Global Governance and Global Politics

Manuel Castells, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

The world is undergoing a process ofstructural transformation in multiple

dimensions: technological, economic,cultural, and institutional. This createsas many opportunities as it induces per-ils. Perhaps the most fundamental prob-lem we now face is the crisis of politi-cal institutions in charge of managingthe transition. We know the problems,we understand the issues, and in manycountries there is enough political willto tackle the questions to be addressed.However, the organizational and institu-tional tools of governance are either insufficient or inadequate. Furthermore,the crisis of governance is related to acrisis of political legitimacy, character-ized by increasing distance between citi-zens and their representatives. Bothcrises feed into each other, threateningwith political paralysis and opening theway both for authoritarian policies andfor demagogic revolts.

Social movements and grassrootsorganizations, as well as a variety of so-cial actors, are trying to fill the currentvoid of representation and legitimatepolicy making. A global civil society isin the making. However, its contributionto solving the problems of our world islimited because of the segmentation ofthe interests and values underlying itsdiverse components. Their connection tonational and international institutions iscomplex and problematic. In otherwords, the transition from a reactivecivil society to a proactive reform of in-stitutions of governance faces formidableobstacles. This lecture aims at identify-ing the factors underlying the politicalcrisis of global governance, as well as atpinpointing the trends that foreshadowpathways for reconstructing democratic

policy making under the new conditionsof globalization, cultural transformation,and a technological paradigm shift.

The Crisis of Political Legitimacy

In April 2004, a report issued by theUnited Nations Development Programme(UNDP), and directed by Dante Caputo,on “Democracy in Latin America” foundthat 54.7% of people surveyed wouldprefer an authoritarian regime if itwould better help alleviate poverty andeconomic difficulties. Only 43% of LatinAmericans fully supported democracy,while 30.5% conditioned their support totheir living conditions, and another26.5% were critical of democracy. Theseattitudes came from a continent that hassuffered for decades from the lack ofdemocracy. Yet, the widespread popularfeeling is that instead of a democraticculture, what has arisen in LatinAmerica is an electoral culture manipu-lated by the political elites. These find-ings are not specific to Latin America.Indeed, in recent years, considerable evi-dence points to the increasing alienationof citizens vis á vis their political repre-sentatives, and the institutions of repre-sentation. Such a trend seems to bepresent worldwide, with the significantexception of Scandinavian democracies.These were the findings of the twoworldwide surveys of representativesamples of the world population thatGallup conducted in 1999 for theMillennium Assembly of the UnitedNations and in 2002 for the WorldEconomic Forum. In the 1999 survey,62.1% of the 57,000 persons interviewedin 60 countries believed that their coun-tries were not governed by the will oftheir people. When asked to select aterm that would better describe theirperception of the government, their mainchoices were “corrupt” and “bureau-cratic.” The sample included citizens inthe United States and Western Europe.In the 2002 survey, the percentage ofpeople who thought they were not gov-erned by their will was 52% in NorthAmerica and 61% in the EuropeanUnion. Fifty-one percent of people in

the world found little or no trust inparliaments, a proportion that increasedto 59% in the European Union. Theleast trusted institutions were multina-tional companies, parliaments, politicalparties, and governments. The mosttrusted institutions were the armedforces, NGOs, and the United Nations.Similar results can be found for Euro-pean democracies in the Euro barometer.The World Values Survey, directed byRonald Inglehart at the University ofMichigan, also showed that from1997–2001 in the countries included inthe survey of political attitudes, the ma-jority of citizens thought that their “gov-ernment was run by a few big interestslooking out for themselves.” In the U.S.,this proportion in 2000 was 63.2%. Onthe other hand, on the basis of evidenceprovided by a variety of surveys, a highpercentage of people feel able to changethe world. But they feel empowered notthrough the political system but throughautonomous mobilization. This search forpolitical alternatives is changing the po-litical landscape, although not always inthe direction of democracy. In countryafter country around the world, in thelast decade people have turned to politi-cal outsiders, punished the incumbentleaders, or voted in dwindling numbers.In California, according to polls directedby Mark Baldassare for the Public PolicyInstitute of California in 1998 and 2000,70% of citizens believed that “govern-ment is run by a few big interestslooking out for themselves,” and 39%thought that “quite a few people ingovernment are crooked.” This attitudeundoubtedly influenced the public deci-sion to recall and replace California’selected governor was used in Californiawith an outsider who promised to “termi-nate” the professional political class, de-spite being a candidate of the RepublicanParty. The voter revolts in France and theNetherlands in 2003 had similar tones.While ideologies change in each context,the common trend is the rejection of thepolitical establishment and the expressionof political protest.

