By Joseph Nye
June 29, 2004 |
Taipei Times
GN3 Editorial Comment:
Making use of information technology, networking
and cultural power, global civil society is acting as
a counterweight to government and business on the
global stage in pushing for all aspects of sustainable
development including human rights, poverty
eradication and environmental conservation. Many are
taking notice of this relatively new force in world
affairs, but they mostly fail to understand the
cultural basis of the movement as opposed to the
economic and political context of businesses and
governments respectively. In the article below, the
author recognizes civil society's effectiveness in
using "soft power" to challenge both governments and
business to reform. But he fails to appreciate the
cultural nature of civil society and it source of
legitimacy.
When Human Rights Watch
declared last January that the Iraq War did not
qualify as a humanitarian intervention, the
international media took notice. According to the
Internet database Factiva, 43 news articles mentioned
the report, in publications ranging from the Kansas
City Star to the Beirut Daily Star. Similarly, after
the abuses of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison
were disclosed, the views of Amnesty International and
the International Committee of the Red Cross put
pressure on the Bush administration both at home and
abroad.
As these examples suggest,
today's information age has been marked by the growing
role of non-governmental organizations (NGO's) on the
international stage. This is not entirely new, but
modern communications have led to a dramatic increase
in scale, with the number of NGO's jumping from 6,000
to approximately 26,000 during the 1990's alone. Nor
do numbers tell the whole story, because they
represent only formally constituted organizations.
Many NGOs claim to act as a
"global conscience," representing broad public
interests beyond the purview of individual states.
They develop new norms by directly pressing
governments and businesses to change policies, and
indirectly by altering public perceptions of what
governments and firms should do. NGOs do not have
coercive "hard" power, but they often enjoy
considerable "soft" power -- the ability to get the
outcomes they want through attraction rather than
compulsion. Because they attract followers,
governments must take them into account both as allies
and adversaries.
A few decades ago, large
organizations like multinational corporations or the
Roman Catholic Church were the most typical type of
transnational organization. Such organizations remain
important, but the reduced cost of communication in
the Internet era has opened the field to loosely
structured network organizations with little
headquarters staff and even to individuals. These
flexible groups are particularly effective in
penetrating states without regard to borders. Because
they often involve citizens who are well placed in the
domestic politics of several countries, they can focus
the attention of media and governments onto their
issues, creating new transnational political
coalitions.
A rough way to gauge the
increasing importance of transnational organizations
is to count how many times these organizations are
mentioned in mainstream media publications. The use of
the term "non-governmental organization" or "NGO" has
increased 17-fold since 1992. In addition to Human
Rights Watch, other NGO's such as Transparency
International, Oxfam, and Doctors without Borders have
undergone exponential growth in terms of mainstream
media mentions. By this measure, the biggest NGOs have
become established players in the battle for the
attention of influential editors.
In these circumstances,
governments can no longer maintain the barriers to
information flows that historically protected
officials from outside scrutiny. Even large countries
with hard power, such as the US, are affected. NGOs
played key roles in the disruption of the WTO summit
in 1999, the passage of the Landmines Treaty, and the
ratification of the Framework Convention on Tobacco
Control in May last year.
The US, for example, initially
had strong objections to the Convention on Tobacco
Control, but dropped them in the face of international
criticism. The Landmines Treaty was created despite
the opposition of the strongest bureaucracy (the
Pentagon) in the world's largest military power.
Similarly, transnational
corporations are often targets of NGO campaigns to
"name and shame" companies that pay low wages in poor
countries. Such campaigns sometimes succeed because
they can credibly threaten to damage the value of
global brand names.
Royal Dutch Shell, for
example, announced last year that it would not drill
in any spots designated by UNESCO as World Heritage
sites. This decision came two years after the company
acceded to pressure from environmentalists and
scrapped plans to drill in a World Heritage site in
Bangladesh. Transnational drug companies were shamed
by NGOs into abandoning lawsuits in South Africa in
2002 over infringements of their patents on drugs to
fight AIDS. Similar campaigns of naming and shaming
have affected the investment and employment patterns
of Mattel, Nike, and a host of other companies.
NGOs vary enormously in their
organization, budgets, accountability, and sense of
responsibility for the accuracy of their claims. It is
hyperbole when activists call such movements "the
world's other superpower," yet governments ignore them
at their peril.
Some have reputations and
credibility that give them impressive domestic as well
as international soft power. Others lack credibility
among moderate citizens but can mobilize
demonstrations that demand the attention of
governments. For better and for worse, NGOs and
network organizations have resources and do not
hesitate to use them.
Do NGOs make world politics
more democratic? Not in the traditional sense of the
word. Most are elite organizations with narrow
membership bases. Some act irresponsibly and with
little accountability. Yet they tend to pluralize
world politics by calling attention to issues that
governments prefer to ignore, and by acting as
pressure groups across borders. In that sense, they
serve as antidotes to traditional government
bureaucracies.
Governments remain the major
actors in world politics, but they now must share the
stage with many more competitors for attention.
Non-governmental actors are changing world politics.
After Abu Ghraib, even US Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld must take notice.
Source: Link
to Taipei Times Article
|