Post on 19-Jan-2023
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Global Civil Society is the Answer to the Global
Democratic Deficit. Discuss.
Global civil society has become a buzzword among
policy-makers and scholars alike in the era of
globalization. While it is being hailed by some as an
inherently altruistic notion with potential to remedy the
emerging global democratic deficit, sceptics go so far as
to question its genuine existence. Scholte rightly argues
that whether ‘civil society activity, scaled up to global
dimensions, (is) an antidote to the failings of democracy
today’ depends upon many variables. Thus, different
conceptions of global civil society yield different
implications for democracy (2007: 15). This essay then
aims to deconstruct the discourses surrounding global
civil society, in order to assess whether it may impact
promisingly upon democracy in either of its apparent
forms. I shall put forth the argument that global civil
society, in its varying conceptions, does not provide the
answer to the global democratic deficit. This is because
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the concept itself cannot be perceived of outside of the
modern paradigm and thus detached from its Western roots,
which in turn severely limits its ability to challenge
the undesirable consequences of globalization.
In order for this essay to contribute meaningfully
to the wider academic discourse on the potential of
global civil society (henceforth referred to as GCS), it
must identify a problem against which to judge this
potential. The negative impact of industrial
modernization on global democracy shall therefore be
identified as the problem in the first part of this
paper. We explore Ulrich Beck’s conceptions of risk
society and reflexive modernization, in order to
determine the underlying nature of the global democratic
deficit. In part 2, we follow the rise of a standardized
global policy discourse, which places its hopes for
eliminating the global democratic deficit (henceforth
referred to as GDD) firmly in the hands of GCS. We then
examine in depth this particular understanding of GCS,
which is being employed by policy-makers and other
international actors in this context. It will soon emerge
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that the policies based on this understanding have done
little to remedy the GDD, as defined in part 1 of this
essay. We conclude that this is because the dominant
global political discourse has captured the concept of
GCS to refer to only a very limited selection of
political phenomena, namely those located in the so-
called ‘third sector’ (Scholte 2007: 16). In order to
provide a slightly more nuanced and less neo-liberally
biased, analysis of its impact on democracy, in part 3 we
open up the concept of GCS to include an alternative
vision by Mary Kaldor, constructed around the writings of
Jürgen Habermas. In the final part of the essay, I hope
to point out that this alternative version of GCS, as a
communicative sphere, while departing from the
restrictive neoliberal conception, ultimately cannot shed
its cosmopolitan, and thus inherently modernist,
normative roots. This in turn undermines its universal
applicability and thus its promise for reducing the GDD.
Part 1 – Why a Global Democratic Deficit?
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Standard accounts of the GDD build on the assumption
that globalization has eroded the power of sovereign
states as they suffer ‘loss of control over cross-border
action’ (Anderson and Rieff 2006: 27). In the absence of
a world state, a system of global governance has emerged
over the course of the last century to regulate growing
global interconnectedness. Overwhelmingly, the
institutions, which dominate the global governance
sphere, have remained exclusive and unaccountable. With
an underrepresentation of developing and transitional
countries, ‘decision making on key global (…) issues
remains concentrated in the major industrial countries’
(Langmore and Fitzgerald 2010), while policies are
devised with a decidedly neo-liberal bias. But even
formally neutral institutions cannot make up for the fact
that people are increasingly unable to meaningfully
influence the decisions that affect their lives. Kaldor
argues that, while common rules and procedures may
provide an institutional basis for the global
connectedness of states, ‘the spread of rules and
procedures is not the same as the spread of substantive
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democracy’ (2008: 34). It is precisely this lack of
substantive democracy, understood as ‘opportunities for
all individuals to shape their own lives and to
participate in and influence debates about public
decisions that affect them’, which Kaldor describes as
making up the GDD (2008: 35). Similarly, Scholte
attributes the GDD to the convergence of a number of
global phenomena: (1) an uninformed global demos, (2)
flawed institutional processes, (3) structural
inequalities, and (4) marginalised identities, which
means that a large number of people are ‘silenced’ within
governance processes.