This widespread crisis of politicallegitimacy threatens to undo the demo-cratic system, and with it, the ability to

THE 2004 ITHIEL DE SOLA POOL LECTURE

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Manuel Castells is the Wallis AnnenbergChair Professor of Communication and Soci-ety at the University of Southern California, LosAngeles. He is also professor emeritus of soci-ology and planning, University of California atBerkeley, and distinguished visiting professorof technology and society at MIT. He is theauthor of 21 books, including the trilogy TheInformation Age: Economy, Society, andCulture (Blackwell, 1996–2004), translated in20 languages.

manage the problems and issues of aworld in turmoil. But unless we ac-knowledge the crisis and understand itsroots, the rejection of populism anddemagogy will not be taken as the de-fence of our principles but as the proofof our hypocrisy. At the source of thiscrisis are a number of well known fac-tors concerning the emphasis on simpli-fied image making induced by mediapolitics: domination of interest groupsdue to the system of campaign financ-ing; expensive media and marketingpolitics that push parties to use illegalfinancing, and, at times, corruption; andwhat John Thompson has labelled scan-dal politics, based on character assassi-nation and exposure or fabrication ofwrong doing as a weapon of choice.But I contend that the crisis of legiti-macy has a deeper structural underpin-ning: the increasing inability of the po-litical system anchored in the nationstate to represent citizens in the effec-tive practice of global governance andthe ascendance of global governance asan increasingly essential component ofnational and local governance.

In this lecture I will develop this ar-gument and I show how the emergenceof a global civil society is related to theattempt by the people to regain politicalcontrol under the new conditions ofpower making and governance.

Globalization and the StateThe concept of globalization is that

we live in societies in which the corefunctions are determined by globally ar-ticulated processes that have the capacityto operate as a unit on a planetary scalein real or chosen time. Communicationand transportation technologies, the glob-ally inter-related media, and the world-wide diffusion of the Internet and othercomputer networks, as well as the spreadof wireless communication, are the mate-rial backbone of a global interdepend-ence that, of course, was not technogi-cally driven but technologically mediated.It is not necessary to analyze here theorigins and features of the process ofglobalization—a number of academicworks, some of which are cited in thereferences, have settled the issue.

In this lecture the reality of theprocess of globalization is just an em-pirical starting point. This includes:

• The existence of a global economy,meaning: a) global interdependencyof financial markets; b) international-ization of production, management,and distribution of goods and servicesaround a core of multinational corpo-rations and their ancillary networks;

c) largely as a result of b, interna-tional trade (reflecting the internation-alization of production) as a keycomponent of economic growth; d) internationalization of science, tech-nology, and know-how at the sourceof productivity and competitiveness forfirms, regions, and countries; e) segmented internationalization ofthe labor force, with the formation ofa demand-driven global labor marketfor the high end of talent and a supply-driven international migrationof labor for all levels of skill.

• A global media system, characterizedby the interrelation of global and localprocesses of communication in an in-terdependent, multilayered system. Theglobal media system is at the heart ofthe emergence of globally diffused, lo-cally appropriated cultural processes.

• The management of the environmentas a planetary issue characterized bythe irreversible damage caused by un-sustainable development, and theneed to counter this deterioration witha global, long term conservation strategy.

• The globalization of human rights,and the emergence of the issue of so-cial justice for the planet at large.

• Global security as a shared problem,e.g., proliferation of weapons of massdestruction, global terrorism, and thepractice of the politics of fear underthe pretext of fighting terrorism.

Overall, the critical issues condition-ing everyday life for people and theirgovernments in every country arelargely produced and shaped by globallyinterdependent processes that go beyondthe realm of countries as defined by theterritories under the sovereignty of agiven state. Under such conditions, anumber of processes constitute the newlandscape of global politics. There is agrowing gap between the space wherethe issues are defined (global) and thespace where the issues are managed(the nation-state). This is at the sourceof four distinct, while related, politicalcrises that affect the institutions of na-tional governance:

• Crisis of efficiency: problems cannotbe adequately managed, e.g., majorenvironmental issues, such as globalwarming; regulation of financial mar-kets; or counter-terrorism intelligence.

• Crisis of legitimacy: political repre-sentation based on democracy in thenation state becomes simply a vote ofconfidence on the ability of the

nation state to manage its interests inthe global web of policy making. Itcannot be a specific mandate, giventhe variable geometry of policy mak-ing and the unpredictability of the is-sues. Political representation is in-creasingly distant, with greaterbetween citizens and their representa-tives. This crisis of legitimacy is ex-asperated by the practice of mediapolitics and the politics of scandal asthe privileged mechanisms to accesspower. Image making substitutes forissue debating, partly due to the factthat major issues can no longer bedecided in the national space.

• Crisis of identity: as people see theirnation and their culture increasinglydisjointed from the mechanisms of po-litical decision making in a global,multinational network, their claim ofautonomy takes the form of resistanceidentity and cultural identity politics asopposed to their political identity ascitizens.

• Crisis of equity: The process of market-led globalization often in-creases inequality between countries,and between social groups withincountries, because of its ability to in-duce faster economic growth in someareas while bypassing others. In theabsence of a global regulatory envi-ronment that compensates for growinginequality, existing welfare states comeunder stress as a result of economiccompetitiveness, and countries withoutwelfare states have greater difficultycompensating for structurally inducedinequality because of the lesser capac-ity of national institutions to act ascompensatory mechanisms.

