scholarly journals Foundations, ENGOs, Clean-Growth Networks and the Integral State

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-142
Author(s):  
William Carroll ◽  
Nicolas Graham ◽  
Mark Shakespear
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Environmental Movement ◽  
Technical Expertise ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Corporate Executives ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Corporate Interests ◽  
Major Donors

‘Clean-growth’ has been embraced by a professionalized segment of environmentalism as a project that aspires to meet Canada’s international climate commitments while supporting a robust rate of capital accumulation. This study situates clean growth within the network that reaches from Canadian foundations that are major donors, to the clean-growth ENGOs that receive the funds, and to other relevant civil-society, state and capitalist organizations, whose governance boards interlock with those of the foundations or the clean-growth ENGOs. Clean-growth initiatives are embedded within a configuration of facilitative funding and governance relations that include major corporate interests but do not extend to the more critical, transformative segment of Canada’s environmental movement. Funded by foundations and partly governed by corporate executives, clean-growth comprises an aspect of the integral state, working to mobilize popular support and technical expertise for a project of climate (in)action that suits dominant business interests.

Managing civil society: democratisation and the environmental movement in a Russian region

2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Crotty
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Third Sector ◽  
Environmental Movement ◽  
Donor Funding ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Donor Agencies

The stalling of civil society development within the Russian Federation and its attendant causes have been a focus of academic study since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Alongside the emergence of a fragmented and chronically under-funded community of advocacy groups, the literature points to a rejection of democratic structures by the Russian populace and an absence of active civil engagement. Consequently, the international community has sought to bolster the growth and development of the Russian third sector by funding projects and organisations with a view to increasing public participation.Utilising research undertaken in Samara oblast of the Russian Federation, this paper examines the role played by overseas donor agencies within the Samara Environmental Movement (SEM). In examining both the quality and quantity of donor assistance received, it reveals a number of dysfunctions arising from this aid, and in particular, a lack of contextualization and mis-direction of the assistance offered vis-à-vis citizen participation, alongside other behavioural impacts of donor funding within the SEM itself.

Beyond legacy: Backstage stigmatisation and ‘trickle-up’ politics of urban regeneration

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 919-934 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsteen Paton
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Private Business ◽  
Private Finance ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
East End ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Commonwealth Games ◽  
Shed Light

This article explores how stigmatisation is intimately linked with neoliberal governance and capital accumulation in specific ways through processes around the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. It advances the author’s previous research exploring the effects of stigma on the East End community hosting the Games, by looking at some of the processes of power and profit which motivate stigmatising processes by ‘gazing up’, rather than ‘gazing down’. That is, looking at the role of the stigmatisers in this project and not the stigmatised. It draws loosely on Goffman’s concept of ‘backstage’ to shed light on those who produce and profit from these stigmatisation processes, including government bodies and actors and private business interests. Looking at some of the processes through which stigmatisation is profited from reveals not only forms of power vital to this process but that it is a key form of exploitation integral to capital accumulation. Under austerity, the political economy of the Games constitutes state support of private finance and a simultaneous withdrawal of social welfare support, which transfers the burden of debt from the state to the individual and wealth from public funds to private funds.

Environmental Governance and the (Re-)Making of the African State

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maano Ramutsindela ◽  
Bram Büscher
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
African State ◽  
The State ◽  
Environmental Challenges ◽  
Environmental Threats ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Nation States ◽  
State Industry ◽  
Multiple Actors

State formation processes that are historically associated with the emergence of the modern state as well as the post-colony have been punctuated by the rise of environmentalism, especially the need for nation-states to respond to, as well as manage environmental challenges. Responses to these challenges by multiple actors such as the state, industry, environmental nongovernmental organizations, and financial institutions culminate in environmental governance and in the co-constitution of environment and state making. The state–environment relations have produced new forms of governmentality that refocus the activities of the state toward globally defined environmental agendas. In Africa attempts by multiple actors to manage the environment have transformed the state in five principal ways: (1) They enable global capitalism to enroll African environments in a niche area for capital accumulation but also tie up African governments to environmentally related business interests; (2) environmental governance in Africa and elsewhere leads to resistance and contestations over natural resources that in turn shape the relationship between the state and its citizens; (3) global environmental issues have led to environmental solidarity among African states, which they use to negotiate environmental agreements at the international stage; (4) environmental threats such as the poaching of wildlife in Africa integrate African states into global security frameworks that in effect threaten or corrode the integrity of the African state; and (5) environmental challenges and the opportunities that come with environmental solutions create conditions for competition among African states as well as the formation of new alliances among states. These outcomes highlight the significance of the state–environment nexus in the continuous (re-)making of the African state.

