The changing role of civil society in international management

September 5, 2023

Last week we began to talk about international public organizations and how they are emerging as important actors, although limited, in dealing with global problems.

This week we are going to look at organizations of civil society.

This should be seen as a part of the whole. The current international system is seen as made up of governments, secretariats and what is now termed civil society. This is in many ways a new term. It came into being around the time of the Rio environmental conference in 1992, but is now common currency.  (This probably means that it will be replaced by some new term as soon as academics tire of it).  It was intended to go beyond non-governmental organizations to incorporate other institutions that were not part of governments, including the private sector and constituencies that might not be formally organized. In a world where individuals can communicate with international organizations through such means as the Internet, they might be included as well. In some areas, like the Internet and climate change, the mix of governments, NGOs, international secretariats and the private sector (and sometimes academia) are being referred to as multi-stakeholder governance, a new concept. And, as Weiss puts it in his book, civil society constitutes the "third United Nations".

Civil society in the UN basic documents

The Preamble to the United Nations Charter, on the basis of which all universal organizations were formed or re-formed, states:

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

As noted in the first lecture, this implied organizations that derived their authority from Beyond the Nation-State

The specific role of NGO's is found in Article 71, which states:

The Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its competence. Such arrangements may be made with international organizations and, where appropriate, with national organizations after consultation with the Member of the United Nations concerned.

There is an implication that international NGO's are also above the State…

And yet, we didn't hear much about them during the Cold War. There are probably several reasons for this:

• In the realist model, there is no place for NGOs. Not being governments, they would not be actors.

• The functionalist model made provision, but as part of society without much definition. Presumably, if they performed a function, they were important, but the functionalists did not spend much time trying to determine what it is.

A governance model sees a role for civil society as distinct actors. What is it?

Power at the international level

To look at that role, as well as the nature of the international public sector, we have again to consider the issue of power. It is an essential ingredient in the realist model and was a major concern in the September 6 session.  Let me elaborate further on what is meant by the three types of power.

The Three types of power

Power is about making people do something that they might not otherwise do.

Political power can be broken down into three types.

• Coercive power: you do it or I will do something to you that will cause you great pain. The ultimate power of the State (can send the police or troops, can throw you in jail, can burn down your house or give you hefty fines)
• Utilitarian power: you do it and I will give you a tangible reward. I’ll build you a new school, I’ll give you a bribe, or an exemption from taxes.
• Legitimate power: you do it because you believe that it is right and proper to do so.

They vary in terms of cost, to the individual and society. Coercive is the most costly, followed by utilitarian. Legitimate power is almost cost-free and is therefore preferred.

But the first two types really don't apply to the international level.

• There is no UN Army, the UN can't levy fines, perhaps once there is a functioning international criminal court, it may be able to throw someone in jail (not execute him, since that is considered torture in UN usage).
• The UN can't give tax breaks (since it doesn't levy taxes) or make bribes (because of audit controls and lack of "walking-around money") or channel public investment to compliant States (although if human rights conditionality is applied to IMF and World Bank lending, there might be an element of this, seen in the negative).
• The only source of power available to international organizations is legitimate power. Which is, in effect, self-enforcing. It should only take information about deviance from legitimate norms and standards to "incentivize" compliance based on "peer pressure" (i.e. of other states).

How do we achieve legitimate power?

If legitimate power is the basis of authority in the international system, the next question is, how is it achieved?

Consensus

If everyone goes along, all have accepted the legitimacy of a decision. The need to have everyone going along means that decision-making by consensus is inevitable. A negative vote by a sovereign State means that the State does not have to accept the outcome.

Negotiation

Decisions are not made by fiat, but rather by negotiation. This is a protracted, complex process that we will discuss in a couple of weeks. Most negotiation is "informal", i.e. out of the public eye. (Necessary to ensure that consensus can be achieved.)

But how do we get it?

Consensus is achieved because all parties perceive that they have gotten enough from the total package to overcome their concerns. “All parties” mean more than governments.

Are governments monolithic?

Governments are not monolithic. They have different parts with different interests. This enables governments to be flexible and permits them to be influenced. Civil society influences governments. Sometimes they can be determinative.