As a result of these crises, and of thedifficulties for governments to act uponthem, non-governmental actors becomethe voices and the movements that de-fend the needs, interests, and values ofpeople at large, thus undermining evenfurther the central role of governmentsin responding to the stress induced byglobalization and structural transition.

New Projects of Governance:Utopias, Ideologies, and thePragmatic Emergence ofGlobal Governance in theform of the Network State

The increasing inability of nationstates to confront and manage the global-ization of the issues central to their gov-ernance leads to alternative projects ofgovernance proposed by various actors.The most relevant of these projects are:

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a) The constitution of a world govern-ment, on the basis of current interna-tional institutions, creating a systemof institutional relationships betweencurrent nation states and internationalinstitutions, and leading to a humanrights-founded world constitutionwith institutions of global governanceestablished over a period of time.This is Jürgen Habermas´dream. In-deed, the federalist project for theEuropean Union, put forward by theGerman Green Party and other influ-ential forces and leaders in Germany(e.g., Ulrich Beck, Joshka Fischer), isa transition step to the world govern-ment. However, as both Habermasand Beck acknowledge, what theycall a cosmopolitan system of gover-nance could only be the result of therise of a cosmopolitan culture in civilsocieties around the world. In fact,public opinion data and politicaltrends point in the opposite direction,in Europe as elsewhere. There isconsiderable reluctance in Europe tosurrender more attributes of nationalsovereignty, and this is unthinkablein decisive countries such as theUnited States, China, Russia, India,Japan, and Brazil. Thus, for globalgovernance to succeed it must findways other than from the mechanicaltransposition of the federal state tothe international stage.

b) Nation states are confronted with in-creasing managerial difficulties in theage of global networks. Two oftendovetailing solutions have recentlyarisen to deal with this issue:

• The market takes care of economicgrowth and equilibrium, with minimalsupervision and correction from government.

• The global civil society, made up ofNGOs and other forms of aggregationof interests, organizes popular expres-sion and representation, connecting tothe government as the processor ofthese projects and demands in the institutional system.

Therefore, the de facto systemof governance is broadeningthrough citizen participation in thepolitical dimension, and throughpublic/partnerships in the manage-ment of the economy and of majorglobal issues (e.g., social rights,the environment).

c) In the extreme, neo-anarchist tenden-cies in contemporary social move-ments seek the dissolution of thestate and its replacement by Internet-enacted networks of people, NGOs,

and grassroots organizations in alllevels of society.

However, nation states, in spite of theirmultidimensional crisis, do not disappear,they adapt to the new context, and theirpragmatic transformation is the real agentof change in today’s landscape of politicsand policy making. This transformation isinfluenced, and fought over, by thealternative projects and models I havementioned: they are cultural/ideationalmaterial on which political and social in-terests work to enact the transformationof the state. By nation states I mean theinstitutional set comprising a nationalgovernment: the parliament, the politicalparty system, the judiciary, and the statebureaucracy. In each country, this entiresystem transforms itself in respond to thecrises, by three main mechanisms:

i) By associating with each other andforming diverse networks of statesfalling into three categories: multi-purpose and constitutionally defined,such as the European Union; fo-cused on a set of issues, generallytrade issues, e.g., Mercosur orNAFTA; or spaces of coordinationand debate, e.g., APEC or ASEAN.In the strongest networks, the statesshare sovereignty.

ii) By building an increasingly densenetwork of international institutionsand supranational organizations todeal with global issues. These consti-tute two types: general purpose insti-tutions, e.g., United Nations; andspecialized institutions, e.g., WTO,IMF, World Bank, NATO, etc. Thereare also ad hoc international semi-in-stitutions defined around a set of is-sues, e.g., the treaties on the globalenvironment and their institutions.

iii) By decentralizing power and re-sources in the hope of increasing le-gitimacy, and by connecting withpeople’s identity, through devolutionof power to regional governments,to local governments, and to NGOsthat extend the decision makingprocess in the civil society.

All in all, the emerging network stateis characterized by:

• shared sovereignty and responsibility

• flexibility of procedures of governance

• greater diversity of times and spacesin the relationship between govern-ments and citizens

However, the whole system developsin a pragmatic way, by ad hoc deci-

sions, ushering in often contradictoryrules and institutions, and making thesystem of political representation muchmore obscure and removed from politi-cal control. Efficiency improves but thelegitimacy of the nation state suffers, al-though overall political legitimacy mayimprove if local and regional institutionsplay their role. Yet, the growing auton-omy of the local and regional state maybring the different levels of the stateinto contradiction against each other. Itremains that the response of nationstates to the crises of global governanceis the constitution of a new form ofstate, the network state. In turn, thisform of state induces new problems.

