Charlotte Dany

Bio: Charlotte Dany is an academic researcher from Goethe University Frankfurt. The author has contributed to research in topics: Global governance & Information society. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 12 publications receiving 108 citations. Previous affiliations of Charlotte Dany include University of Bremen.

Janus-faced NGO Participation in Global Governance: Structural Constraints for NGO Influence

Abstract: Increasingly, nongovernmental organizations participate in negotiations within international organizations as well as in global working groups and discussion forums. This trend is commonly said to enable the influence of the participating NGOs. Yet this article highlights the negative effects of the high level of NGO participation on the NGOs' influence. It shows, in the case of the UN World Summit on the Information Society, how the NGOs' influence is reduced to less relevant issues and how this influence turns out to be highly selective: while the views and demands of a few NGO actors are successful, more diverse views from the broader NGO community become neglected. This suggests greater caution regarding the usual claim that more is necessarily better with regard to NGO participation in global governance.

Global Governance and NGO Participation: Shaping the information society in the United Nations

Abstract: 1. Introduction: The Ambivalence of NGO Participation 2. Power and Influence in Global Governance 3. A Structurationist Framework of Analysis 4. The 'Information Society': Issues and Practices 5. Global ICT Governance at the WSIS: NGO Influence 6. Structural Power Mechanisms at the WSIS 7. Conclusions

Civil Society Participation under Most Favourable Conditions: Assessing the Deliberative Quality of the WSIS

Abstract: When the United Nations (UN) World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) took place in Geneva in 2003, its innovative multi-stakeholder design was widely praised. The inclusion of non-state actors developed into one of the defining and legitimizing goals of the summit. The WSIS ought to be ‘the scene of a new world dialogue, a new form of international communication based on the values of responsiveness, exchange, solidarity and sharing’.1 The WSIS symbol is a flower, whose four petals around the dot on the ‘i’ represent governments, international organizations, businesses and civil society organizations (CSOs), which all contribute to the common vision of an ‘Information Society for All’.2 CSOs,3 as well as other observers, actively participated during the whole preparatory process, as well as at the summit, by contributing to the drafting process of the policy documents. Indeed, when it became apparent that the summit would not be a success with regard to substance, the WSIS strived more forcefully to promote the announced multi-stakeholder approach. The participation of civil society actors aimed to allocate legitimacy to the policy output.

The impact of participation: how civil society organisations contribute to the democratic quality of the UN world summit on the information society

Abstract: The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held by the United Nations in 2003 to draft a programmatic declaration for the information age The involvement of civil society organisations (CSOs) in the drafting process was innovative and led to WSIS becoming an especially instructive case in order to assess the potential of civil society participation in global governance The author analyses the preconditions that were provided for CSOs to participate within this policy process and how it influenced the policy output The all-encompassing rhetoric of the multi-stakeholder approach at WSIS and its good performance with regard to conceding access, transparency and inclusion to non-state actors suggest that the summit would be responsive to arguments from civil society and therefore a likely case for a deliberative policy process However, the impact of CSOs on the policy documents has only been marginal Despite favourable conditions for CSO participation, WSIS was not as responsive towards civil society arguments as could have been expected A content analysis of policy documents and civil society statements with regard to three selected issue areas – Internet governance, intellectual property rights and communication rights – reveals that CSOs were, in many cases, not able to influence the outcome Their argumentative input only led to minor changes in the policy documents The case of the World Summit on the Information Society indicates that favourable conditions for CSO participation alone do not necessarily provide a solution for the democratic deficit in global governance

World Politics and Organizational Fields: The Case of Transnational Sustainability Governance

Abstract: Transnational rule-making organizations have proliferated in the area of sustainability politics. In this article, we explore why these organizations share a set of core features that appear overly...

Global democracy: normative and empirical perspectives

Abstract: Democracy is increasingly seen as the only legitimate form of government, but few people would regard international relations as governed according to democratic principles. Can this lack of global democracy be justified? Which models of global politics should contemporary democrats endorse and which should they reject? What are the most promising pathways to global democratic change? To what extent does the extension of democracy from the national to the international level require a radical rethinking of what democratic institutions should be? This book answers these questions by providing a sustained dialogue between scholars of political theory, international law and empirical social science. By presenting a broad range of views by prominent scholars, it offers an in-depth analysis of one of the key challenges of our century: globalizing democracy and democratizing globalization.