The Sovereign Limits of Global Civil Society: A Comparison of NGO Participation in UN World Conferences on the Environment, Human Rights, and Women

1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Marie Clark ◽  
Elisabeth J. Friedman ◽  
Kathryn Hochstetler
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Global Civil Society ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Transnational Relations ◽  
Political Processes

The increased visibility of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements at the international level invites continuing evaluation of the extent and significance of the role they now play in world politics. While the presence of such new actors is easily demonstrated, international relations scholars have debated their significance. The authors argue that the concept of global civil society sets a more demanding standard for the evaluation of transnational political processes than has been applied in prior accounts of transnational activity. Further, most empirical studies of this activity have focused on a limited number of NGOs within a single issue-area. Using three recent UN world conferences as examples of mutual encounters between state-dominated international politics and global civic politics, the authors develop the concept of global civil society to provide a theoretical foundation for a systematic empirical assessment of transnational relations concerning the environment, human rights, and women at the global level.

scholarly journals Global civil society and international ethics: Mervyn Frost's restatement of constitutive theory

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-489
Author(s):  
PETER SUTCH
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Global Civil Society ◽  
Constitutive Theory ◽  
Constructivist Theory ◽  
International Ethics ◽  
The Core ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Oriented Approach

Mervyn Frost's restatement of his constitutive theory of international relations raises a number of crucial points which need elaboration and discussion. Discussing the issues under the key headings used by Frost in his reply to my ‘Human Rights as Settled Norms’, I wish to focus on the following claim which I take to be central to the development of any norm-oriented approach to political and international theory. The claim is simply this; we are required, as a necessary component of post-positivist and constructivist theory, to take account of ethical and political inequalities in the development of any series of ‘settled norms’ that constitute the prevailing domain of discourse. This claim, I believe, accurately captures the core concerns of my earlier article and informs those tensions that remain to be discussed here.

scholarly journals Transnational Relations and Activism in International Relations: Debates and Consensus in Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 142
Author(s):  
Ani W. Soetjipto ◽  
Arivia Tri Dara Yuliestiana
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Transnational Activism ◽  
Transnational Advocacy ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Transnational Relations ◽  
Norm Diffusion ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures

This article explores the concepts of transnational relations and activism in the study of International Relations, specifically the role of civil society in transnational advocacy. It is fascinating to discuss the role of civil society when state actors are no longer the most prominent actors in International Relations studies in the midst of globalisation. Some articles related to transnational relations have been written by the scholars of International Relations such as Thomas Risse-Kappen (1995). Even so, one of the most sophisticated concepts of transnational activism was introduced by Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998), in Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. In order to fully understand transnational activism in the study of International Relations, a divergent perspective can be applied. In this article, the authors aim to examine the recent debates and its counternarratives in International Relations through critical and constructivism lenses. Firstly, this article would describe the concepts of transnationalism and transnational activism in the study of International Relations (state of the art). Secondly, it would be a discussion in the literature on transnationalism and transnational activism which cover themes about norm diffusion, the ‘boomerang pattern’, political opportunity structures and accountability and effectiveness. The last part is conclusion that can be drawn from this consensus and debates in the concept of transnational activism.

Individuals in International Relations

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-45
Author(s):  
Peter Hägel
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Transnational Relations ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Discipline Formation

Chapter 2 reviews how International Relations (IR) scholarship has been treating individual agency, especially within the dominant theoretical frameworks, Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism. Various analytical perspectives, such as the “levels-of-analysis,” foreign policy analysis, and the transnational relations approach, have reserved room for the analysis of individuals in world politics. But concerns about academic discipline formation and real-world relevance have led to a widespread neglect of individual actors. While James Rosenau’s research and the integration of social theory into IR offer fruitful ways of thinking about individual agency, they often overemphasize the structural situatedness of actors fulfilling social roles. Revisiting the structure–agency debate, the chapter takes inspiration from Margaret Archer’s sociological insights in order to propose that agency should be analyzed as a variable with an intrasubjective and an intersubjective dimension, which always requires contextual specification. Power, it is argued, should be seen as a disposition, and its exercise vis-à-vis other actors as an intentional project.

scholarly journals Cosmopolitanism as Hospitality: Revisiting Identity and Difference in Cosmopolitanism

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gideon Baker
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Global Civil Society ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Global Identity ◽  
Universal Structure ◽  
Identity And Difference ◽  
Ethical Relations

For many cosmopolitans, an emergent global civil society is re-framing the relationship between the universal and particular in world politics in ways that do justice to both. This article disputes this claim, finding that the concept of global civil society shares the same fundamental problem as state sovereignty, namely that it is better at articulating global identity than difference because it reproduces in different form statist attempts to describe a universal structure of particularity. It then argues that to avoid reducing difference to identity while remaining true to the cosmopolitan impulse to ethical universality, that is, to recognition of moral obligations to foreigners, it is necessary to take cosmopolitanism as synonymous with an ethics of hospitality enabling a nondialectical account of identity and difference in cosmopolitanism. As Derrida affirms, hospitality deconstructs the binary of identity and difference in our ethical relations with strangers. This dialectic-defying quality of cosmopolitanism-as-hospitality requires a greater decisionism than dialectical liberal-cosmopolitanism, turning cosmopolitanism away from the pure ethics of its liberal variants and transforming it into an ethicopolitics.

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