe individual who is the primaryactor in civil society; social asso-ciations merely enable him or her torealise their own potential and theirown projects. Social associations,in other words, are nothing butaggregates of individuals, which inturn reflect the wishes and thedesires of their members.

It is this interpretation of civilsociety that finds it difficult toaccommodate NGOs, for two

reasons. First, though it is possible that individualswho come together in associations transform theirassociation into an NGO, a number of importantand influential NGOs are not created through thisprocess. Global NGOs come in from the outsidearmed very often with their own ideas of what iswrong and what should be done to remedy thesituation. At precisely this point the issue ofrepresentativeness arises to bedevil thinking on civilsociety. Second, the arrival of global NGOs onto thescene may carry important and not so positiveimplications for notions of political agency. For ifthey have their own ideas of what should be doneand how should it be done, ordinary human beingswho have experienced, say, injustice in their dailylives are denied the opportunity to frame theirresponses in their own terms. NGOs more often thannot have their own programmes, they more oftenthan not speak a highly specialised language thatmay well be incomprehensible for the inhabitants ofthe regions in which they operate, and they maywell have their own ideas of what is politicallypermissible and what is not.

Ordinary individuals, it is evident, possess littleopportunity to influence agendas that are formulatedin far-off places. Associational activity at the globallevel tends therefore to acquire a life of its own, a lifethat is quite distinct from the everyday lives of thepeople who do not speak but who are spoken for.TH

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When ordinary men

and women engage in

political activity, they

acquire agency, they

recover selfhood, and

they earn self-

confidence. This is

politics in the best

Aristotelian tradition:

politics as self-

realisation.

Bluntly put, people are disempowered rather thanempowered when highly specialised, professional,and more often than not bureaucratised civil societyactors tell them what is wrong with their dailyexistence and how they should go about resolving theproblems of their collective lives. In the process civilsociety may undergo both depoliticisation anddisempowerment.

Admittedly, some global civil society actors haveinitiated novel ways of bringing the problems ofeveryday existence of poor and impoverished people ofthe Third World to international platforms andpropelling them into the glare of the media spotlight.But can all this substitute for the activity we callpolitics? Let me put this differently: when individualswho are otherwise far too preoccupied in eking out abare and minimum subsistence in adverse conditionscome together and think through how to resolve theirsituation, they are empowered because they arepoliticised. And to be politicised is to acquireconsciousness that collective endeavours offerpossibilities of self-realisation. To bepoliticised is to be made aware thatcertain rights accrue to every humanbeing by virtue of being human. Itmeans that people who have beenconstituted as subjects and not ascitizens by the policies of the statecan rise to demand justice, equality,and freedom; to demand that thestate delivers what it has promised intheory. Political activity simply makesfor aware and self-confident humanbeings because these human beings acquire agency inand through politics. And thereby ordinary men andwomen make the transition from subject to citizen.

It is precisely this notion of politics that is devaluedwhen global civil actors commandeer politicalinitiatives and once again constitute human beingsas subjects of political ideas arrived at elsewhere, or,worse, when they constitute individuals as consumersof agendas finalised elsewhere. For we must ask thisuncomfortable question of even the most well-meaning of NGOs: who was consulted in the forgingof agendas? When? And how where the local peopleconsulted: through what procedures and throughwhat modalities? Were they consulted at all? Do, inshort, global civil society actors actually representpeople, particularly of the Third World? Or are theyself-styled spokespersons of people who do not haveeven a remote chance of influencing these agendas?

Do these more often than not well-funded and oftenwell-organised civil society actors actually speak frombelow? Or do they claim to do so in order to gainlegitimacy?

Certainly cyber-savvy global activists areinfluential because they know the language that willwin attention and perhaps applause. But it is preciselythis that causes unease, for whatever happens topeople who do not know any language that mayhave resonance in the world of international politics?What happens when ordinary human beings do nothave access to computers through which civil societyactors wage their battles? What happens whenactivists who feel passionately about certain crucialissues are not in a position to participate in acts ofresistance at the annual meetings of the internationalfinancial institutions? And now consider the some-what formidable range of issues that have been takenup by global NGOs. Today they dictate what kind ofdevelopment should be given to Third World people,what kind of education they should receive, what kind

of democracy should be institution-alised, what rights they shoulddemand and possess, and what theyshould do to be empowered.