The Problems of the Solu-tion: The Contradictions ofthe Network State

The practice of global governancethrough ad hoc networks, has a numberof major problems derived from the con-tradiction between the historically con-structed nature of the institutions thatcome into the network, and the newfunctions and mechanisms they have toassume in the network, while still relat-ing to their nation-bound societies.

A coordination problem, with threeaspects: organizational, technical, andpolitical.

Organizational: agencies rooted in theprotection of their turf, and in theirprivileged commanding position vis ávis their societies cannot have the samestructure, reward systems, and opera-tional principles, as those agencieswhose fundamental role is to findsynergy with other agencies.

Technical: protocols of communicationdo not work; the introduction of the In-ternet disorganizes rather than relatesagencies. Agencies are resistant to net-working technology that implies net-working of their practice.

Political: coordination is not only hori-zontal between agencies, but also verti-cal in two senses: networking with theirpolitical decision makers, thus losingtheir bureaucratic autonomy; networkingwith their citizen constituencies, thenbeing forced to democratize.

An ideological problem: coordinatinga common policy means a common lan-guage and a set of shared values, for instance against market fundamentalismin the regulation of markets, or accept-ance of sustainable development in envi-ronmental policy, or priority of humanrights over the raison d’etat in securitypolicy.

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A geopolitical problem. Nation statesstill see the networks of governance as anegotiating table to impose their interests.There is a stalemate in the intergovern-mental decision making processes be-cause the culture of cooperation is stillnot there. The overarching principles arethe domination of the personal/political/social interests in the commandingheights of each nation state. Global gov-ernance is seen as a field of opportunityto maximize each nation state’s owninterests, rather than a new context forpolitical institutions to govern. In fact,the further the globalization process pro-ceeds, the more the contradictions it gen-erates (identity crises, economic crises,security crises) lead to a revival ofnationalism, and to the primacy of sover-eignty. Although this is a general trendfor all countries, the key issue nowadaysis American unilateralism, the policy ofpreemptive action, and putting nationalsecurity first without concern for thedestabilization of the world at large. ThisAmerican hegemonism must be seen,however, as a specific policy of the Bushadministration and its surrounding circleof neoconservatives. This was not thepolicy of previous administrations. Whilethe damage wrought by Bush unilateral-ism may last for some time, it is essen-tial to differentiate structural, long-termtrends, and short-term aberrations in thepolicy of a major power, even if weknow that aberrations may change thecourse of history. In other words: ourworld is multilateral, but Bush, at leastuntil 2004, did not seem to know it. Andthe neoconservatives, who know it, aretrying to reverse the trend for the benefitof their own ideological agenda. How-ever, Bush may come to understand thathis legacy will depend on returning tomultilateralism. If this would be the case,the neoconservatives would be sacrificedon the new altar of a moral America.Yet, as long as these geopolitical contra-dictions persist, it is impossible for theworld to shift from a pragmatic, ad hocnetworking form of negotiated decisionmaking to a system of constitutionallyaccepted networked global governance.

Tentative Paths Towards theReconstruction of DemocraticGovernance in a Global Context

The reconstruction of a democraticpolitical order on the international scenecannot be based on a multilateral agree-ment on the characteristics of a newworld order. This would imply that theproblem has been solved. We are at thepreliminary stage: agreeing on how to

manage disagreements. The most urgentissue in global governance is how togovern in a process of shared sover-eignty assuming current disagreement;thus instituting processes of bargainingand control, with feedbacks in real time,on various dimensions: political, organi-zational, procedural, technical. If westart from observed practice in recentyears, procedures to tackling problemsof global governance include:

• Public/private partnerships.

• The development of a global civil so-ciety, with an increasing role for non-governmental actors in managing is-sues at the international level, thusbridging legitimacy in public opinionwith global issues management.

• The emergence of the global move-ment for global justice that hasforced a debate on issues and onmechanisms of representation.

• The redefinition of the role and organ-ization of international institutions, andparticularly of the United Nations, in-troducing into their practice public/private partnerships (e.g., UN GlobalCompact), particularly with multina-tional companies, and reaching out tothe global civil society and to theglobal network of local governments.

• Attempts at defining a UniversalCharts of Rights, leading to the for-mation of a Global Social Contract,as in the project of the InternationalLabor Organization (ILO). There is afragmented, global constitutionalprocess, with treaties on the environ-ment, on social rights, on laborrights, on children’s rights, onwomen’s rights, and on human rightsat large. This has no teeth in itself,but then NGOs and civil society takeit up, becoming the actors thatprocess the principles into the media,then in the political system.

• Attempt to build new institutions onspecific issues, e.g., The InternationalPenal Court (albeit undermined bythe refusal of the U.S., Russia, China,and India to acknowledge its jurisdic-tion); the Climate Change overseeinginstitutions; the WTO competition au-thority, etc.

• Media exposure and media campaignsas the inducers of a new culture, ulti-mately impacting the political system.

