The Third Force: The Rise of Transnational Civil Society

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Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion

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NGO

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The Third Force: The Rise of Transnational Civil Society. Copublished 2000 by the Japan Center for International Exchange, Tokyo, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C.

Copyright © 2000 Japan Center for International Exchange and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the Carnegie Endowment.

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Distributed within Japan and Asia by the Japan Center for International Exchange or its agents.

The views presented in this publication are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Carnegie Endowment, the Japan Center for International Exchange, their officers, staff, or trustees.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The third force : the rise of transnational civil society / Ann M. Florini, editor.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-87003-180-5 (cloth : acid-free paper)—ISBN 0-87003-179-1 (pbk. : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-0-87003-305-6 (e-book)

1. Civil society. 2. Globalization. I. Florini, Ann.

JC337 .T45 2000

322.4—dc21 00-009535

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

1: What the World Needs Now?

Ann M. Florini and P. J. Simmons

2: A Global Network to Curb Corruption: The Experience of Transparency International

Fredrik Galtung

3: Advocates and Activists: Conflicting Approaches on Nonproliferation and the Test Ban Treaty

Rebecca Johnson

4: Toward Democratic Governance for Sustainable Development: Transnational Civil Society Organizing Around Big Dams

Sanjeev Khagram

5: Transnational Networks and Campaigns for Democracy

Chetan Kumar

6: Building Partnerships toward a Common Goal: Experiences of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines

Motoko Mekata

7: The Power of Norms versus the Norms of Power: Transnational Civil Society and Human Rights

Thomas Risse

8: Lessons Learned

Ann M. Florini

Annotated Bibliography

Yahya A. Dehqanzada

Index

Contributors

Japan Center for International Exchange

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Foreword

As the world becomes ever more tightly integrated, rapid economic, political, and technological changes create urgent new needs for global rules. Those needs raise pressing questions about who gets to make the rules. A swiftly growing number of coalitions of civil society groups now claim the right to have a say in everything from nuclear arms control negotiations to the operations of multinational corporations. These transnational networks are much in the limelight, alternately portrayed as rock-throwing anarchists disrupting the serious deliberations of governments or as the last remaining hope for global peace and justice. Despite the hype, there has been surprisingly little rigorous analysis of the fundamental issues raised by this growing role of transnational civil society. Are these networks truly powerful, or merely good at attracting attention to themselves? How much of a role are they likely to play in addressing the world’s problems in the coming decades? What are their legitimate roles, and what are likely to be their aims?

The Third Force sheds new light on the answers to these questions. Its six case studies compel recognition that these border-spanning networks are a real and enduring force in the international relations of the twenty-first century. That reality will require governments and corporations, the targets of civil society campaigns, to adjust their behavior and their decision-making practices. And, as Ann Florini argues, the networkers themselves need to recognize that their new influence imposes new responsibilities. Above all, those involved in transnational civil society networks must become far more transparent about who they are, what they are doing, why they are doing it, and who is paying for it.

This book grew out of a presentation given by Dr. Florini at a session on civil society and international governance at the 1998 Global ThinkNet Conference, sponsored by the Japan Center for International Exchange (

JCIE

) in Tokyo. That meeting made it clear that the role of transnational civil society networks in global governance was both important and insufficiently examined, particularly by researchers outside the United States. Accordingly, the

JCIE

asked Dr. Florini to direct a study that would bring together researchers from a variety of countries. Most of the authors she assembled are both participants in and analysts of the networks they write about, a combination that gives them unusual insight.

The Third Force provides a carefully formulated framework of common questions for each case study, making it possible for the book to uncover broad trends. Its dispassionate analysis reveals not only how useful transnational civil society networks can be but also how difficult it is for those networks to live up to the self-professed ideals that render their power legitimate.

The

JCIE

and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace both believe that as globalization changes the identity of policy actors and transforms the processes of international relations, policy research institutes like ours must help policy makers and the public alike understand and respond to the challenges of this new era. The Third Force represents a major step forward in that understanding.

The ThinkNet conferences are the centerpiece of the Global ThinkNet project, which the

JCIE

launched in 1996, with the generous support of the Nippon Foundation, to commemorate its twenty-fifth anniversary. Global ThinkNet aims to strengthen cross-border intellectual networks among research institutions and researchers. Under its auspices, researchers from around the world collaborate on projects related to the themes of globalization, governance, and civil society.

Both of us would like to express our gratitude for the generous support of the Nippon Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, without which this project would not have been possible.