Of course these developments have not occurred by
historical accident. One contemporary thinker who has
traced the impact of globalization on political decision-
making processes since the late 18th century is German
sociologist Ulrich Beck. His insights will help us to
establish a more fundamental understanding of the GDD
against which we can judge the potential of GCS. Beck’s
work circles around two main concepts, that of reflexive
modernization and risk society. Reflexive modernization
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describes the process of the self-destruction of
industrial society through ‘the victory of Western
modernization’ (1994: 2). In other words, modernity
backfires to create risk society (1994: 10). Risk society
emerges in two phases. First, effects and self-threats
are systematically produced but do not become public or
political issues. Second, ‘dangers of industrial society
begin to dominate public, private and political debates
and conflicts’ (1994: 5). It is crucial to note at this
point that throughout modernity the risks described above
had been captured by the nation state. Today, risks such
as nuclear threats or climate change can no longer be
contained within territorial borders, let alone by
national governments. Yet, while there are no longer
‘non-participants’ to global threats (Beck 1994: 11),
decision-making processes directed at these threats
remain confined to the formal political institutions of
modern society, which are themselves undemocratic. We
must then arrive at the conclusion that the proliferation
of industrial modernization has led to the GDD not only
by creating risk society in the first place, but also by
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failing to address said risks from outside the modernist
paradigm within which they were produced.
Part 2 - Global Civil Society to the Rescue?
Let us now turn to the historical moment at which GCS
is identified by the dominant political discourse as the
answer to what has been described above as the deepening
GDD. With the end of the Cold War, global governance
institutions gained leverage as they filled the power
vacuum created after the break down of the bi-polar world
order. The liberal democracies that spearheaded these
institutions, began feeling the deepening GDD as a crisis
of legitimacy (Anderson 2011). While throughout modernity
the liberal democratic state had gained legitimacy from
its citizens, who could negotiate their concerns and
challenge state power through civil society, global
governance institutions, such as the UN or the IMF, had
no such legitimacy resource. Their design left them
unaccountable to an overwhelming percentage of the world
population. In this light, the growing ubiquity of the
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concept of a GCS, first introduced in the late 1970s and
80s by Eastern European and Latin American activists who
regarded it as ‘a useful concept in opposing militarized
regimes’ (Kaldor 2003: 586), could be seen as a
convenient development for powerful global actors. If
civil society had played a crucial role in legitimizing
the state then a global civil society could surely do the
same for global political actors. And so by the early
1990s dominant political discourse had captured the
concept of GCS, by promising in its rhetoric the
democratization of global governance processes, through
societal input ‘from below’ (Scholte 2007: 15). The non-
governmental organisation (NGO) was viewed as a key agent
of this dynamic. NGOs were suitably institutionalised
manifestations of GCS whose numbers had grown
exponentially with the strengthening of the global human
rights regime and democratic transitions in post-
totalitarian societies. In any case, with the erosion of
state sovereignty through globalization, or the emergence
of risk society according to Beck (1994), NGOs were
increasingly taking a leading role in the provision of
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state services and functions across state borders and
causes. Most critically, the rhetoric circulating within
dominant policy discourse described NGOs as
representative of otherwise excluded views and interests
(Nelson 2002: 132). They were seen as credible and
trustworthy and thus their input could legitimize global
governance institutions and processes, by making these
more accountable. But did this dynamic actually reduce
the GDD in the sense that it allowed ‘the people affected
by a given circumstance (to) determine the policy
decisions vis-á-vis that circumstance’ (Scholte 2007:
21)? Most contemporary scholars would disagree, and here
is why:
First of all, Anderson criticises that the UN and NGOs
are mutually reconfirming (2011: 874). While NGOs are
seen as civil society organisations and therefore as
representatives of the world’s peoples for purposes of
providing the UN with a form of ‘quasi-democratic
legitimacy’ (2011: 855), NGOs are happy to fill this role
because it confirms their auto-vision as global moral
authorities. Because of this circular legitimation
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process, the assumption that NGOs can act as
intermediaries, thus democratizing the global governance
process, is never questioned. Yet, the GCS organisations
themselves often suffer from internal shortfalls in
transparency and accountability to those local groups
that they are claiming to act in the interest of (Nelson
2002: 133). Meanwhile, the assumption that these GCS
actors have purely altruistic intentions is inherently
misleading. Kaldor has described NGOs as ‘tamed social
movements’ (2003: 589), which means that they are
essentially interested in promoting their own cause.