• Internet as a global, horizontal meansof communication provides a publicspace, both as an organizing tool, andas a means for debate, dialogue, andcollective decision making. Wireless

communication increases autonomy ofnetworks of communication.

Indeed, before 9/11, 2001, significantprogress was being made toward themultilateral management of global is-sues, based on networking between na-tional governments, international institu-tions, and the civil society. The threatof terrorism and the politics of fearpracticed by several governments havetemporarily derailed the prospects of in-ternational cooperation. But citizensaround the world are not giving up,and in some cases, as in Spain inMarch 2004, they are transforming thepolitical climate, inducing the condi-tions to restart cooperation and dialogueas predominant ways to tackle ourproblems, including security issues. Ul-timately, the power of global civil soci-ety acting on public opinion via themedia may overcome the resistance ofstate apparatuses to limit their power inexchange for increasing their legiti-macy, and, ultimately, their efficiency.

The Multidimensional GlobalCivil Society

The crisis of legitimacy and the in-creasing difficulty of managing theworld’s problems on a global scalehave induced the rise of a global civilsociety. However, this generic labellumps together several forms of organi-zation and action, which are quitedifferent, and even contradictory intheir goals and effects. A distinctionmust be made between:

Grassroots organizations, communitygroups, labor unions, and interestgroups, that, in every country, defendlocal or sectorial interests as well asspecific values against or beyond theformal political process. Some analysts,particularly Robert Putnam, argue thatthis form of civic engagement is on thedecline, as individualism ascends as thepredominant culture of our societies. Infact, the reality is highly diverse in dif-ferent areas of the world. For instance,community organizations have become avery important part of the social land-scape in almost every Latin Americancountry. The difference is that thesources of social organization are in-creasingly diversified: religion, particu-larly non-Catholic religious groups,plays a major role. In some cases,criminal organizations build their sup-port networks in poor communities inexchange for patronage and forced pro-tection. Or, people in the community,or women groups, or ecologists, or ethnic groups organize to have their

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voice heard and assert their identity.However, traditional forms of politicaland ideological sources of voluntary as-sociations seem on the decline almosteverywhere, although the patronage sys-tem continues to surround each majorpolitical party. Overall, this processamounts to a shift from the politicalsystem to informal and formal associa-tions of interests and values as thesource of collective action and socio-political influence. This is a strengthen-ing of the local civil society to face theproblems resulting from uncheckedglobalization. Properly speaking, this isnot the global civil society, although itconstitutes a milieu of organization,projects, and practices that nurture thegrowth of the global civil society.

A second trend is represented by therise of non-governmental organizations(NGOs) with a global or internationalframe of reference in their action andgoals. This is what most experts wouldname as the global civil society. Theseare private organizations (albeit oftensupported or partly financed by publicinstitutions) that address global prob-lems outside government channels. Of-ten they affirm values that are univer-sally recognized, but politicallymanipulated by governments in theirown interest. In other words, interna-tional NGOs claim to be the enforcersof the unenforced human rights. A casein point is Amnesty International,whose influence stems from the factthat it is an equal opportunity critic ofall cases of political, ideological, or re-ligious repression, regardless of the po-litical interest at stake. These are fun-damental, uncompromising values thatdefy argument: torture is always wrong.The notion here is that even to fightevil, adopting evil practices is to offervictory to the very sources of destruc-tion we are against. The affirmation ofhuman rights on a comprehensive,global scale gives birth to thousands ofNGOs that cover the entire span of thehuman experience, from poverty to ill-nesses, from hunger to epidemics, fromwomen’s rights to the defense of chil-dren, and from banning land mines tosaving the whales. Médecins Sans Fron-tières, Oxfam, Greenpeace, and somany others, are well known examples.The annual reports prepared on thematter by the London School of Eco-nomics’ center for the study of theglobal civil society provide ample evi-dence of the quantitative importanceand qualitative relevance of this grow-ing trend that has already altered thesocial and political management ofglobal and local issues around theworld. To understand the characteristics

on the Mexican people at large. Tosurvive and assert their rights, theycalled upon global solidarity, becomingone of the harbingers of the global net-work of indigenous movements, itself acomponent of the much broader globalmovement. In other words, the move-ment for global justice is not just onemovement: it is concurrently a globaltrend of local resistance, a connectionbetween many of these movements in aglobal network of debate and coordina-tion of action, and a formalization ofsome of these movements in a perma-nent, but changing, network of socialinitiatives aimed at influencing thecharacter of the ongoing process ofglobalization. Such a process is nowcharacterized by social movements asbeing in the hands of corporate inter-ests and their surrogate governments.Yet, the movement for global justice,inspired by the motto “another world ispossible,” is not a sum of nationallybound struggles. It is a global networkof opposition to the values and inter-ests currently dominant in the global-ization process. Its nodes grow andshrink alternately, depending on theconditions under which each societyrelates to globalization and its politicalmanifestations. This is a movementthat, in spite of the attempts by someof the moment’s elites to build a pro-gram for a new world order, is betterdescribed by what it opposes than by aunified ideology. It is essentially ademocratic movement that calls fornew forms of political representation ofpeople’s will and interests in theprocess of global governance. In spiteof its extreme internal diversity, themovement indeed voices a commoncritique of the management of the worldby international institutions made upexclusively from national governments.It is an expression of the crisis of legit-imacy, transformed into oppositionalpolitical action.

