A civil society that goes beyond the nation-state requires global forces and players, and participation as a global network. These factors include globalization as a driving force for ‘interconnectedness’, (I)/NGOs, and the United Nations (UN) etc
On a fundamental but intrinsically basic level, for civil society beyond the nation-state to work, there must be a shortening of time and space barriers in the international community. This is often referred to as a part of globalization. Globalization by virtue has allowed information, goods, people and knowledge to spread from across national territories and into territories, which is not a new concept; yet has increased dramatically in recent years. This inevitable force has given people the opportunity to become more aware of firstly, the globe, secondly, global issues and thirdly their place in the world. Essentially, civil society is concerned with ‘awareness’ of the self and of those around the self. However, it is argued that with globalization comes greater inequality with the west exploiting developing countries. Furthermore, those nations that benefit most from globalization appear to be most concerned with ‘global civil society’ with membership of (I)/NGOs mainly being Western nations. “Thus, for example, 60% of the secretariats of INGOs are based in the European Union and one third of their membership is in Western Europe… This area is also the most densely globalised, whether we mean the concentration of global capitalism as measured by the presence of transnational corporations and the importance of trade and foreign investment.” 'A link between globalisation and increasing inequality is already acknowledged by the UN.
There are estimated to be over 48,000 international organisations, some are intergovernmental organisations such as the (UN) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) but the majority are non-governmental organisations such as Amnesty International and Green peace. The UN plays a key role in the possibility of a civil society beyond the nation-state, because in order for a civil society to work, there must be communication of citizens within a global arena. The UN acts as an international body through which the channels of communication can be fed. There are many ways that the UN, the principal global institution committed to peacekeeping, intervenes with the help of various other members of global society to facilitate peace. It fields international monitors to settle election disputes and deploys transitional authorities such as in East Timor where they ensured that security and ultimately peace could be achieved between the warring protagonists.
Many of the growing international organisations are advocacy groups concerned with human rights, the environment, women's rights and relief work. The nature of their work can help promote peace or ameliorate the effects of conflict. They have established effective transnational alliances and networks of communication capable of influencing governments and world institutions. ‘NGOs significantly influenced the content of agreements and charters at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992.’ Development networks help to establish small-scale organisations, which provide a range of services to support the poor and marginalised communities. There is, for example, a well-developed global network of organisations concerned with helping those affected by the spread of AIDs. Medical skills and technology have been successfully transferred and employed in many developing countries through international organisations.
There has been increasing co-operation between international environmental, human rights, health and relief organisations as environmental destruction and degradation can cause famine, poor health and displacement of large numbers of people. Such networks of global society can play an increasingly important role in facilitating peace as poverty; social injustice and environmental problems are factors, which trigger conflict. International aid organisations often try to identify local capacities for peace and design their programmes to support and reinforce them. ‘International aid may play a role in enabling people in a war torn society to exert influence to gain the international political assistance they need and want.’ Conditions are sometimes employed by international institutions and regional organisations by tying political aid to progress toward democratic rights and freedoms.
One great organization supporting the notion of a civil society that goes beyond the nation-states is the ‘World Conference of Religions for Peace.’ On their website, they state that as part of their missionary that “The World Conference of Religions for Peace is the largest international coalition of representatives from the world's great religions who are dedicated to achieving peace. Respecting cultural differences while celebrating our common humanity, Religions for Peace is active on every continent and in some of the most troubled places on earth, creating multi-religious partnerships that mobilize the moral and social resources of religious people to address their shared problems.” From this missionary, we can evaluate this organization as a truly international and inclusive group that crosses religious boundaries as well as national boundaries. The organization, like the United Nations, takes a work load on, that many nation-states try to; or fail to do such as “…mediating dialogue among warring factions in Sierra Leone; building a new climate of reconciliation in Bosnia and Kosovo; organizing an international network of religious women's organizations; and launching an extraordinary program to assist the millions of children affected by Africa's AIDS pandemic, the Hope for African Children Initiative.” It appears though; that this organization is essentially cleaning up the mess other nation-states have created against their fellow nations.