Instead of the ‘the people of the world’ they represent
their own principles (Anderson and Rieff 2006: 29).
Additionally, it is important to acknowledge that in a
world dominated by liberal-capitalism, these actors must
too ensure their financial viability. Instead of
challenging the state and the market, ‘NGOs look
increasingly like quasi-governmental institutions,
because of the way that they substitute for state
functions, and at the same time compete with one another’
for donor funds (Kaldor 2003: 589). Naturally, the above
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factors challenge the legitimacy claims that global
governance actors make with reference to, what they
understand to be, GCS organisations. Their ability to
remedy the GDD, by providing people with an opportunity
to be directly involved with global decision-making
processes without constraints from the state or the
market, is no longer given. Finally, I will get to the
most crucial factor, which renders the dominant claim,
that NGOs as GCS organisations can provide an answer to
the GDD, invalid. Let us recall that in the first part of
this essay we determined that the GDD, produced by
reflexive modernization, which culminates in risk society
(Beck 1994), is a product of the failings of modernity.
As a historical paradigm it has proven inherently
exclusive and anti-democratic in its capacity to produce
knowledge and inform policy-decisions. The normative
regime, which both global governance institutions and
NGOs subscribe to, is firmly rooted in this modern
paradigm. Scholars have noted that NGOs begin to develop
in the 1970s and 80s alongside neoliberalism (Anheier,
Glasius and Kaldor 2012: 17). By the 1990s the global
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governance scene is dominated by policy-decisions, which
prioritise the global market and spread of humanitarian
norms. Unsurprisingly then, NGOs develop with an
overwhelming normative bias, with the promotion of human
rights and democracy as their main priority.
Interestingly, Anderson and Rieff note, that within this
discourse human rights and democracy are often used
interchangeably by NGOs who thereby fail to acknowledge
the deep contestation of these concepts outside of, but
also within, the West (2006: 34). This contestation can
probably be most felt in the form of backlashes against
said democracy promotion programmes, as described by both
Ishkanian (2008) and Chandler (2004). Chandler goes as
far as to suggest that the involvement of INGOs in
national civil society promotion schemes in the Balkans
should be read as an inherently neo-colonial endeavour.
The large gap between internationally funded civil
society associations and the Bosnian people, a dynamic
which resonates with the argument made earlier on in this
paragraph, leads to the downplaying of local power
relations and ultimately to conflict (2004: 235). The
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notion that local communities may be disinclined to
challenge their political elites for fear of economic and
social insecurities, escapes the understanding of most
Western actors. The NGOs remain unable to provide a
democratic link between locals and the international
community, because they are themselves trapped within the
normative confines of neoliberal modernity.
Should our analysis then end here? We have sufficient
evidence to conclude that those actors described by the
dominant global political rhetoric as constituting GCS,
have done little for the elimination of the GDD.
Naturally, this has also led to popular disillusionment
with the term itself. Yet, let us recall that so far we
have analysed the democratic potential of that version of
GCS, which is being advocated by those powers, who are
largely responsible for producing the GDD, as defined by
Beck, in the first place. In other words, we are failing
to see the concept from outside of the dominant paradigm,
while in fact scholars have suggested that the neo-
liberal hijacking of the concept, obscures alternative
understandings (Scholte 2007: 17). Howell and Peace
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(2001) have referred to this process as ‘the
Americanization of the Debate’ while Kaldor acknowledges
that global institutions and Western governments have
taken up the concept of GCS for their neo-liberal policy
agenda, but that this is not the whole story (2003: 589).
The above scholars agree that equating GCS with the NGO
sector silences a whole array of actors and should thus
be avoided. Moreover, if the backfiring of modernity has
indeed caused the GDD, then shouldn’t we search outside
of the dominant paradigm for the answer to this deficit?
In the third part of this essay, we will therefore
examine the potential of alternative understandings of
GCS, which claim to be less neo-liberally biased.