There is a fourth type, the movementof public opinion, made up of turbu-lences of information in a diversifiedmedia system, and of the emergence ofspontaneous, ad hoc mobilizations usinghorizontal, autonomous communicationssystems. A meaningful example was thespontaneous mobilization of thousandsof youth in Spain in March 2004,against the manipulation of informationby the Aznar government in the daysfollowing the barbarian massacre con-ducted in Madrid by Al Qaeda. Usinginstant electronic communicationthrough SMSs, their publicity campaignreached enough of the electorate tochange the result of the election. In theU.S. context, the success of the Howard

of the international NGOs, three fea-tures must be emphasized:

1) In contrast to political parties, theseNGOs have considerable popularityand legitimacy, which translates tosubstantial funding through donationsand widespread volunteer work.

2) NGOs focus on practical matters,specific cases, concrete expressionsof human solidarity: saving childrenfrom famine, freeing a political pris-oner with name and face, stoppingthe lapidation of a woman, blockingthe destruction of indigenous cultureby unsustainable development in oneparticular spot of the planet. What isfundamental here is that the classicalpolitical argument of rationalizingevery decision in terms of the over-all picture of politics is denied.Goals do not justify the means. Thepurpose is to act to undo evil or todo good in one specific instance.The positive output must be consid-ered in itself, not as a way of mov-ing in a positive direction. Becausepeople have come to distrust thelogic of instrumental politics, themethod of direct action on directoutputs finds increasing support.

3) The key tactics of NGOs to achieveresults, and build support for theircauses, is media politics. It isthrough the media that they reachthe public mind and mobilize peoplein support of these causes. So doing,they put pressure on governmentsbeholden to the voters or on corpo-rations fearful of consumer’s reac-tions. Thus, the media become thebattleground for NGO campaigns.Since these are global campaigns,global media are the key target. Theglobalization of communication leadsto the globalization of media poli-tics. The public space of the globalcivil society is the global space ofcommunication structured around in-terdependent media.

The third type of reality that concursto the formation of the global civilsociety is made of social movementsthat aim at controlling the process ofglobalization, and in doing so they buildnetworks of action and organization toinduce a global social movement forglobal justice, as the movement calls it-self (what the media labelled, incor-rectly, the anti-globalization movement).The Zapatistas, for instance, were asocial movement insurging against theeconomic, social, and cultural effectsof globalization (represented byNAFTA) on the Mexican Indians and

Dean campaign in 2003, in spite of thelimitations of his candidacy and hiseventual demise, showed the potentialof the Internet as a medium of au-tonomous organization independent froma command and control center, as it isthe case in practically all political cam-paigns. The implications of this phe-nomenon at the global level, as exem-plified by the simultaneous peacedemonstrations around the world onFebruary 15, 2003, are full of politicalmeaning. Internet and wireless commu-nication, by enacting a global, horizon-tal means of communication, provide apublic space, both as an organizing tool,and as a forum for debate, dialogue,and collective decision making. Theglobal civil society now has the techno-logical means to exist independent frompolitical institutions and the mass me-dia. However, the ability of socialmovements to change public perceptionstill depends, to a large extent, on theircommunication strategies vis á vis themass media.

In the last analysis, the will of thepeople speaks. And people decide theirwill on the issues that affect their lives,as well as the future of humankind,from the messages and debates that takeplace in the public sphere. The publicsphere in our time is largely dependenton the communication media system,which includes not only television, ra-dio, and the print press, but a whole va-riety of multimedia and communicationssystems, among which the Internet is ofincreasing importance. There is a shiftfrom a public sphere anchored aroundthe institutions of society to a publicsphere constituted around the media sys-tem. This is neither good nor bad, butthis shift does have considerable conse-quences on the practice of democracy,and on the relationship between civilsociety and the state.

The media system nowadays is simul-taneously local and global. It is organ-ized around a few media businessgroups of global reach. But, at the sametime, it is dependent on state regula-tions, and focused on narrowcasting onspecific audiences. By acting within themedia system, particularly by creatingevents that send powerful images andmessages, transnational activists inducea debate on the hows, whys, and whatsof globalization, and on societal choices.It is through media politics that non-state actors influence people and fostersocial change. Ultimately, the transfor-mation of consciousness does have con-sequences on political behavior, on vot-ing patterns, and on the orientations ofgovernments. Here again, I do not makevalue judgments about how positive the

choices thus influenced will be. But it isat the level of media politics where itappears societies can be moved in a dif-ferent direction from those already insti-tutionalized in the political system.