We have cause to worry. Forwhat we see is the collapse of theidea that ordinary men and womenare capable of appropriating thepolitical initiative. What we see isthe appropriation of political pro-grammes in favour of the agenda ofthe global civil society actor.

Frankly, it is unclear whether international NGOsstrengthen or weaken the role of the community.First, NGO activism, which straddles nationalboundaries to create global coalitions, is nosubstitute for self-determining and empoweringpolitical action born out of specific experiences.Second, whereas the Third World State has provednotoriously non-responsive to the demands of civilsociety, it is also a fact that, at moments of crisis,this very civil society has mobilised to hold the stateaccountable. In December 2001, for instance, thestreets of Buenos Aires were filled with agitating andagitated Argentinians who demanded the resig-nation of President Fernando de la Rua. Even as thecountry descended into financial chaos and anarchy,even as people banged pots and pans on theirbalconies, even as the streets of the city overflowedwith crowds, and even as deadly riots took the lives TH

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We must ask this

uncomfortable

question of even the

most well-meaning of

NGOs: who was

consulted in the

forging of agendas?

of 30 people, the President had to resign. At somepoint he was held accountable.

To whom, we may ask, are the international NGOsaccountable? Witness, for instance, the response ofLori Wallach, whose organisation Public Citizenorchestrated the battle for Seattle. In an interviewpublished in Foreign Policy, she was asked thefollowing question: ‘You’re referring to the idea ofdemocratic deficits in multilateral organizations . . .Some people argue that nongovernmental organ-izations (NGOs) like yours also have a democraticdeficit—that you also lack democracy, transparency,and accountability. Who elected you to representthe people at Seattle, and why areyou more influential than theelected officials . . .?’ The answer MsWallach gave was the following:‘Who elected Mr Moore? Whoelected Charles Barshefsky? Whoelected any of them?’ (Foreign Policy2000: 36). This, to put it mildly, isno answer simply because it evadesthe issue. In another question shewas asked who Public Citizen isresponsible to. ‘Our members’, shereplied. ‘How do they express theiroversight?’ ‘Through their cheque-books’, she replied, ‘they just stoppaying their membership dues’(2000: 39). Note that no longer arepeople expected to realise their selfhood in andthrough associational life, their participation isconfined to the payment or withdrawal ofmembership dues.

We have cause for unease. For much of theleadership of global civil society organisationsappears to be self-appointed and non-accountableto their members, many of whom are passive andconfine their activism to signatures to petitionscirculated via e-mail. Also note that, whereas we seehuge crowds during demonstrations against theWTO or in alternative forums such as the WorldSocial Forum, between such episodes activity iscarried on by a core group of NGOs. It is possiblethat participants in demonstrations are handed apolitical platform and an agenda that has beenfinalised elsewhere. This is hardly either democraticor even political, it may even reek of bureaucraticmanagement of participatory events. It may evenrender people, as suggested above, consumers ofchoices made elsewhere.

Moreover, as has been widely observed, inter-national NGOs resist attempts to make their ownfunctioning transparent even as they demand trans-parency and accountability from internationalfinancial organisations. Observers have commentedthat, since most global NGOs do not issue financialor activity reports or any declaration of objectives, itis difficult to gauge their nature (Scholte 2000: 119).Even if they do issue such statements, does this maketheir activities more transparent? And remember thatit is precisely these organisations, whose ownprocesses of decision-making are closed to publicscrutiny, who happen to be in control of people’s

lives and destinies.We also need to wonder how

democratic the organisations ofglobal civil society are given thegreat inequalities of resourcesbetween the North and the South. Itis more than possible that ThirdWorld organisations get sidelinedwhen it comes to the making ofglobal agendas. For instance, Hart-Landsberg reports that influentialgroups such as Public Citizen andleaders of labour organisations inthe US focused on keeping Chinaout of the WTO at Seattle, citingexploitative working conditions andthe unfair trade practices of the

Chinese government. However, no independentmovement of Chinese workers has called forinternational support for a campaign to keep Chinaout of the world body. ‘In fact, even organizationsoperating in Hong Kong that seek to promoteindependent labour organizing in China haverefrained from supporting such a campaign’ (Hart-Landsberg 2000:106).

