Is Global Civil Society a Good Thing? By Ann Florini §

Created Time: December 3, 2021 10:37 PM Database: Evergreen Database Last Edited Time: December 6, 2021 3:17 PM Tags:#Article Type: Literature Notes URL:

• Defintions
  • Civil Society: interest groups lobbying to pressure decision makers?
• Why did people protest the Iraq war?
• What is the second superpower?
  • Civil Society: amorphous realm of human associations that are not family or government or profit-seeking business
• What is the problem of Civil Society?
  • Decisions made by unelected groups and unaccountable extremist, undermine democratic process
  • Some governments aren’t required to follow them, but many are concerned how they’ve risen in authority
• How can civil society have so much authority?

  • NGOs are formalized civil society can hire staff and open bank accounts

    💡 Cases of NGOs having power

    • Organized protests where world leaders meet

    • Ban US from using landmines

    • Led international anti-slavery campaign

    • Have a say in important global decisions, security, economy, environmental

• How is civil society being more powerful affect the doubts in its role in the international community?
  • UN had Kofi Annan make a panel to conduct assessment of UN and civil society interactions
  • US has anti-NGO backlash as threat to democracy
• UN conferences since 1970s for States to meet up and discuss, but NGOs come together instead
• technology is one of the factors in helping groups of NGOs interact and communicate easily. The activists communicate using information technology as their source of communication to reach out to citizens more widely.
  • it went from television to the internet which makes message delivery more efficient and less time consuming.
  • people become more educated which help them in involving themselves with those activities in making a better civil society.
• NGOs were created to pressure the government in serving the favor to the citizens which they may find it pressuring.

  • some countries implemented certain laws and regulations to limit the creation of NGOs.

    💡 Some laws set out that to be eligible in forming an NGO, one must have 300 million yen in “basic capital” permanently in the bank

  • However, some NGOs does not have that much money since the source of income mostly generate from

    • Governments
    • Voluntary contributions
    • And fee charged for services rendered
• Without NGOs, many of the pressing issues now on the global agenda, from human rights to the inequities of global trade rules to ozone depletion, would never have received much attention.
  • demands governments to be transparent