Part 3 – Alternative Global Civil Society
Mary Kaldor is among the frontrunners of an
alternative debate surrounding the concept of global
civil society, which appreciates its emancipatory
potential and ability to promote a kind of global
democracy that can maximize the ‘opportunities for all
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individuals to shape their own lives’ (2008: 35). Kaldor
is critical of the capturing of the concept of GCS by
dominant neo-liberal discourse in the 1990s. She does not
believe that the term can be conflated with the emergence
of a third sector of NGOs. With this claim she knowingly
subscribes to the European, or activist, understanding of
GCS (2003: 588). While she does acknowledge the growth of
the numbers of NGOs from the 1970s, she also sees the
emergence of other socio-political phenomena, such as
transnational advocacy networks and new social movements.
In that sense, she views GCS as being an ‘arena in which
the individual negotiates, struggles against, or debates
with the centres of political and economic authority’
(2003: 585). This arena must by no means describe a
physical or material space, rather it should be
understood as a ‘communicative sphere’ that allows for
the reconciliation of local and global discourses (Kaldor
2008: 41). Like Beck, she acknowledges that globalization
has produced a GDD, in the sense that territorial
boundaries no longer determine who is affected by global
risks and policies. The democracy gap cannot be remedied
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by the neoliberal version of GCS, which aims at creating
a global version of liberal representative democracy
through placing its emphasis on ‘top-down’ legitimization
of global procedures and institutions. In contrast, GCS
as a communicative sphere will allow for the ‘bottom up’
deliberation of a genuinely global public good, by
including voices from the very grassroots of society
(Kaldor 2008: 36). Details of this discursive process
have been elaborated by Habermas in his writing on
communicative action and the public sphere.
Habermas describes the public sphere as an ideal
space, which mediates between society and the state and
‘where subjects participate as equals in rational
discussion in pursuit of truth and the common good’
(Finlayson 2005: 12). He traces the emergence of a public
sphere to the 18th century enlightenment when ideas about
the freedom and equality of citizens of newly formed
nation-states begin to spread across the Western world.
Habermas charts the rise of a reasoning public through
the establishment of the freedom of association, which
sets the stage for increased public deliberation and
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debate (1974: 137). The 18th century public sphere can
then be classed as the origin of a democratic politics.
Habermas holds on to his theory of the public sphere,
which ‘holds up the ideal of free rational discussion
between equals’, despite knowing that the idea of true
equality has from its inception remained a purely utopian
ideal. His theoretical optimism is grounded in the
assumption that social order rests on communicative
action and a discourse ‘in which the voices of all
concerned are listened to, in which no argument is
arbitrarily excluded from consideration and in which only
the force of the better argument prevails’. Only under
these communicative conditions can a public consensus
emerge which is founded on the basis of reason. Thus,
communicative action is the only means of resolving
conflict in modern society because it allows subjects
collectively to determine ‘the rules of their coexistence
for themselves’ (Finlayson 2005: 107). Finally, Habermas
places his hopes for communicative action in contemporary
civil society, made up of informal organisations and
members of the political community who, through their
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participation in discourse can ‘reach understandings,
make compromises and form opinions’, which can influence
formal decision-making institutions (Finlayson 2005:
108). Returning to our problem of the GDD, Habermas,
argues that a political system is more likely to produce
politics and laws that are in tune with ‘discursively
formed public opinion’ (Finlayson 2005: 109), when it is
porous to the input from civil society. His writings
support Kaldor’s theory, that GCS, as a process of
communication among private individuals without legal or
other constraints, can produce such a thing as a genuine
global public good around which global democratic
practice can be built (Habermas 1974: 136). Crucially,
normative biases, which have impeded upon neoliberal
conceptions of GCS and undermined its democratic
potential, are avoided due to the purely rational nature
of communicative action. Kaldor’s alternative version of
GCS implies that the GDD can be remedied by the power of
communication, channelled by individuals who are able to
shape their own lives and ‘influence debates about public
decisions that affect them’ (Kaldor 2008: 35).