Thus it is essential for state actors,and for intergovernmental institutions,such as the United Nations, to meetcivil society not only around institu-tional mechanisms and procedures ofpolitical representation, but in public de-bates in the global public sphere builtaround the media communication sys-tem. To some extent, the series of majorconferences that the UN organized inthe 1990s on several major issues ofhumankind (from the condition ofwomen to environmental conservation),while not very effective in terms of de-signing policy, were essential in foster-ing a global dialogue, in raising publicawareness, and in providing the plat-form on which the global civil societycould come to the forefront of the pol-icy debate. Therefore, for the states andinternational institutions to meet the de-mands and projects of the global civilsociety, they must stimulate the consoli-dation of this media-based publicsphere, stimulate the dialogue with spe-cific initiatives, and record, on an ongo-ing basis, this dialogue’s contributions,so that they can inform policy makingin the UN itself. Harnessing the powerof the world’s public opinion is as im-portant as broadening institutional, polit-ical participation, in the fruitful, syner-gistic connection between thegovernment-based international institu-tions and the global civil society.

Conclusion—Global Gover-nance Without a WorldGovernment: Global CivilSociety and the NetworkState

The term global civil society refers toa highly diverse field of social practiceand organization. I have tried to identifythe main components of this diversity.To engage an informed debate on therelationship between civil society andglobal governance, we need to take astep further in the analysis. We needsome conceptual precision to clarify thedebate.

Without going into the intellectualhistory, the concept of civil society canbe related to three theoretical traditions,each one rooted in the practice of soci-eties at different moments. The first,best represented by Locke, considerscivil society the organizational and insti-tutional defense of individual rightsagainst the intrusion of the state. Civil

society is in opposition to the state. In-terestingly enough, the approach ofmany social movements to the practiceof civil society reflects this old, liberaltradition, albeit extending the notion ofindividual rights to collective humanrights.

The second tradition, that we couldassociate to Tocqueville, refers to theprocess of self-management of the is-sues arising in social life by peoplethemselves, organized autonomouslyfrom the state, but within the frame-work of a democratic system of gover-nance. In this case, epitomized by theNorth American tradition of communityorganization and civic engagement, civilsociety is complementary to governmentin the conduct of public affairs. Itthrives under the protection of the dem-ocratic state, and in return nurturesdemocratic politics by making citizensresponsible for the management of theirown lives without becoming dependenton the government.

The third tradition, most often citedin progressive circles, but probably themost misunderstood, is Gramsci’s con-ceptualization of the civil society, asformulated in Quaderni de Carcere. Itstems, like the second tradition, fromthe belief in the importance of people’sautonomous organization, as in theworks of labor unions, farmers coopera-tives, community organizations,churches, and the like. But for Gramscithese organizations constitute themselvesas civil society, on the basis of theirconnection to the state. So, the Grams-cian civil society is this intermediatespace between the state and its citizens,in which the state institutions and peo-ple’s organization may interact, ex-change, and negotiate interests and val-ues, in a form of extendedco-governance. For Gramsci this is pre-cisely the interest of the civil society, asit provides the channel for the transfor-mation of the state without engaging ina frontal assault of the state apparatusto seize power. In this tradition, civilsociety is the channel to reform thestate and its policies, using the organ-ized pressure from society, without lim-iting the process of democratic represen-tation to elections and formal politics.Scandinavian democracies come closerthan any other to this model, and seemto work more efficiently than any otherinstitutional systems in the world. Butwhat we must retain from this excursusis that civil society, at least in theGramscian tradition, is not definedagainst the state, or outside the state,but by its organized relationship to thestate. This is the difference between so-ciety and civil society; between social

14 PS January 2005

movements and civil society; betweencivic associations and social movements.

The practice of civil society changeswith its context. In our historical con-text, the key issue, I argued here, is thatgovernments are national, while themain issues to be managed are global.States have set up their networks ofglobal governance, but civic organiza-tions have remained in their territoriallybounded turfs.

Social movements have gone global,overcoming the limits of the nationstate, but in so doing have made diffi-cult their constitution as the civil soci-ety’s partner of the global networks ofgovernance. Thus, the formation of aglobal civil society, in the Gramsciantradition, amounts to identifying themechanisms and processes of connectionbetween people’s autonomous organiza-tions and the network state in its differ-ent levels and domains. In our societies,the forms of organization and aggrega-tion of interests are diversified, andephemeral. Cultural codes are constantlyforming and reforming. But there is stillone fundamental lesson from the Gram-scian approach to civil society that re-tains its meaning in our societies: thereis no civil society (in contrast to socialmovements or actions of people’sprotest) without forms of articulationwith the state. The civil society is abridge between society and the state, achannel able to transform the statethrough a representative citizenship thattranscends, without denying, the proce-dures constitutionally coded in politicalinstitutions.

