of transnational actors are largely optimistic, suggesting they herald an emerging global civil society comprising local civic groups, international organizations (IOs), and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). This new civil society, moreover, is widely assumed to rest upon shared liberal norms and values that motivate INGO action and explain their supposedly benign inouence on international relations. The NGO Scramble The NGO Scramble Alexander Cooley and James Ron

Organizational Insecurity and the Political Economy of Transnational Action

This article takes seriously the proposition that ideas and concepts, both good and bad, have an impact on international public policy. It situates the emergence of governance, good governance and global governance, as well as the UN's role in the conceptual process. Although 'governance' is as old as human history, this essay concentrates on the intellectual debates of the 1980s and 1990s but explores such earlier UN-related ideas as decolonisation, localisation and human rights, against which more recent thinking has been played out. A central analytical perspective is the tension between many academics and international practitioners who employ 'governance' to connote a complex set of structures and processes, both public and private, while more popular writers tend to use it synonymously with 'government'.

Governance, good governance and global governance: conceptual and actual challenges

The NGO Scramble: Organizational Insecurity and the Political Economy of Transnational Action

▪ Abstract Recent scholars have broadened the study of transnational relations, once limited to political economy, to include contentious international politics. This is a refreshing trend, but most of them leap directly from globalization or some other such process to transnational social movements and thence to a global civil society. In addition, they have so far failed to distinguish among movements, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and transnational networks and do not adequately specify their relations with states and international institutions. In particular, few mechanisms are proposed to link domestic actors to transnational ones and to states and international institutions. This paper argues that mass-based transnational social movements are hard to construct, are difficult to maintain, and have very different relations to states and international institutions than more routinized international NGOs or activist networks. These latter forms may be encouraged both by states and international ...

TRANSNATIONAL POLITICS: Contention and Institutions in International Politics

List of Figures Acknowledgements Abstract Preface Introduction PART I: APPROACHES TO PEACE Towards the Liberal Peace Towards Peace-as-Governance Towards the Peacebuilding Consensus PART II: CONSTRUCTING THE LIBERAL PEACE Constructing the Liberal Peace from Below Constructing the Liberal Peace from Above PART III: REFLECTING ON THE CONCEPTS OF PEACE Conceptualizing Peace Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

The Transformation of Peace

From “Consultative Arrangements” to “Partnership”: The Changing Status of NGOs in Diplomacy at the UN

Private groups, such as Amnesty International and Save the Children Fund, have had a formal consultative status with the United Nations since its founding. Such groups--known as nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs--have come to exert considerable influence on the UN's agenda setting, decisionmaking, and policy implementation. This book examines the role of the NGOs in world politics and the accomplishments of selected groups dealing with the environment, women's rights, children's problems, human rights, and refugee and famine crises. Although these organizations and the UN generally act as partners and collaborators, there are also some tensions, as the NGOs do not have voting status and must remain independent and innovative. In the area of human rights, in particular, the NGOs have applied slow but steady pressure to force the UN to institute real sanctions against individual governments, thus earning the title conscience of the world. Contributors are Seamus Cleary, formerly at the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development; Jane Connors, senior lecturer in law at London University and specialist in women's rights; Helena Cook, former legal officer of Amnesty International; Richard Hoggart, former assistant director-general of UNESCO; Michael Longford, UK representative to several international groups; Sally Morphet, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office; Angela Penrose, Save the Children Fund; John Sankey, former UK representative to the UN in Geneva; John Seaman, Save the Children Fund; Bill Seary, formerly at the National Council for Voluntary Organizations; Henry Steel, leader of the UK delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission; and Douglas Williams, former deputysecretary of the UK Ministry of Overseas Development. Copublished with the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies Available through Brookings in North America only

The conscience of the world : the influence of non-governmental organisations in the UN system

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Amnesty International and Oxfam to Greenpeace and Save the Children are now key players in global politics. This accessible and informative textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the significant role and increasing participation of NGOs in world politics.

Peter Willetts examines the variety of different NGOs, their structure, membership and activities, and their complex relationship with social movements and civil society. He makes us aware that there are many more NGOs exercising influence in the United Nations system than the few famous ones.

Conventional thinking is challenged in a radical manner on four questions: 

the extent of the engagement of NGOs in global policy- making; 
the status of NGOs within international law; 
the role of NGOs as crucial pioneers in the creation of the Internet; 
and the need to integrate NGOs within mainstream international relations theory. 