To cite another example, environmental NGOshave persistently campaigned for lower emissionlevels in the atmosphere through control of pollutingindustries and vehicular traffic. In Delhi, at thebeginning of the new millennium, ‘pollutingindustries’ were closed down and vehicles that did notmeet the standard laid down were abandoned by adecision of the Supreme Court, which was underpressure from the environmental lobby. However, inthe process people were condemned to homelessness,massive hardship, and unemployment (DelhiUniversity 2001). The gap between the demands ofenvironment-conscious NGOs and the need of theTH

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No longer are people

expected to realise

their selfhood in and

through associational

life. Their

participation is

confined to the

payment or

withdrawal of

membership dues

poorer sections of society was just too starkly visible.We discover dissonance in the way Third Worldactivists envisage crucial matters and the way inwhich global civil society actors largely based in theWest view them.

Certainly we need to acknowledge the outstandingservices rendered by some global civil societyorganisations. We should be grateful that some of thesegroups have brought issues of crucial importance to thetop of political agendas. Nevertheless, the dominationof global civil society by organised and well-fundedNGOs hailing from the West poses some very vexingquestions for issues of political representation, politicalagency, and politics in general. They may even be apart of the project that seeks to disable activism in civilsociety and depoliticise it. Is it possible that NGOsperhaps unwittingly form an integral part of the sameplan that characterises the state and the market? Is itpossible that the same logic of power underpins theactivities of international civil society actors?

Global Civil Society Actors andInternational Politics andEconomics

My second set of questions has to do withwhether global civil society actors cancounteract deep-rooted structures of global

capitalism and the state-centric global order, orprovide an alternative to the system. There is a muchwider methodological issue that confronts us here:what is the relationship between civil society, whethernational or global, and the other two domains ofcollective existence, namely, the state and the market.For, as suggested above, contemporary political theorytends to assume that different sectors of collectivelife can counter each other and perhaps even providean alternative to each other because each of themhas a specific raison d’être.

Let me begin this part of the argument bysuggesting that civil society is not only constitutedby the state and the market but also permeated bythe same logic that underpins these two spheres.Recall, for a start, that civil society as a peculiarlymodern phenomenon emerges through the samehistorical processes that generate both the modernimpersonal state and the modern market system.These processes have to do with the separation of theeconomic and the political, the appropriation of theeconomy by a private class of proprietors, and theconcomitant rise of the institution of private property.They have to do with the emergence of the notion ofthe autonomous individual and self-directedindividualism. They have, further, to do with thedissolution of community as ‘face to face’ interactionand with the carving out of a space where individualsmeet, in the words of Marx, as ‘bearers of com-modities’. Classical theory called this space ‘civilsociety’ which, peopled by legally autonomousindividuals who may well be strangers to each other,was marked by impersonal and contractual relations.And all this carried its own problems, as the theoristsof early modernity were to tell us in some detail.

For instance, Hegel, arguably the most dis-tinguished proponent of civil society, in 1821 was tohail the propensity of modern civil society to enhancefreedom in contrast to the ‘unfreedom’ of pre-modern societies (Hegel 1942). But at the same timehe was profoundly ambivalent about the democraticpotential of the sphere or of its capacity to instituteethicality in the Greek sense, or what he called TH

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Above: Dependence on US food aid in Mogadishu, Somalia. © Crispin Hughes/Panos Pictures.

Sittlichkeit. For if the material context for therealisation of the self and for the recognition ofrights is bourgeois or bürgerliche society, this, as hewas quick to realise, carried its own momentum.Because even as modern life witnesses a dramaticexpansion of the sphere of socialinteraction in civil society, thisinteraction is permeated deeply bythe ethos of the capitalist market,that of self-serving and instrumentalaction. And this can pose a problemfor the very reproduction of thesphere; it may well disintegrateunder the influence of self-centredreasoning, which is the hallmark ofthe capitalist market system. In sum,Hegel was to teach us an importantlesson: that civil society is shotthrough with the same powerequations as the market, for it isconstituted by the market system.

More significantly, there isanother problem that confronts classical politicaltheory: even as the market constitutes transactionsin civil society, the market order presupposes a stableand sturdy civil society in order to function efficiently.Market relations simply need to be embedded in non-market relations in order to function with somemeasure of success. But not any kind of non-marketrelations, let me hasten to add, will do. Markettransactions need disciplined, predictable, andsocialised behaviour as a prerequisite for theirsuccessful operation. If Adam Smith put forth histheory of ‘moral sentiments’ in 1759 (Smith 1976) toaccomplish this, a contemporary theorist such asFrancis Fukuyama (1975) argues that capitalistaccumulation needs the presence of trust. And JamesColeman and Robert Putnam suggest that ‘softer’social norms that guarantee expectation, such associal capital, should buttress economic transactions,if we want the domain of these transactions toexpand (Coleman 1988: S95-S120; Putnam 1993;1995). Civil society and the market, we realise, aredependent on each other; they need not provide analternative to each other at all.

