A Tentative Model of Cooperation between States and Global Civil Society: Focusing on Their Cooperation with International NGOs in International Security Governance

This chapter grounds a definition of global civil society in the existence of international law and links with international networks of either international NGOs or support groups crucial for enabling civil society groups in postconflict countries to operate. Conceptualizing civil society in these global terms, the chapter critiques a technocratic approach to peace- and statebuilding that reduces the multitude of civil society actors to NGOs and their limited ability to address the social condition created by war. If the state of persistent disorder created by a combination of fragmentation and globalization is to be transformed, activist civil society needs to be regarded as a partner in countering sectarian and fundamentalist narratives and in increasing the accountability of corrupt elites. Activist civil society is underpinned by an assumption that protest, activism, debate, and deliberation are the main mechanisms for change. Linked up with international actors, it can provide the basis for a strategy for constructing legitimate institutions at different levels. By focusing on elites associated with the armed groups as participants in the peace talks in a top-down approach to conflict resolution, the international community has at least implicitly endorsed the marginalization of activist civil society. Reversing this relationship opens up new possibilities for reducing violence and for building peace.

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Transnational Social Movements and Peaceful Change

The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190097356.013.25 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Alejandro Milcíades Peña

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Civil Society ◽

Political Violence ◽

Global Civil Society ◽

Dynamic Processes ◽

Transnational Social Movements ◽

Relational Perspective ◽

The Relationship ◽

Interactive Dynamic ◽

Dominant Treatment

The chapter discusses the relationship between social movements and peaceful change. First, it reviews the way this relationship has been elaborated in IR constructivist and critical analyses, as part of transnational activist networks, global civil society, and transnational social movements, while considering the blind sides left by the dominant treatment of these entities as positive moral actors. Second, the chapter reviews insights from the revolution and political violence literature, a literature usually sidelined in IR debates about civil society, in order to cast a wider relational perspective on how social movements participate in, and are affected by, interactive dynamic processes that may escalate into violent outcomes at both local and international levels.

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