T

ADASHI

Y

AMAMOTO

President, Japan Center for International Exchange

J

ESSICA

T. M

ATHEWS

President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Acknowledgments

As is true for all publications, many people whose names do not appear in the contents made valuable contributions to this book. I owe thanks to the enormous range of people I contacted in my extensive search for the ideal case study authors. Cara Carter provided excellent research assistance. Delores Bigby coped cheerfully with multiple revisions of the ever-growing manuscript. Trish Reynolds at Carnegie and Pam Noda at the

JCIE

skillfully shepherded the manuscript through the complexities of joint publication. Anyone who has spent time at the Carnegie Endowment in recent years knows that one of the institution’s major assets is its outstanding library staff, Jennifer Little, Kathleen Daly, and Chris Henley, who found everything needed for both my own research and the annotated bibliography.

I am deeply grateful to the two institutions that published this volume. The

JCIE

proposed the idea of a multinational study on the role of transnational civil society in global governance, managed all the logistics, and made the project a pleasure. The Carnegie Endowment hosted me throughout this project (and others), providing a most supportive environment. I am particularly grateful to the president of the

JCIE

, Tadashi Yamamoto, to Hideko Katsumata, executive secretary of the

JCIE

, to the Carnegie Endowment’s president, Jessica Mathews, and to the Endowment’s vice president for studies, Thomas Carothers.

My thanks as well to my fellow authors, not only for their written contributions but also for their congeniality. I learned much from them and enjoyed the process greatly.

On behalf of all the authors, we are deeply grateful to the Nippon Foundation for its generous financial support of the project. I also want to extend my thanks to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund for making it possible for me to take on this project.

1

What the World Needs Now?

Ann M. Florini and P. J. Simmons

In Late 1999, tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Seattle in one of the most visible manifestations of civil society in recent decades. They had gathered to show their opposition to the World Trade Organization (

WTO

) and the broader forces of economic integration that it represents. The

WTO

, which was meeting to set an agenda for a proposed new round of global trade negotiations, found itself under scrutiny as never before. For several days, television news shows around the world displayed protesters being gassed and arrested by the hundreds. Although media reports portrayed the protesters as a combination of American labor unionists who wanted to protect their jobs at the expense of Third World workers and hippies left over from the 1960s, in fact the protesters represented a broad and to some degree transnational coalition of concerns. They objected not only to the

WTO

’s ability to override domestic environmental legislation but also to the very nature of the processes by which governments and corporations are fostering economic integration.

This is not the first time such groups have inserted themselves into global decision making, for good or ill. In recent decades, such stories have filled newspapers and scholarly journals alike.

• Every year, an international nongovernmental organization called Transparency International releases an index ranking the world’s countries on how corrupt they are perceived to be. Although Transparency International only came into existence in 1993, it has galvanized a global movement against corruption.

• Almost since the dawn of the nuclear age, scores of activist groups have campaigned vigorously for a ban on nuclear testing. They argued that a test ban, more than any other measure, could bring nuclear arms races and the spread of nuclear weapons to a screeching halt. In 1996, they got their way when 136 countries signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

• For much of the twentieth century, countries around the world have constructed large dams on their rivers to create water supplies and electrical power. But in the past decade, would-be dam builders have found themselves in the crosshairs of a transnational movement protesting the environmental and human costs of these massive projects. Now, governments, the private sector, and transnational civil society have come together to create a World Commission on Dams, potentially setting a precedent for a new style of global problem solving.

• When an obscure guerrilla movement known as the Zapatistas took over four towns in the southern province of Chiapas in 1994, the Mexican government started to respond with force. When nongovernmental activists elsewhere (particularly in the United States) protested, Mexico put its troops on hold.

• In December 1997, 122 countries signed an international treaty to ban land mines, despite the vehement objections of the world’s most powerful governments. Standing beside the government delegates were representatives of some 300 nongovernmental organizations, members of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, without whom the treaty would not exist.

• At the end of the 1990s, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet found himself facing international legal charges based on his alleged violations of human rights in Chile. Nike found that its bottom line suffered dramatically when it was accused of violating the rights of its workers in poor countries. The new standards by which heads of governments and corporations alike are being judged originated and spread due to the determined efforts of a broad network of nongovernmental groups around the world.

Nongovernmental organizations (

NGO

s), informal associations, and loose coalitions are forming a vast number of connections across national borders and inserting themselves into a wide range of decision-making processes on issues from international security to human rights to the environment. But how significant is this flurry of apparent activity? Is transnational civil society becoming a permanent and powerful contributor to solving the world’s problems? And should global problem solving be left to a loose agglomeration of unelected activists?