If we are to take the argument that global governance and civil society is troubled by the fact that nation-states are deeply rooted by exclusive history, language and culture, then Religions for Peace is a good example of how nation-states ought to work in the quest for civil society that goes beyond their national boundaries. What is special about Religions for Peace is that it goes beyond political and humanitarian relief; in that in combines religion and international co-operation within its network. This is something that nation-states such as France have trouble with. Traditionally, France has maintained a separation of the church and the state with the church detached from public affairs. Religions for Peace therefore play an important part in the process of nations combing in effort on an international scale.
If we break it down further, a nation “designates people; however national and international both confusingly refer as well to matters pertaining to what are strictly states, as in national capital, international law.” States refers “to set of governing institutions with sovereignty over a definite territory.” If we combine these two definitions together we see that nation-states are sovereign territories that derive legitimacy through the channels of its sovereignity. Nation-states are unified by cultural entities such as language or common descent. “The nation-state implies the parallel occurrence of a state and a nation. In the ideal nation-state, the population consists of the nation and only of the nation: the state not only houses it, but protects it and its national identity (i.e., they coincide exactly): every member of the nation is a permanent resident of the nation-state, and no member of the nation permanently resides outside it.”
If we were to talk of a civil society that went beyond the nation-state, we could use the European Union as a basis for arguing that there is evidence that a global civil society does exists. “The European Economic Community (EEC) had been founded in 1957-58 to oversee the economic integration of the nations of Western Europe.” But it was the success of the “liberalized trade and internal market policies” supported by the EEC (or EC) in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s made its members more amenable to the greater integration of the EC. Consequent efforts toward greater economic and political union of the EC's members eventually yielded the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty), concluded in December 1991. The treaty's enactment (Nov. 1, 1993) created the European Union out of the European Community; in addition, the European Economic Community was renamed the European Community, and the EC's Council of Ministers was renamed the Council of Ministers of the European Union.
Now referred to as the EU, the main goal of the community was to integrate its member’s economies into a single frontier-less market that would have a mutual currency and a common central bank. European Parliament is the “directly-elected democratic expression of the political will of the peoples of the European Union, the largest multinational Parliament in the world.” The European Parliament acts for the 370 million citizens of the Union, its primary purpose are like that of any Parliament - to pass good laws and to examine and regulate the use of executive power. Now more than ever before, it is in a much better position to do both because its responsibilities have been gradually widened and its powers strengthened first by the Single Act of 1987 and then by the Treaty of European Union of 1993.
The benefits of the European Union are overwhelming. Firstly, every citizen of each Member State is both a national and a European citizen. This in effect is evidence of nations going beyond their national territories into a European Civil Society. Those nation-states that use the EURO share their currencies with the other nations in the European Union, which reaps a whole load of financial benefits from tourism to trading.
Since the 1960s, there has been a relationship with the European Union and Latin America. “The relationship between the two continents has substantially evolved over the past three decades. Today’s partnership reflects the growing importance and developing potential of the Latin American region, and the will of both parties to further strengthen the relationship in the future. The EU is an important economic and political partner for Latin America, it is the leading donor in the region, first foreign investor, and second most important trade partner.” The relationship between the EU and Latin America has evolved over time, to include elements of political and economic co-operation. For example, co-operation and alliance agreements signed by the EU with its Latin American partners include a “democratic clause, enshrining co-operation and mutual respect for democratic principles and human rights”. The agreements also include new perspectives for economic, industrial, scientific, technical and environmental co-operation, as well as the fight against drugs. Likewise, decentralised co-operation has become more important over the last ten years, this trend has been coupled by an increasingly important role for civil society in the implementation of EU initiatives.