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Part 4 – The Never-Ending Story of the Liberal Paradigm
To simply assume that Kaldor’s interpretation of
what constitutes global civil society is entirely value
neutral and unbiased would of course be erroneous. It is
no surprise that Habermas’s idea of a public space has
been taken up by many Western activists to deliberate the
idea of a GCS. Like most human rights activists’,
Kaldor’s view of the global social order is an inherently
cosmopolitan one. Cosmopolitans subscribe to the idea
that globalization is leading to the formation of a world
community or ‘universal circle of belonging’, where
people are experiencing growing solidarity towards each
other and that this has been fuelled by a variety of
global developments such as trade, increasing human
mobility and the gradual elimination of nationalisms
(Cheah 2006: 491). While cosmopolitanism’s conceptual
roots can be traced back to Immanuel Kant who saw ‘man as
a citizen of the world’ and thus believed the key to his
freedom to lie in a universal civil society (Kaldor 2003:
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586), more recently this school of thought has influenced
the post Cold-War humanitarian regime and other actors
who consider themselves to be part of a wider version of
GCS (Cheah 2006: 493). Yet, a cosmopolitan approach to
GCS can prove problematic on a number of levels when we
consider its potential to remedy the GDD. First of all,
the claim that globalization has led to the replacement
of nationalism with growing human solidarity or a mass-
based political consciousness cannot be universalized.
Cheah rightfully observes that there is a ‘lack of fit
between the material interconnectedness brought about by
global capitalism and the degree of formation of global
solidarities’ (2006: 491). In other words, while people
in the global North may experience globalization as the
gradual ascension of human solidarity to the global
level, there is little evidence to suggest that people in
the global South are experiencing globalization in the
exact same manner. Any such claim would be blatantly
disregarding the rise in local extremist groups whose
solidarities may have been cultivated as a result of
globalization but who feel by no means connected to a
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‘universal circle of belonging’ (Cheah 2006). Secondly,
Marx suggests that political emancipation, which can be
achieved through the globalization of civil society as
suggested by Kaldor, is not full human emancipation,
because it leaves intact relationships of inequality and
exploitation (Howell and Pearce 2001: 53). There exists a
cosmopolitan inclination to privilege concerns over the
freedoms and rights of individuals over economic equality
and the international division of labour, which severely
challenges its potential to meaningfully address the GDD.
After all, this deficit is premised upon the condition
that people across the world are increasingly unable to
influence the decisions that affect their lives based on
structural inequalities. Assuming that the advancement of
civil liberties, such as the rights to freedom of speech
or association, can by itself lead to global democracy,
severely underestimates the divisive power of global
capitalism. Howell and Pearce thus rightfully proclaim
that translating the possibility of a GCS to the real
material world of exploitation and poverty in the South
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remains a considerable challenge (Howell and Pearce 2011:
60).
In conclusion, what are then the implications for
Kaldor’s version of GCS being deeply rooted in
cosmopolitan thought for its potential to remedy the GDD?
We established in the first part of this essay that this
deficit, understood by Beck as caused by the process of
reflexive modernization, is problematic precisely because
it cannot be remedied from within that same modern
paradigm from which it has emerged. Any effort to limit,
diagnose or monitor the threats produced by reflexive
modernization will ultimately lead to the production of
additional uncertainties. Kaldor’s cosmopolitan version
of GCS, although attempting to provide a critique of neo-
liberally biased conceptions of GCS as well as liberal
representative democracy, still to some extent subscribes
to liberal ideas produced during the enlightenment
period, such as an emphasis on individual human freedoms
and a belief in the possibility for rational
communicative action. In other words, much like the INGOs
from earlier on in this essay, most actors working under
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the banner of cosmopolitan GCS are too trapped within the
normative confines of modernity. In answer to our main
question, I would thus argue that cosmopolitanism’s claim
to certain alleged truths about the human condition, such
as the ability to perceive of a ‘common good’, undermine
the potential of Kaldor’s alternative version of GCS to
provide an answer to the GDD. This is precisely because,
any claim to an absolute truth, no matter how tentative
it might be, will by default exclude competing truths and
as such reduce the chances for a truly plural discourse
(Foucault 2002). People who are unwilling or unable to
address their political concerns within the language of
the modern individualist human rights regime, will remain
marginalised and largely excluded from global decision-
making processes. To some extent then, the core-periphery
divide, which is a crucial feature of the GDD, remains
unchanged.
Part 5 – Ways Forward
When we look back at our initial assessment of the
GDD, as having been produced by the emergence of risk
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society through the backfiring of modernity, it would
seem commonsensical to search for an answer to the
democratic deficit outside this realm of modernity.