These questions matter. Transnational civil society is a piece—an increasingly important piece—of the larger problem of global governance. Although the state system that has governed the world for centuries is neither divinely ordained nor easily swept away, in many ways that system is not well suited to addressing the world’s growing agenda of border-crossing problems. Even when governments find that their national interests coincide with broad global interests, political will is often hard to muster in the face of dangers that are incremental and long term, and most of the transnational threats to human well-being arise cumulatively rather than as acute crises. Even if states are able to bestir themselves, the transnational agenda is so complex and multifaceted that multiple sources of information and multiple points of intervention are needed. The sheer number of regimes and agreements needed to cope with the wide range of problems demanding governance is overwhelming the resources available to states, which in any case face increasing domestic demands.

And the transnational agenda is becoming more urgent. Thanks to the information revolution, the growing integration of national economies, and the rapidly increasing number of people in the world, human activity is less constrained than ever by national borders. People travel, migrate, communicate, and trade in ever-growing numbers, and the sheer number of economically active people is putting heavy stress on the environmental infrastructure on which everyone depends. All that integration across borders has important benefits—greater freedom of choice, enhanced economic efficiency—but it also creates (or makes people aware of) problems that threaten human well-being. Such threats include everything from the difficulty of regulating internationally mobile capital to the danger of global environmental change to the corruption of governments and societies around the world. And even when the problems take place squarely within national territories, as in the case of human rights violations or the construction of dams that may devastate local ecosystems and populations, the solutions often draw broadly on the international community.

In short, the world badly needs someone to act as the global conscience, to represent broad public interests that do not readily fall under the purview of individual territorial states or that states have shown themselves wont to ignore. This book sets out to determine whether transnational civil society can, and should, fill the gap between the supply of and the need for global problem solving. Will, and should, transnational civil society play a greatly expanded role in the ever-expanding set of global issues?

To date, a large and growing literature has not made clear whether transnational civil society can provide an appropriate and effective instrument across the board, or whether in the end it will prove to be sound and fury signifying nothing. The literature largely concentrates on other questions. Much of it examines civil society one country at a time or draws comparisons across countries about the status of national civil societies.¹ Relatively few analysts have looked at the networks linking civil society organizations across territorial boundaries, and most of these have examined just one case at a time.² Very few studies have compared the various transnational civil society networks to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this emerging form of transnational collective action.³ And only a handful have looked systematically at what, if anything, transnational civil society should do—at whether, and under what conditions, it is desirable for transnational civil society to play a significant part in making the decisions that shape the future for all of us.⁴ (The annotated bibliography in this book lists some of the relevant literature.) This gap badly needs to be filled. Anecdotes and isolated cases cannot answer fundamental questions about the significance, sustainability, and desirability of transnational civil society.

This book sets out to fill the gap by comparing six stories. The stories are quite diverse—indeed, they were selected to cover a wide range of issues, to discover what commonalities might lurk beneath the surface. For the most part, they were chosen because at first glance they seem to be success stories. By teasing out what factors might account for success, or at least prominence, it is possible to move on to investigate whether those factors are widely shared. All the cases address the same three basic questions: How powerful is transnational civil society? How sustainable is its influence? How desirable is that influence?

The first case is in many ways the simplest. It is the story of the transnational network to curb corruption, a network that arose with astonishing rapidity in the 1990s to force corruption onto the international agenda. Unlike most cases of transnational civil society, this network consists primarily of a single international nongovernmental organization (

INGO

), Transparency International. Transparency International has created effective links with international organizations and national governments and has systematically cultivated the establishment of national chapters in scores of countries. But the basic story is about what a single man with a powerful idea at the right moment can accomplish through transnational nongovernmental means. Fredrik Galtung, the first professional staff member hired by Transparency International, brings us an insider’s account of this remarkable organization.

Rebecca Johnson’s chapter addresses a more diverse, and divided, network: the array of groups that campaign for nuclear arms control. As she shows, this motley crew uses very different strategies, from Greenpeace’s direct action to the Programme for Promoting Nuclear Nonproliferation’s behind-the-scenes meetings of government officials and nongovernmental experts. On occasion, members of the network have found themselves sharply at odds with one another over both tactics and goals. Yet the groups share a common dedication to reducing the risk of nuclear war, and their disparate approaches have proved complementary. Most strikingly, the chapter makes clear that without the active participation of transnational civil society, such fundamental nuclear arms control accords as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the permanent extension of the Nonproliferation Treaty would never have been signed.