Going on from the European Union, where we can conclude that nation-states within Europe have gone beyond their territorial national boundaries into an economic, political and legal domain. And then to the relationship between the EU within this domain, bilaterally co-operating with Latin America suggests some foundations for a ‘global civil society.’ The advantage of this, in the context of supporting the notion of a global civil society is that the nations of Latin America are Spanish speaking countries, which originates from Spain needless to say. Therefore, a common language is shared between the EU and Latin America. By virtue there is a robust correlation between the two organization and nations. This however, is something the EU lacks; a common language and culture in a continent so diverse. If one continent posses a huge range of languages, values, political systems, ideologies and cultures such as Europe, then the global domain with ‘Eastern’ ideologies, socialist views, communist regimes, Zulu and Arabic languages, the Jewish faith are but an example of the diversities of the world. The enquiries into how possible talk of a civil society beyond the nation-state should revolve around the possibility of this concept in the diverse global domain. How possible would it be to incorporate every national requirement and desire under a global civil society? What would happen to sentiments of nationalism and identity? How standardized and homogeneous would society be without diversity? These are some questions that ought to be raised when talking of a ‘global civil society.’
To conclude, civil society beyond the nation-state is simultaneously a goal to aim for, a means to achieve it, and a framework for engaging with each-other about ends and means. Many of the difficulties of the civil society debate disappear when we lower our expectations of what civil society ought to be.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Policy.com [Think Again] Winter 1999 – 2000 (http://foreignpolicy.com/Ning/archive/archive/117/ThinkAgain.pdf)
-
Lester Kurtz, ed, Encyclopaedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, San Diego: Academic Press
-
Adam Selgiman, The Idea of Civil Society; New York: Macmillan, 1992.
-
John Keane; Global Civil Society; Oxford University Press, 2001
-
Amitai Etzioni, Implications of the American Anti-Terrorism Coalition for Global Architectures, European Journal of Political Theory, vol. 1 no. 1 (July 2002)
- Donnellan, C. Issues, Vol. 55. Globalisation, Cambridge, Independence Educational Publishers, 2002
- Lipschutz, R. Reconstructing World Politics: The Emergence of Global Society
- Anderson, M. How Aid Can Support Peace - Or War, Colorado, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1999
Policy.com [Think Again] Winter 1999 – 2000 http://foreignpolicy.com/Ning/archive/archive/117/ThinkAgain.pdf
Lester Kurtz, ed, Encyclopaedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, San Diego: Academic Press, pp. 269-78
Lester Kurtz, ed, Encyclopaedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, San Diego: Academic Press, pp. 269-78
Adam Selgiman, The Idea of Civil Society (New York: Macmillan, 1992).
John Keane; Global Civil Society; Oxford University Press; 2001 (pp 24)
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/CSGR/wpapers/wp3199.PDF (pp 2)
Amitai Etzioni, Implications of the American Anti-Terrorism Coalition for Global Architectures, European Journal of Political Theory, vol. 1 no. 1 (July 2002), 9-30.
John Keane; Global Civil Society?; Cambridge University Press; 2003 (pp 15)
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/CSGR/wpapers/wp3199.PDF (pp 3)
Global Civil Society 2001; H. Anheier, M. Glasius, M. Kaldor; Oxford University Press; 2001 ( pp7)
Donnellan, C. Issues, Vol. 55. Globalisation, Cambridge, Independence Educational Publishers, 2002, p.29.
Lipschutz, R. Reconstructing World Politics: The Emergence of Global Society, p.105
Anderson, M. How Aid Can Support Peace - Or War, Colorado, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1999, p.146.
http://www.wcrp.org/RforP/MISSION_MAIN.html
http://www.wcrp.org/RforP/MISSION_MAIN.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation-state
http://www.itcilo.it/english/actrav/telearn/global/ilo/blokit/eu.htm
http://training.itcilo.it/actrav_cdrom1/english/global/blokit/eu.htm
http://www.eu.int/comm/external_relations/la/index.htm
Europa. External Relations. November 2005.