The Global Civil Society

According to this week’s reading, the global civil society has three social and political implications. Firstly, there is influence shift from state-based institutions to social relations. The relationships between different NGOs become significant in political and social perspectives. Then, the NGOs played important rules and become essential actors in the international society. Thirdly, the global civil society is moving toward more democratic based politics. The NGOs and even the state based institutions will become more “people centered” (Warkentin & Mingst 2000, p238). The individual rights will be highlighted and the state sovereignty may be limited.

On the other hand, the market is also a fundamental component. In global society, the transnational cooperation and interaction become more actively. Some international trading agreements like the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) is designed to carry out some regulations in due to ensure the transnational investment is standardized into same way. It is seem to be a good method to minimize the transaction cost and encourage foreign investment. However, there is a series of oppositions have been lead by some NGOs to against the MAI. These NGOs criticized the agreement would violate labor and environmental conditions. They argued that MAI would lead the countries to competitively minimize their labor cost due to attract foreign investment. This is a typical negative aspect of global civil society. When many countries are integrated together in market, the country with better economic development and leading technologies would constrain and take advantage from the weaker countries. For example, they may benefit from hiring cheap labor and getting permission to pollute the environment.

In brief, the global civil society has both positive and negative perspective.

Source: Craig Warkentin and Karen Mingst, “International Institutions, the State and Global Civil Society in the Age of the World Wide Web,” Global Governance 6 (April-June 2000): 237-257.