Sanjeev Khagram tells a story that in many ways is the mirror image of Transparency International’s top-down approach. In his chapter on the gradual emergence of a global network opposing the construction of large dams, Khagram identifies the origin of the network in multiple national civil society campaigns. These campaigns emerged not only in North America and Western Europe but also in Brazil, India, Indonesia, China, and a host of other developing countries. The frequent complaint against transnational civil society—that it overwhelmingly represents the concerns of Northerners who have the time and resources to apply to civil society organizing, rather than the concerns of people in poor countries—clearly does not apply in this case.

Chetan Kumar looks at one of the most controversial of transnational civil society roles: the targeting of specific governments with the aim of changing not just the policies but the very nature of those governments. In case studies on the Zapatista movement in Mexico and the campaign to restore President Aristide to power in Haiti, Kumar grapples with profound questions about the morality and practicality of transnational nongovernmental efforts to influence domestic processes of democratization.

Motoko Mekata recounts the odyssey of perhaps the best known of the recent transnational civil society campaigns: the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In addition to providing a comprehensive account of the transnational network’s activities and impacts, she shows the extent to which the loosely coordinated campaign depended on the quite independent activities of national-level civil society. She provides a particularly detailed insider’s account of the Japanese national campaign, which more than most depended for its success on its transnational counterparts.

In the final case study, Thomas Risse explains the complex processes by which transnational civil society has transformed attitudes toward human rights in the second half of the twentieth century. He elucidates the impact transnational civil society has had on setting global human rights standards and changing governmental behavior. And he raises major questions about the future of this large and seemingly well-entrenched sector of transnational civil society.

These quite diverse stories are all variations on a common theme: efforts to solve problems that span borders in the absence of border-spanning governments. This introductory chapter provides a common framework of definitions, questions, and context. Chapter 8 returns to those questions to see what answers have emerged.

The Nature of the Beast

At first glance, it seems odd that transnational civil society should exist at all, much less be able to sway mighty governments and rich corporations. Why should people in disparate parts of the world devote significant amounts of time and energy, for little or no pay, to collaborations with groups with whom they share neither history nor culture? These networks are unlike the other major collectivities in the world. States occupy clearly defined physical territories with the coercive power to extract resources from those territories and their inhabitants, enjoy legal recognition from other states, and can call on powerful sentiments of patriotism to cement the loyalties of their citizens. The various subsidiaries of transnational corporations are tied together by common economic interests and legal obligations.

By contrast, transnational civil society networks—the emerging third force in global politics—tend to aim for broader goals based on their conceptions of what constitutes the public good. They are bound together more by shared values than by self-interest.⁵ The values the networks espouse vary tremendously. They range from beliefs in the rights of animals to religious beliefs to beliefs about the inherent superiority of some ethnic groups over others. Some of these values are widely held. Others, particularly the racist views reflected in the hate groups, are repugnant indeed.⁶

We use the somewhat ungainly term transnational civil society in preference to other frequently heard lingo (such as global civil society) to emphasize both the border-crossing nature of the links and the fact that rarely are these ties truly global, in the sense of involving groups and individuals from every part of the world. The Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa in particular are severely underrepresented in transnational nongovernmental coalitions, other than those that address strictly regional and developmental concerns.

The definition of transnational civil society comes in three parts. First, like all civil society, it includes only groups that are not governments or profit-seeking private entities.⁷ Second, it is transnational—that is, it involves linkages across national borders. Third, as the case studies show, it takes a variety of forms. Sometimes it takes the form of a single

INGO

with individual members or chapters in several countries, as in the case of Transparency International. In other cases, transnational civil society consists of more informal border-crossing coalitions of organizations and associations, such as the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

The coalitions overlap with the rapidly growing set of nongovernmental service providers—such as or Médecins sans frontières—that are increasingly familiar from the extensive news coverage of their role in humanitarian disaster relief efforts as well as development projects in poor countries. These service providers have benefited enormously from the increasing tendency of governments and intergovernmental organizations to channel relief and development funds through

NGO

s rather than to national or local governments.⁸ Although there is overlap between the ranks of the nongovernmental service providers, newly flush with government funds, and the members of the advocacy coalitions, the two are not identical, and the fortunes of the latter do not depend on the continued government-provided resources of the former.