Therefore, whereas it is perfectly true that globalcivil society has critiqued the workings of theinternational economic order, is a critique ofcorporate managed globalisation, we are compelledto ask, the same as a critique of capital in search ofglobal markets? The problem is that global civil

society tends to be broad-based, comprising as itdoes many groups with divergent purposes and aims.Kaldor, for instance, accepts that only a few of theprotestors at Seattle were actually againstglobalisation; the others wanted to reform interna-

tional trade and financial institutionsas well as make them accountable(Kaldor 2000: 112). And the sametheme was echoed at the WorldSocial Forum that met in PortoAlegre in Brazil in February 2002.The meeting, which was attended by50,000 delegates and which wasmeant to be a parallel to the meetingof the World Economic Forum inNew York, put forth the idea of analternative world: ‘Another world ispossible’, went the slogan. However,according to a newspaper report,‘delegates bristle at the WSF beingcalled the “anti-globalisation” meet.They argue that they are not meeting

here to register protests but to work out concreteproposals that will be superior to what will be floatedat the New York meeting of the WEF’ (The Hindu, 3February 2002: 10).

Actually, the movement against globalisationcan be split into (a) radical individuals and groupswho oppose capitalism but are rather clueless aswell as powerless when it comes to alternatives and(b) established NGOs that work at the margins to‘reform’ the system. The latter would rather thatthe present system is reformed and made moreaccountable and humane. They consequently focuson institutional reform rather than on an alternativeto the system. And the ones that are anti-capitalistglobalisation and dream of a better internationalorder are relegated to the fringes of global civilsociety, dominated as it is by professional bodieswho now are partners in world decision-makingforums.

Global civil society, it is evident, by and largeprefers to work within the parameters of a systemthat has been found wanting by many critics bothfrom the Third World and from the advancedcapitalist world. Given the plural and somewhatcontradictory nature of the protest movements, theycan hardly provide us with an alternative system. Intandem with the post-Washington Consensus, someglobal civil society actors would humanise thecapitalist system rather than think of another systemTH

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Civil society as a

peculiarly modern

phenomenon emerges

through the same

historical processes

that generate both

the modern

impersonal state and

the modern market

system

that may be able to deliver justice and equity.Therefore, they may reform the neo-liberal platformbut they are unable to map a new course. And theanti-capitalist globalisation groups are more romanticthan pragmatic when it comes to alternatives. Weseem to live in a world of disen-chantment where activists eitherrefuse to dream dreams of analternative world system or aredoubtful about what they want in itsstead. For, as Scholte put it in thecontext of Seattle, ‘halting a newround of trade liberalisation is notthe same as building a better worldorder’ (2000: 116). In the meantimeliberalisation, privatisation, andexploitation of Third World resourcescontinue to coexist with the rhetoricof human rights, environment,democracy, and what the World Banknow calls the Comprehensive Devel-opment Framework.

When we come to the state-centric internationalorder, we find that the relationship between states andglobal civil society is profoundly ambivalent. It is truethat global civil society actors have through thetechniques of ‘naming and shaming’ embarrassedindividual states and even succeeded in overthrowingindividual governments. But it is equally true that statesare not at all ceding their power over matters that theyconsider crucial. Consider the response of the US tothe mobilisation of international public opinion in thewake of the 11 September 2001 attacks on New Yorkand Washington. Political activists were connecting viathe Internet, peace marches dotted the landscape fromDelhi to Washington to Berlin, and writers wereauthoring impassioned pieces on why the Bushgovernment should not punish the innocent people ofAfghanistan by bombarding the country. And yet theAmerican government went ahead and declared war onAfghanistan, adding to the already considerable woesof the people of that country. The US, which incidentallyclaims to speak for the ‘free world’, refused to heedthe voice of global civil society and proceeded to violatethe freedom of the people of Afghanistan. Thesovereignty of the US remained intact despiteconsiderable criticism by civil society actors.