Environment and the Global Civil Society

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Environmental Movement ◽  
Global Civil Society ◽  
Three Gorges ◽  
The Three Gorges ◽  
The World ◽  
Narmada Dam ◽  
The Three Gorges Dam

AbstractThis paper examines the role of civil society in environmental movements in the context of globalization. Exploring the various meanings of civil society, it argues that to understand civil society as a politically meaningful concept, due consideration should be given to social movements, which recharge civil society. At the same time, the efficacy of social movements rests on the vibrancy of civil society. In the present day world, civil society has become quite active in a large number of public interest issues of which environment has become quite central. This paper explores the conditions of the environmental movement as a truly global phenomenon and its role in the rise of a global civil society. The paper also reflects on the implications of the emergence of a global civil society for the protection of the environment. Drawing upon the cases of the Three Gorges Dam in China and the Narmada Dam in India the paper examines the role of an incipient global civil society. We must keep on striving to make the world a better place for all of mankind - each one contributing his bit, in his or her own way. - Ken Saro-Wiwa The Environment is humanity's first right. - Ken Saro-Wiwa

Business advocacy in Asian PTAs: a model of selective corporate lobbying with evidence from Japan

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mireya Solís
Keyword(s):  
Current Trend ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Preferential Trade Agreements ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Technical Expertise ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Business Lobbying ◽  
Preference Intensity

What explains the pattern of selective business interest in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with active campaigning for and utilization of tariff preferences for some trade agreements, but not others? Under what conditions can business advocates of PTA policy mount an effective lobbying campaign to influence policy outcomes (i.e., shaping decisions onwhoto negotiate with andwhatto negotiate about)? These are important questions given that analyses of Asian PTAs frequently assign a negligible role to business interests either out of apathy or lobbying weakness. To understand the pattern of selective business lobbying for PTAs, I develop a theoretical model with three main independent variables: venue selection, preference intensity, and advocacy effectiveness, and apply it to the case of Japan to test its usefulness. My model shows that the conditions for effective business PTA campaigning are exacting: loss avoidance, high technical expertise, and influence-seeking strategies that maximize access opportunities given institutional constraints. And yet when these factors align, business interests do influence PTA outcomes. My research shows that the current trend to characterize the agency of PTA proliferation as either state-led or business-driven needs to be re-examined as it is more useful to think about state-society constellations in favor or against PTAs.

The multispatial governance of social and economic policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-174
Author(s):  
Bob Jessop
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Body ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Social Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Politics Of The Body

This chapter distinguishes Foucault’s approach from the work of Anglo-Foucauldian scholars. The latter adopted a microsocial perspective, focused on the programmes and rationalities of government that work across multiple alliances between different actors, and argued for bottom-up civil society responsibilization. Foucault was not only state-phobic but also suspicious of political action based on civil society. His theoretical interests shifted from the micro-physics of disciplinary society and its anatomo-politics of the body to the more general strategic codification of a plurality of discourses, practices, technologies of power, and institutional ensembles around a specific governmental rationality concerned with the social body (bio-power) in a consolidated capitalist society. This is reflected in the statification of government and the governmentalization of the state. This led to his analyses of sovereignty, territorial statehood, and state power and the role of civil society in this regard and to less well-substantiated claims about their articulation to the logic of capital accumulation.

Resurrecting Prostitutes and Overturning Treaties: Gender Politics in the “Anti-American” Movement in South Korea

2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine H. S. Moon
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Internal Competition ◽  
And Gender

Although recent expressions of “anti-Americanism” in South Korea have alarmed policy makers in Seoul and Washington and aroused fears about declining popular support for the bilateral alliance, they are understandable manifestations of civil society activism, which has grown since democratization began during the late 1980s. This paper analyzes anti-Americanism as a dynamic coalition movement accompanied by the all of internal competition, conflicts, and contradictions that characterize such movements. In the process, some actors and issues have become high priorities, whereas others have been marginalized or silenced. Professor Moon examineskijich'on(camptown) prostitution around U.S. military bases in Korea as a case study of how power conflicts within the coalition movement, which are focused on nationalism and gender, have exploited and shut out the very people who served as its initiators and early leaders.

scholarly journals Human Rights Advocacy in Silicon Valley: Civil Society’s Perceptions of Platform Accountability Efforts and Stakeholder Engagement Processes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kayla Brown
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
New Media ◽  
Stakeholder Engagement ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
External Pressure ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
Private Corporations

This research project evaluates civil society’s perceptions of human rights advocacy and stakeholder engagement within the particular context of content governance and platform accountability. It is informed by critical theories of new media and scholarship on social movements and social change. Findings reveal that, within the context of platform accountability and content governance, organized civil society advocates for human rights by applying external pressure through media coverage and by networking directly with platform companies, many of which are hiring dedicated human rights leads and establishing more robust stakeholder engagement or governance processes; corporate interests underpin both strategies, however, the individuals interviewed identified the former as the most effective. Although organized civil society is an important counterweight to corporate power, findings reveal that business interests are still a significant barrier to enacting meaningful social change. Findings also suggest that good faith by and good actors within platform companies are ultimately not enough, reinforcing the important role organized civil society plays in increasing democratic accountability, even as private corporations begin to create processes to govern themselves.

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