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| Can We Have a ‘Global Civil Society’? |
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Cosmopolitan theorists state that those affected by a particular nation-state's decision, citizen or not, are patently stakeholders nonetheless. These stakeholders have a claim to be a part of the decision-making process of the polity but since non-citizens are intrinsically not part of the respective nation-state the outcome is that the political community in a global world must be extended beyond the nation-state to include them. If sovereignty is not reconstituted then a 'governance gap' becomes inevitable.
New rights for Cosmopolitan citizens
Cosmopolitans have undertaken a search for new rights for individuals asserting the shortfall in sovereignty means non-state actors should be able to intervene in decisions normally taken solely by sovereign states. The aim is to rectify a 'governance gap' in the transnational public sphere by generating a supranational sphere of civic participation, with new governance agendas focused on the individual rather than on the nation-state. They wish to utilise civilian networks to represent global citizens and act as intermediaries with other transnational actors including states, institutions and TNCs. This focus on the individual of the global citizen project is informed by an Enlightenment heritage. Since cosmopolitans wish to satisfy the 'governance gap' utilising democracy they refer to the shortfall in sovereignty as a 'democratic deficit'. Michael Bond spelt this out when he wrote:
"As finance and production becomes more global and increasingly important decisions are taken at an international level where there is no political machinery to deal with citizens' concerns NGO's are filling the "democratic deficit"" (2003, p.278).
The trend in international law since the Cold War has been to give human rights increasing prominence at the expense of the once-dominant nation-state but cosmopolitan theorists do not merely assert that the new-born institutions of the global citizen must stand outside of nation-states. They also feel these new institutions must stand outside of an overarching global authority or world government. Hans Kung is clear that:
"…such a thing is neither realistic nor worth striving for. It would be all too remote from the citizens of the world not could it be legitimated democratically" (2004, p. 48)
Mary Kaldor agrees, noting there is no wish for a one world government or federation (1999, p.148) and even if such a desire existed any attempt to establish a prescribed authority on a global level would most likely lead recalcitrant nation-states to war. Therefore global citizens would therefore represent themselves as individuals and be represented through a 'special form of unbounded society' (Keane, 2003, p. 17). It is at this point that the extension of civil society to the transnational sphere appears to provide the alternative model to the once-sovereign nation-state. At this juncture it becomes necessary to ask what exactly is civil society?
Civil Society
There has been a re-occurring discussion of citizenship and political community throughout the history of political thought. Aristotle wrote of a 'koinonia politike' or 'political community' where citizens who were free and equal could associate (Newman, 1973). Romans such as Cicero, concerned about absolute power and interested in outlining the rights and responsibilities of the rulers and the ruled, honed Aristotle's theme resulting in the term 'societas civilis' or 'civil society' but it was during the Enlightenment and thinkers like Thomas Paine when the term 'civil society' became popular. Georg. W. F. Hegel can be credited with developing what we now think of the term when he wrote of a 'burgerliche gesellschaft'. He used the term to describe both a bourgeois and a civil society and placed this 'burgerliche gesellschaft' between the family and the state (Hegel, 1821, p187-380).
The term fell into disuse during the Industrial Revolution but Antonio Gramsci revived the term when considering struggle against dictatorship and tyranny and it can also be found in the dissident writings of Václav Havel. It was often deployed in discussions around post-Cold War Eastern Europe where civil society, with its concern of the sovereignty of the individual, was viewed as a bulwark against the overwhelming state authority common in the Soviet Bloc. The term has matured further with the development of 'zivilgesellschaft' (German lit. 'civil society') most notably in the work of Jurgen Habermas (cf. 1992).
Today, political scientists recognise three spheres in any society including a sphere consisting of a public body (or bodies) working for a public interest (the state authority or government) and a sphere of private bodies working for private interests (business/the market/general populace). Civil society is located directly between the two; distinct from the official and the commercial. It is a third sphere consisting of those private bodies working for a public interest encompassing those who act uncoerced. They call for their rights, just as the burghers did during the Enlightenment, and proceed of their own volition to effect social or political change.