This is the definitive guide to this crucial area within international politics and should be required reading for students, NGO activists, and policy-makers.

Non-Governmental Organizations in World Politics: The Construction of Global Governance

The Report of the Panel of Eminent Persons on United Nations-Civil Society Relations was published in June 2004. It strongly endorsed the case for wider participation of civil society in all aspects of the UN's work, both at the headquarters and at the country level. However, the Panel members displayed little understanding of the existing NGO consultative arrangements. Many of its recommendations were impolitic or impractical. The report was intellectually incoherent because it embodied three competing theoretical frameworks: functionalism, neocorporatism, and democratic pluralism. The functionalist emphasis on expertise and the neocorporatist emphasis on engaging stakeholders cannot offer criteria for participation on an all-embracing democratic basis. Reform is needed to provide facilities and resources to enhance participation by marginalized groups. KEYWORDS: nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), United Nations, global civil society, Cardoso Report, functionalism, neocorporatism, legitimacy, participation. ********** Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been important participants in the United Nations system since 1945. They have access to intergovernmental meetings, present written statements, make speeches, and lobby for specific texts to be adopted. For the first twenty-five years, fewer than 400 NGOs were registered with the UN, and at any particular meeting only a few of these were active, mainly behind the scenes. During the 1970s, a series of major UN conferences stimulated a tremendous growth in the number of NGOs, the range of issues addressed, the types of activities undertaken, the amount of media coverage, and the extent of influence achieved. Now more than 3,000 NGOs are registered as having consultative status, and many more have some involvement in UN policymaking. However, NGOs are still predominantly limited to conferences and the subsidiary bodies of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). (1) They have no formal status within the General Assembly, the Security Council, or the international economic institutions. Many NGOs want their participation rights to be extended to these forums, but there is significant opposition to this among the UN's member governments. A second problem is the imbalance within the NGO community at the UN between the numbers of individuals from North America and northern Europe and the lower numbers from other parts of the world, particularly from Africa. In this article, I analyze the conclusions of a review, known as the Cardoso Report, that was intended to address these limitations to the consultative arrangements and to generate new ideas for civil society engagement with the UN. (2) There are three normative arguments for enhancing NGO participation in policymaking: the functionalist appeal for the use of expertise; the corporatist desire to involve the affected interests; and the pluralist belief in democratic policymaking. The three arguments are all clearly present in the Cardoso Report, but confusion results because they are not compatible with each other. The first two approaches represent a threat to the NGO participation rights that have been operating for the last sixty years at the United Nations. The only morally sound and politically feasible basis for legitimizing wider NGO participation in the UN system is the democratic claim for all voices to be heard in global policy debates. The goals of extending ECOSOC participation rights to other forums and of increased participation from civil society in developing countries will be analyzed below in this light. The Cardoso Panel on United Nations--Civil Society Relations The work of the Cardoso Panel must be seen as part of the reform process that Kofi Annan initiated as soon as he took office in January 1997. His first report to launch the reforms called for the United Nations "to engage civil society and make it a true partner in its work." (3) Progress was slow and many new ideas met with opposition. …

The Cardoso Report on the UN and Civil Society: Functionalism, Global Corporatism, or Global Democracy?

No account of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 and popularly known as the Earth Summit, would be complete without coverage of the activity of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). They generated debate with the government and in the media in many, perhaps most, countries. They took part in the preparatory work, wrote special reports, joined governmental delegations to Rio and ran a large forum in parallel to the official conference. UN officials have described the role of NGOs as having been ‘unprecedented‘, and that is the general view. It is less widely known that NGOs have been influential at UN conferences for decades and that they were in danger of having less access than normal to the Earth Summit. Far from the situation being ‘unprecedented’, the NGOs made such an impact at Rio because the weight of precedents made it impossible to restrict their numbers and their activities.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0260210500118455

Peter Willetts

Papers

From “Consultative Arrangements” to “Partnership”: The Changing Status of NGOs in Diplomacy at the UN

The conscience of the world : the influence of non-governmental organisations in the UN system

Non-Governmental Organizations in World Politics: The Construction of Global Governance

The Cardoso Report on the UN and Civil Society: Functionalism, Global Corporatism, or Global Democracy?

From Stockholm to Rio and beyond: the impact of the environmental movement on the United Nations consultative arrangements for NGOs