Article
Revolutionary, Advocate, Agent, or Authority: Context-Based Assessment of the Democratic Legitimacy of Transnational Civil Society Actors
Ethics & Global Politics
(2010)
Abstract
The literature on transnational civil society encompasses a number of conflicting views regarding civil society organizations’ (CSOs) behavior and impacts and the desirability of civil society involvement in international policymaking. This piece suggests that this lack of consensus arises from the diverse range of contexts in which CSOs operate and the wide variety of activities in which they engage. This article seeks to organize and analyze the disparate data on civil society by developing a context-based standard of democratic legitimacy for CSOs. The article disaggregates democracy into input, throughput, and output components, and shows how CSOs must support or manifest different aspects of democracy in order to be democratically legitimate in a given context. Applying this standard to existing works, the article identifies several problems in current research, including a failure to recognize ways the democratic imperatives of transnational advocacy differ from national advocacy, and the potential for international civil society interventions to undermine local democratic processes.
Keywords
- transnational civil society,
- civil society,
- global governance,
- NGOs,
- international policymaking
Disciplines
Publication Date
September 1, 2010
DOI
10.3402/egp.v3i3.4882
Citation Information
Christopher Pallas. "Revolutionary, Advocate, Agent, or Authority: Context-Based Assessment of the Democratic Legitimacy of Transnational Civil Society Actors" Ethics & Global Politics Vol. 3 Iss. 3 (2010) p. 217 - 238 ISSN: 1654-6369 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/christopher-pallas/8/