On the other hand, global civil society actors needstates and their institutions to substantiate and codifytheir demands in law. Transnational organisations maycritique the practices of states in, say, the field of

human rights, but they also require states to createpolitical and legal frameworks that facilitate setting upof the rule of law, civil and political rights, orenvironmental protection. Women’s groups can hardlydemand, say, gender justice without the correspond-

ing demand for state protection andthe demand that states set up appro-priate institutions for protection ofwomen’s rights. Alternatively, civilsociety groups fighting, say, violationsof civil liberties will need the stateto punish offenders. They simply willneed human rights commissions,sympathetic judges, and a sensitivepolice to realise their objectives. Icould cite a number of other suchexamples; the point, however, I hopeis clear. Efforts in civil society willcome to naught unless states codifythese efforts in the form of law orregulations. In effect, what I amtrying to suggest is that civil society

actors will draw upon states both to redress violationof human rights and to reform civil society itselfthrough enacting laws restricting sexual harassment inthe workplace, for example. This again means—andthis is a point that is not generally grasped by manycurrent advocates of civil society—that statesconstitute the limits of civil society, as well as enablingpolitical initiatives in global civil society. In effect, thevery states that global civil society supposedly opposesenable the latter in the sense that only they canprovide the conditions within which the civil societyagenda is realised. In effect, vibrant civil societiesrequire strong and stable states as a precondition totheir very existence. After all, we hardly expect to finda civil society in countries like Afghanistan andSomalia, where the state itself leads a precariousexistence as a result of the civil wars that have wreckedthe countries and their polities. The shade of Hegel,who suggested that the state is a precondition for theexistence of civil society, looms especially large here.

Finally, we should recall that not only Third Worldgovernments but also informed critics belonging tothat part of the world argue that the values of globalcivil society reflect those held by a narrow group ofinfluential states in the international order. Any attemptto institutionalise these values in states of the ThirdWorld, is seen as an imposition. This is particularly trueof human rights, which are considered to be embeddedin a set of norms and historical processes specific to TH

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Global civil society by

and large prefers to

work within the

parameters of a

system that has been

found wanting by

many critics both

from the Third World

and from the

advanced capitalist

world

Western Europe and the US and therefore inappropriatefor other societies. Incensed critics regard the imposition

of human rights upon societiesthat may possess other notionsof how relationships betweenindividuals and governmentsshould be arranged as anextension of imperialism.Whether these critiques arevalid or invalid is not the issuehere; the point is that globalcivil society actors, particularlyhuman rights organisations, areseen as embedded within anideology that is highly Euro-centric: liberal democracy. Foreven though some of these

organisations have moved in the recent past to embraceideas of social and economic rights, which for longhave been seen as the preconditions of meaningfulcivil and political rights, it is the latter, not the former,that inform the consensus on human rights.

This really means that global civil society actorsreflect the consensus that liberal democracy is the onlyform of democracy that remains of value in theaftermath of the fall of communism in 1989. Therefore,even as we accept that global civil society actors canlaunch, and have launched, a critique of the practicesof some states, we must ponder upon whether, in doingso, they do not codify values that belong to another setof states. Can global civil society transcend the existingtension between the Western world and the Third Worldthat permeates the international legal, political, andeconomic order? Or will it merely work within theparameters of a system that has already been laid downby a few powerful states? Can global civil society everbe truly global? Or is it fated, as national civil societiesare, to function within the framework laid down byhegemonic states?

Conclusion

In sum, global civil society has managed to give anew vocabulary to the state-centric and market-oriented international order. The achievement is

not meaningless, for at least international financialand trade institutions have become more responsiveto public opinion, they have reformed earlierstrategies of corporate managed globalisation, theyhave added issues of social concern to their agendas,and they have called for greater governance of

globalisation. But notions of governance remaindevoid of politics as self-realisation even as globalcivil society fails to have an impact on the unequaldistribution of global wealth. In the meantime, theWTO concentrates on the widest and fastest possibleliberalisation of the flow of goods across borders.

Therefore, the notion that global civil society caninstitutionalise normative structures that run counterto the principles of powerful states or equally powerfulcorporations, which govern international transactions,should be treated with a fair amount of caution. Ofcourse, actors in global civil society have made adifference, as actors in national civil society make adifference. But they function as most human actorsdo, within the realm of the possible, not within therealm of the impossible. Ultimately, global civil societyactors work within inherited structures of power thatthey may modify or alter but seldom transform. But thiswe can understand only if we locate global civil societyin its constitutive context: a state-centric system ofinternational relations that is dominated by a narrowsection of humanity and within the structures ofinternational capital that may permit dissent but do notpermit any transformation of their own agendas.

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