Civil society as now discussed is indelibly linked to values and ideas with an Enlightenment heritage. These include freedom, sovereignty of the people, enlightened self-interest, the individual as a rational agent, a transparent and accountable government with separation of powers, liberal democracy based on consent and the rule of law, secularism and human rights hence the need to remedy a 'governance gap' by expanding democracy.
The cosmopolitan case now can be summed up. Nation-state sovereignty is subject to increasingly intense contestation as the processes of globalisation bring us all closer together. It is this compression of the planet that leads to a 'governance gap' where states find they cannot directly manage processes that were once their sole preserve. This in addition to the exclusion of stakeholders, whose fundamental rights and needs recognise no borders, from decision-making means a 'governance gap' exists.
Cosmopolitans seek to resolve it by extending democracy to a level 'outside' the narrow political sphere of a nation-state. Therefore they call the shortfall in sovereignty a 'democratic deficit'. They wish to remedy this by extending civil society into the transnational public sphere to intervene in state decision-making based upon legitimacy conferred purely by the universal rights of global citizens.
Now all that is left is to explore the efficacy of the cosmopolitan argument and model.
The dilemmas of cosmopolitanism
To criticise the cosmopolitan case is, in effect, to accuse them of an unfair comparison as the fundamental premise of the discourse is built upon a supposed equivalence between both the domestic/transnational spheres and between civil society/global civil society. The cosmopolitan argument and the model of global civil society, built as they are upon these two analogies, therefore stand or fall upon the validity of the comparisons.
Examining the first analogy and the reality of both spheres we observe that the domestic environments within nation-states are settled, structured and ordered hierarchically. Authority exists and a domestic civil society finds its place somewhere between the state and the truly private sphere. In contrast, the global sphere is anarchical, with little real order and with no overarching state or global authority for a global civil society to slot beneath. The environments initially facing domestic civil societies within settled power structures and a single global one without are therefore essentially dissimilar and what is true in one setting is not necessarily true in the other.
Without transnational, supra-state authority to provide new rights for cosmopolitans we have to ask exactly what are the rights of a global citizen, apart from what has already been provided by nation-states? Also, if new rights are actually now available, who provides and/or secures them and who is it that global citizens can hold to account for them?
Accountability
If global citizens were to attempt to gain their cosmopolitan rights (as opposed to those offered and secured by their respective nations) they would still ultimately have to lobby or apply pressure to those with authority i.e. nation-states or go to organisations that would have to lobby or apply pressure to those with authority i.e. nation-states. In fact, as global civil society actors have no powers to formally account anybody in their capacity as global citizens they are inherently dependent on nation-states and TNCs to comply, listen or accede to their claims. This in effect amounts to abandoning aspirations towards representation and concentrating on raising awareness and public opinion. Although some, such as Michael Moore, have been successful in raising awareness and opinion this of course is not at all like what global alternatives to the nation-state should limit themselves to.
The absence of authority above the nation-state further complicates the cosmopolitan case. The institutions proposed by cosmopolitan theorists can be immediately thwarted or even disabled by the actions of nation-states. Just as the non-participation of the US irrevocably undermined the League of Nations modern cosmopolitan institutions will also suffer in terms of legitimacy and authority due to the non-participation of nation-states. An example would be the obstruction and palpable dilution of the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the current Bush Administration. Their authority is therefore highly conditional.
A major concern for any examining the cosmopolitan case would be the utter absence of both new rights and bona fide accountability for these rights without such authority. Leading critic, David Chandler writes:
"Despite the desires of cosmopolitan advocates, there appears to be little evidence of the claims of any 'new' levels of democracy or political accountability, promised to the global citizen, as opposed to the humble citizen of the nation-state who can formally hold their government to account. In fact, any search for the formal democratic rights of the cosmopolitan citizen would be a fruitless one (2003, p.337)".
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