Unsurprisingly, this is easier said than done. Both the
dominant discourse and alternative approaches show the
inclination of Western actors to hold on to familiar
forms of knowledge production and concepts which are
rooted in their ideological history. Of course it may one
day be the case that globalization will have spread the
ideas of Western enlightenment across the globe, so that
a truly global civil society can emerge, but this is
certainly not the reality today. For now, we need to find
a way of ensuring the coexistence of plural knowledges,
which in turn may provide a more fruitful answer to the
GDD than any version of GCS ever will. First and foremost
this must involve a sharp increase in non-Western voices
contributing to the discourse surrounding global issues.
Crucially, this must happen without the mediation of
Western actors and concepts. Secondly, as I have already
mentioned, we must not close our eyes to the destructive
and divisive power of global capitalism, primarily in its
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neo-liberal incarnation and the structural inequality
that it produces, which makes people, as groups and
individuals, unable to contribute meaningfully to the
global discourse. And while these goals might seem
utopian at this moment, we do not have to look very far
to see how they might well be attained.
The Occupy movement has been attempting to challenge
vast global imbalances in both political and economic
power, while claiming no representativeness other than
that of its participants. It recognises democracy as a
social process while questioning conventional means by
which global democracy is being produced in our world
today. The plurality of the movement’s manifestations
allows it to stay attuned to changing dynamics at the
base of society across global regions (Razsa and Kurnik
2012). Buell argues that one of its greatest achievements
has been to find a way to ‘forge a public space for a
continuing discussion’ of global issues (2011). He adds
that this space could eventually ‘allow disparate and
evolving life styles, ethnicities, and world views to
live and thrive together’. Crucially, Occupy does not
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seek to justify its political goals by immersing itself
in the language of GCS, and it may just be this factor,
which could give it the strength to meaningfully address
the GDD in the long run.
Conclusion
The preceding essay has attempted to explore whether
global civil society is the answer to the global
democratic deficit. I began my analysis with an
exploration of the deficit itself and the role that
global governance institutions have played in its
emergence. I then attempted to explore the paradigmatic
roots of the GDD by tracing the emergence of Beck’s risk
society. By establishing that said risk society must be
attributed to the backfiring of modernity, we assumed
that any attempt to remedy the GDD from within the modern
paradigm, was unlikely to yield much success. In line
with this prediction, we went on to establish in the
second part of this essay, that the dominant and
standardized version of GCS could not provide an answer
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to the GDD. This was due to a variety of shortfalls,
which overwhelmingly related to the discourse’s
rootedness in liberal Western political thought and its
fixation with installing liberal representative democracy
or enhancing legitimacy through international NGOs. In
the third part of the essay we introduced an alternative
understanding of GCS, as advocated most famously by Mary
Kaldor. We saw the concept widened to include not just
INGOs but players that are active in the realm between
the state and the market. In that sense GCS comes to
describe a communicative sphere, which allows people
across the globe to deliberate their common will and
become emancipated from the strains of dominant
neoliberal discourse. Ultimately, I concluded that
despite having been taken up by a broad variety of global
actors, this version’s normative cosmopolitan roots
impinge on its promise of total inclusiveness. Because
cosmopolitanism exhibits traits that link it to the
modern paradigm, we cannot but question its potential to
break out of and meaningfully confront the dilemmas posed
by reflexive modernity.
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What does this tell us about the usefulness of the
concept of GCS in general? Scholte (2007) is certainly
correct, when he suggests that any assessment of whether
GCS can be the answer to the GDD depends upon our notions
of civil society and democracy respectively. In this
essay I have assessed the potential of varying notions of
GCS against my understanding of the GDD, which is
informed by Beck’s notion of reflexive modernization.
Hence, I will certainly acknowledge that alternative
definitions of this deficit may produce different answers
as to the potential of GCS. Yet, while Scholte (2007)
concludes that ‘global civil society is not inherently
either a democratic or counter-democratic force in
contemporary politics’, I wish to assert that far from an
empty concept to be filled with meaning by whomever
wishes to do so, it has come into the world normatively
charged, if only by the power of its semiotic
connotation.
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