This is particularly true when an issue is new and there are no pre-defined structures. As example can be found in the Internet domain name controversy. I have described the origins of the domain name controversy in another place (my book on Internet governance). An initial idea among those who wanted some form of regulation of the assignment of domain names was to give it to the International Telecommunications Union. This idea was supported by some of the main non-governmental organizations concerned with the Internet, including the Internet Society. It was opposed by others, usually on the grounds that any regulation, especially international regulation, was undesirable. Through the good offices of the ITU, a memorandum of understanding on generic top-level domain names (MOU-gtld) was worked out in which there would be a system of registrars. However, for it to be binding, the MOU-gtld had to be endorsed by the Member Governments of the ITU. The European Union was favorable (its then-telecommunications commissioner, Martin Bangemann, was highly supportive of an international role in Internet regulation).

The United States, arguably with the greatest current stake in the Internet, was originally inclined to go along with the MOU. Partly this was because the United States is usually represented at the ITU by specialists in telecommunications. However, there was in the United States a major backlash among a number of non-governmental organizations, including prospective registrars, as well as Internet freedom advocates. They convinced the US government to withhold support and, since the existing central domain registry was found in the US, a new national process was started. In the end, neither prevailed, but the agreed structure, ICANN, was a civil society entity, rather than an international organization. Only time will tell whether this will remain, but it shows the power of civil society to affect international decision-making.. [For an update on how the issues are developing, you might want to look at the work being done by the Internet Governance Project, now headquartered at Georgia Tech but founded originally at Syracuse University. We will be reviewing this in detail later.] NGO's continue to be major players in the Internet Governance Forum, which was set up to deal with these issues.

Who is civil society?

A fair question is who is part of civil society? In some respects it is a simple question, in others less so.

International NGO's

Clearly non-governmental organizations that are recognized by the United Nations are part of civil society. They have been part of the UN's business since the outset. There are several thousand of them, and by being recognized by governments in the United Nations, through the Committee on NGO's, they obtain a guaranteed access to UN deliberations. Most international NGO's have headquarters in developed countries but have affiliates throughout the world. To be recognized, an NGO has to prove that is purposes fit the UN's, that it has international reach and that it is not committed to the overthow of any sovereign government. For more information, browse the UN web pages on civil society.

National NGO's with International Reach?

A second group are national NGOs which, nevertheless, have an international reach. Many of these also have consultative status with the UN, although their primary focus is domestic. They can often be quite influential, as is the case of AARP in the area of aging. Other organizations that are primarily nationally focused find it useful to be active at the international level both to project their values and to find support by identifying with trends that NGO's from all major countries also endorse. Sometimes they become involved internationally, when an issue reaches the international stage in which a normative agreement might undercut a national position. This was probably the case, for example, when the National Rifle Association of the United States suddenly decided to become accredited to the UN, when the Commission on Crime Prevention and Control began to seek views on the extent to which there was support for an international convention in the trafficking of firearms. They weren't very successful because the NRA had almost no experience in working with other international NGOs, but they did influence US positions on the treaty (the US has neither signed nor ratified the optional protocol on trafficking since its adoption in 2001).

Epistemic communities

Another part is what Peter Haas calls "epistemic communities". These are essentially scholarly communities or communities that are bounded by common disciplines or interest. In many areas, they are the most influential non-governmental parties to international agreements. The main example is in the area of environment.

One particularly influential community has been the meteoroligists in the area of climate change. Many international organizations are the natural homes of certain disciplines. The World Meteorological Organization, for example, depends on the meteorological community for the effectiveness of its work. This has carried over to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), over half of whose members do not work for governments, but all of whom are part of an epistemic community of persons concerned professionally with climate change. Similarly, the International Atomic Energy Agency is the home agency for nuclear physicists and engineers, a role that has become increasingly important as the popularity of these fields haas decreased.

Here the relationship between civil society and the international organizations is highly symbiotic, each clearly needs the other.

Multi-national corporations?

The private sector was not usually considered in civil society (nor was it particularly interested in international organizations) until recently. What has changed is a sense that business objectives have a relationship with the international public sector (as in, for example, regulation of child labor, or in proposals for a code of conduct on transnational corporations), Similarly, international organizations have sensed that contribuions from the private sector can help support, directly, international programmes. To tap this, the United Nations has set up the Global Compact, which is an effort to reach out to and engage the private sector.

Why would they be emerging now?

A fair question is why civil society has become so important now in the international arena. What is it about the constellation of power and institutions in the early 21^st century? We can think of a number of reasons. In this, we can distinguish international action between the formulation and enforcement of norms and the delivery of services "on the ground".  What follows is my own take on the reasons.

