The Globalization Reader by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119409953
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2019-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

There is no doubt that developing ideas and making demands on how to improve the world are part of the core business of NGOs and social movements. They can confront the world of political, bureaucratic, and factual constraints and troublesome compromises with ideals and utopic ideas, which are otherwise lost in the day‐to‐day business of politics. And they enjoy the privilege of being able to look beyond a short time horizon of election cycles and to make suggestions which are all too often taboo in politics for tactical reasons.

But NGOs have been more than workshops for ideas already for a long time now. As they increasingly organize globally, they and their networks form the core of an international public and civil society. They can thus also act as a counterweight to the financial capital that has been organized internationally for quite some time, the transnational groups and trade associations with their squadron of influential lobbyists. And they can mobilize masses of people – against large dams and coal and nuclear power plants. They even manage to bring tens of thousands of people onto the streets in many capitals all over the world during rounds of world trade talks and climate summits. They are thus able to stymie power politics and enforce some publicity and transparency.

But even if they are justly described as a democratic counterweight to economic and political powers, the NGOs are still constantly exposed to the question of their legitimacy. Surveys may confirm that they are highly appreciated by the population, but this demographically determined acceptance does not lend them any democratic legitimization yet. In whose name do their officials speak if, for example, simple donors do not have any influence on the election of those officials? They represent a virtual community at best. The myth of the direct democratic organization that is only concerned with noble goals has been shattered by fundraising posters at bus stops and bitter donation scandals, even if these have only been isolated cases so far.

Notwithstanding their common goal, namely, that they want to save the world, NGOs thus remain a mixed bunch which can only agree on collective messages with difficulty and sporadically. Their advantage clearly is their watchdog function over politics, because many eyes can see many things, and their abundance of ideas and alternatives, because many minds can produce many thoughts. Yet NGOs, at best, succeed only briefly in committing to a collective, substantive, and strategic direction. After all, who is supposed to make such central decisions in a movement without a center?

The engagement of civil society in climate policy is more fragmented and varied than ever. Upon closer analysis, this fact helps us to dispense with the harmonious picture of a civil society that is given more credit for its skill in solving problems than “the” politicians. NGOs and social movements must strive to openly discuss their diverse conflicts of interest and differences in positions among themselves. Even networks established over the past years (CAN, Forum for Environment & Development, Climate Alliance) seem unable to organize such strategic and self‐reflective debates.

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