The Long Tradition

Although most of the literature on the subject dates from the 1990s, transnational civil society has played a role in global affairs for centuries. Indeed, it may be as old as religion. As one author points out: Religious communities are among the oldest of the transnational: Sufi orders, Catholic missionaries, Buddhist monks carried word and praxis across vast spaces before those places become nation states or even states. Such religious peripatetics were versions of civil society.⁹

And religious organizations provided the impetus behind the first modern transnational policy campaign: the nineteenth-century campaign to end slavery. Substantial evidence now exists that slavery remained economically viable in most of the places where it was abolished. The practice of slavery ended not because slaveholders found it unprofitable but because growing Protestant movements (especially Quaker, Methodist, and Baptist) found it morally reprehensible, persuaded their religious brethren elsewhere of the cause, and in time enlisted the support of the British government, which used its dominant naval power to constrict trade to slaveholding countries.¹⁰

NGO

s dedicated to ending the slave trade date to 1775, with the establishment of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, followed a decade later by the British Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and the French Société des Amis des Noirs.¹¹ The links among the movements solidified in 1839 with the establishment of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, in one commentator’s view, the first transnational moral entrepreneur—religious movements aside—to play a significant role in world politics.¹²

Slavery was not the only issue to engage the nascent transnational civil society in the 1800s and early 1900s.¹³ Peace groups based in Europe and America lobbied at various international peace conferences. Governments began to use nongovernmental technical experts as delegates to international conferences. A variety of civil society associations formed around trade issues. The International Committee of the Red Cross was formed, the first step in what became the transnational Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Such groups as the Institut de Droit International and the International Law Association, both formed in 1873, contributed substantially to the development of international law.¹⁴

Over the course of the twentieth century (with the exception of the periods covering the two world wars), the rate at which

INGO

s formed steadily grew. These numbers do not tell the full story of the growth of transnational civil society—they include only formally constituted organizations with members and activities in more than one country.¹⁵ But their numbers do reflect a general trend. By the turn of the century, the rate of formation was about ten a year, although nearly as many dissolved themselves every year. The number increased until World War I, fell to nearly nothing during the war years, then jumped again to about forty a year until war clouds again darkened the horizon. Although only a handful were created during the Second World War, immediately afterward the number jumped to unprecedented levels, starting at about a hundred new international associations a year and increasing ever since, with perhaps only ten to twenty dissolving each year. In other words, formal, transnational

NGO

s have been accumulating at an unprecedented and increasing rate for fifty years. The Union of International Associations now lists over 15,000 transnationally oriented

NGO

s.¹⁶ And the growth in informal transnational coalitions and linkages of all sorts is, if anything, outpacing the increase in formal organizations.

Now, coalitions that claim to speak for broad regional and global public interests abound. Hardly an international issue can be found that lacks at least a rudimentary transnational network, and many are highly developed. The Climate Action Network, a 269-organization alliance of national and regional environmentalist nodes, has coalesced around the climate change negotiations.¹⁷ Women’s groups have taken advantage of a series of large United Nations conferences to form a thick weave of interconnections.¹⁸ In 1998, some 600

NGO

s from around the world linked to put an end to negotiations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (

OECD

) on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment.¹⁹ One of the larger networks active in the peace and conflict arena, the Hague Appeal for Peace, held a conference in May 1999 that drew some 10,000 activists, who used the occasion to launch several new campaigns.²⁰ With all the potential case studies, this could easily have been a very long book indeed.²¹

How Do They Do It?

Standard international relations thinking assumes a hierarchy among the instruments of power: military force ranks highest, then economic resources, then—far down the list, if mentioned at all—such soft instruments as moral authority or the power of persuasion.²² The three types of international actors—states, the private sector, and civil society—vary greatly in their ability to use these instruments. Governments have coercive power, thanks to their control of military forces and the police, and they command economic resources because of their ability to tax. They can, and often do, use control over information to persuade or bamboozle other states, firms, and citizens. Firms lack coercive power but enjoy sometimes substantial economic resources, enabling them to influence governments and the public through everything from campaign contributions to bribes to their ability to provide jobs. And, of course, firms can devote some of their resources to advertising, usually to sell products, but sometimes to sell their views on issues. Civil society groups occasionally command economic resources, but these are usually very limited. By and large, they must rely on softer instruments of power, such as moral authority or the ability to shape how others see their own interests.

In the chapters that follow, the authors show how transnational civil society coalitions have attempted to shape the evolution of international norms—that is, standards about how governments, corporations, and other groups ought to behave.²³ Some of these norms are eventually explicitly codified as treaties, such as many of the human rights standards, the nuclear arms control treaties, the new

OECD

antibribery convention, or the land-mine treaty. Others may not become treaties but are still widely shared standards of behavior, as is the case for emerging norms about how governments and intergovernmental organizations should treat people who may be displaced by the construction of big dams.

Civil society tries to