Media?

A growing segment of the concerned international public is obtaining information from the new media on the Internet (Facebook, other social media, Twitter) that are not run by governments, but rather by civil society (either organized or unorganized). Thus, mobilization of support for a position may depend on these sources.

A good example is the work of an activist, Naomi Klein, a Canadian who also writes for The Nation. Her most recent book, published in 2014, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, makes a strong case for a combination of international action and local mobilization to deal with climate change. The Amazon page for the book says that it is a "brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core 'free market' ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems. In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option." If you go to the site, you can read the introduction (by clicking on "Look Inside!) and see her argument.

Opponents of climate change will also use social media. For example, the American Petroleum Institute runs ads saying that natural gas is nice and usually says that this is good in combatting climate change. Thus, reaching this media is important in obtaining support for different positions.

Magic of the marketplace?

We live in a period in which the State is increasingly passing the responsibility for economic and social change to the operations of the market. If so, then whoever can play in the market, in the sense of mobilizing support, or providing an information product, can be important. NGO's, who do not have the constraints of States (who really have difficulties criticizing each other, or themselves), can attract attention. The example of Amnesty International is apt here. Civil society institutions can help craft legitimacy for certain issues, as well.

Distrust of the Nation-State?

We also live in a period when the Nation-State is often distrusted, or more precisely, its institutions are considered unreliable. Civil society institutions, not bound to underpaid civil services or to political parties, can be considered more trustworthy. This is particularly true in the delivery of services at the field level.

Corruption

A concern of donor countries is that their funds are not misappropriated through corruption. Rather than providing funds through government agencies, NGO's are preferred. This is often the case when, as in civil conflicts, there really is no government. Transparency International is an NGO that puts pressure on governments.

The non-politics of relief

NGO's can often be effective because they are seen as politically neutral. They can even be considered more neutral than international organizations. For example, Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) is able to operate in places where even the United Nations cannot work. It importance was reflected in the fact that it was working in the areas of Damascus that were attacked by chemical weapons.

Fundraising?

It is easier for some donor governments to give to NGOs than to international organizations. The United States Agency for International Development, like other development assistance agencies, operates under guidelines that call for it to disburse a certain percentage of aid through NGO's.

In what issues are they particularly strong?

There are areas where NGO's have become particularly significant.

Environment

In the area of environment, civil society institutions have played a key role. They have been able and willing to see the issue as it is, in the long-term, something that governments find difficult (in that government's time horizon is typically only a few years). The Wapner book gives a good description of the process.

Examples: Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, Environmental Defence Fund

Human Rights: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, IWRAW

Human rights is a second area. NGO's have been successful because they have been able to advocate, critically, for enforcement of norms. Both Amnesty and Human Rights Watch are prominent. For example, the International Women's Rights Action Watch (IWRAW), which operates out of the University of Minnesota, has been very effective in promoting use of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrmination against Women. IWRAW's web site describes their work very well.

Development

In the development field, NGO's have been able to innovate in ways that governments would find difficult.  Lindenberg and Bryant address this in some detail.

Humanitarian Assistance: Doctors without Borders, CARE, World Vision

It is in the area of humanitarian assistance that organizations of civil society have been most visible. They have been able to mobilize support and concern and, often, deliver services more rapidly than international organizations.

How is this different from the national level?

At the national level, NGO's work by influencing the political process, and by providing services either on delegation by the State or where the State is not active. At the international level, the politics are more complex and more indirect. As we look at specific functions, we will see how this works. There are two factors of particular concern

• Multi-national constituencies. International NGO's have to balance the differing needs of their national constituencies. They are often accused, for example, of not reflecting the interests of their developing country affiliates.
• Complex funding - dependence on donor countries channeling funds. Funding for international NGO's is complex and difficult, particularly if they are seeking to represent the interests of developing country constituents.

What are their limitations?

• Not states, cannot participate directly in negotiations
• Limited funding, inability to protect selves in harm’s way

What are the main issues of governance and management?

NGO's typically have less oversight from their constituents (since their support is somewhat market-based). They therefore have some flexibility.

However, there is a potential for abuse.

The concern for maintaining image, constituency base, may produce less-then-long-term focus. Monitoring and evaluation is necessary, but not always done.

A central problem is trying to maintain strategic direction when financing is year to year and is often driven by fads and fancies in the global marketplace, where NGOs compete for funding.

Over the course we will see how this works out in specific areas.