Identifying the issue is easier thanproviding solutions to the problem, al-though it is a first and necessary step.Furthermore, to propose specific formsof articulation between state and societyin the space of the global civil societyis a task that goes way beyond the lim-its and purpose of this lecture. But Iwill try to illustrate how best to ad-vance in the practical treatment of theissue.

The key question is the following:which are the forms of articulation be-tween the dynamics of societies and theinstitutions of the state in the process ofnetworked global governance? I summa-rize here some of the observed trendsthat could be the beginning of this insti-tutional and cultural transformation ofthe international political system. This isnot a program, an agenda, or a pro-posal. This is what I see growing in thepractice of people and institutionsaround the world.

First, there are a number of processesthat do not seem to address the funda-mental question of the autonomous link-

age between state and society. The de-centralization of the state in the formsof subsidies and support to NGOsseems to lead, more often than not, tonew forms of clientelism and patronage.The integration of the values of themovement into the state through theconstitution of progressive governmentsmay confront the oldest dilemma in therelationship between social change andinstitutionalization: how to preserve theautonomy of social movements whengovernments need to respond to a muchbroader range of interests in society andin the world at large? On the otherhand, the growing influence of neoanar-chism (explicit of implicit) in the “anti-globalization movement,” or the radical-ization of specific identities within themovement (e.g., indigenous identities),increase the separation between the stateand society, at least vis á vis the mobi-lized sectors of society. The radical au-tonomy of social movements may be asource of social change and cultural in-novation, but it will find difficulties inopening the path for the constitution ofcivil society.

Thus, maybe the issue must betackled differently, starting both fromthe state and from civil society, ratherthan giving priority to one or theother of this tense, but creative cou-ple. Here are the premises for thebuilding of this new relationship.

The global state does not exist, be-cause there is no global citizenship. Theprocess of global governance is enactedin practice by the global network state.The network state, in its changing formsof representation and articulation is thestate of the global age. This state mustlink the state actors with interests ineach particular process of governance.This implies enlightened multilateralism.Any attempt at using multilateral institu-tions to impose unilateral interests orpolicies destroys the basis of trust onwhich a shared global governance canbe built. Procedural rules are essential.

On the other hand, the civil societyconstitutes itself at various levels bysetting up forms of articulation of soci-ety with each level of the state: local,regional, national, international. So, gov-ernments acting together at the interna-tional level have already submitted tothe rules of engagement negotiated withtheir own civil society institutions.However, this is not enough. Becausethere are global problems in which so-cial actors are directly involved, withoutnecessarily acting upon governments(e.g., human rights, environment, etc.),social organizations or social actorsmust have mechanisms and processes ofdirect connection with the international

institutions, e.g., with the United Nations. And subnational levels of gov-ernment should also have access tohigher levels of international coopera-tion and negotiation. It is this complexnetwork of connections between formsof social organization and levels of po-litical institutions that constitute theglobal civil society.

In practical terms, this means concur-rent development of the system of inter-national institutions, the autonomous ex-pressions of societies, and themechanisms of their relationship.

This starts with the strengthening ofthe United Nations and related institu-tions and with the enlightened decisionby governments to enhance the auton-omy of the UN and other internationalinstitutions. This would be the equiva-lent, in the old context of the nationstate, of asserting the independence ofthe judiciary once it has been appointed.

On the other hand, society needs tohave the means for the growth of itsautonomy vis á vis the state, not onlyinstitutionally, but culturally. The auton-omy of society depends on the extentand strength of its public civic con-sciousness. In our time, this depends es-sentially on the process of public com-munication at the roots of the formationof the public mind. This means institu-tional and political measures must leadto the following policies:

• Preserve freedom of the Internet as ahorizontal, global means of au-tonomous communication. Thisshould extend to the formation ofwireless communication networks.

• Assert freedom of information andcommunication in the new techno-logical context, for instance throughthe creation of an independent International Free CommunicationCouncil to protect people against the manipulation of information or abuseof media power. This is not to goback to the statist project of the“New information order” proposedby Unesco years ago. Rather, here I propose reproducing at the interna-tional level institutions such as theFrench Conseil de l´Audiovisuel, toprotect the most fundamental sourceof civil and political rights in ourform of society.

• Similarly, the international institu-tions themselves should practice online transparency of their delibera-tions and policy making, so that thepublic can be aware of who runs theworld and for what. No more closedmeetings except when necessary forsecurity reasons.

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If international institutions aredeveloped and their autonomy

safeguarded, if societies are equippedwith autonomous means of informationand communication, if mechanisms forthe participation of social organiza-tions, social movements, and citizensat large, in their diversity, are set up

at all levels of the international institutional system, and if govern-ments agree to respect the rule of lawin this international system, then thereis an opportunity to upgrade democ-racy and political management at theglobal level where our lives are decided.

Granted, it is unlikely that all stateswould accept this new global democracy.Yet, such states may well become the newform of failed states. The political outcastswould not be designated by the superpow-ers, in terms of their own interests, butstigmatized by the global civil society act-ing on behalf of the values of humanity.

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