1
Power Shift

• Jessica Matthews, Ch. 34, pp. 287-293. Excerpted
  from Matthews, Power Shift, Foreign Affairs,
  761, 1997, pp. 50-66.

2
Key questions

• What is the nature of this power shift?
• and its causes/effects?
• Advantages/disadvantages of NGOs providing
  services once the responsibility of states?
• Is technology creating a global civil society?
• Does the influence of intl NGOs constitute
• neo-colonialism?
• Are intl NGO workers the new missionaries?
• Are they members of the TCC (transnational
  capitalist class)?
• What does the rise of NGOs mean for democracy?
• Key terms civil society, NGOs, global civil
  society

3
The Rise of Global Civil Society

• End of Cold War brought a redistribution of power
  among states, markets, and civil society
• National govts are sharing powers incl
  political, social security roles at core of
  sovereignty w/ businesses, intl organizations,
  and range of citizens groups, known as NGOs
• Govts are not simply losing autonomy in a
  globalizing economy

4
and the Decline of States

• Absolutes of Westphalian system territorially
  fixed states a single, secular authority
  governing each territory and representing it
  outside its borders no authority above states
  are all dissolving
• Intl standards of conduct are gradually
  beginning to override claims of national
  sovereignty

5
As states weaken, nonstate actors acquire more
power globally

• New info/communication technologies are most
  powerful engine in the relative decline of states
  and rise of nonstate actors (e.g., NGOs, as well
  as TNCs, criminal and terrorist networks, etc.)
• They disrupt hierarchies, spread power among more
  people and groups
• But they also have the potential to create new
  divisions, separating ordinary people from elites
  with wealth education to command technologys
  power

6
The Network Model

• In networks, individuals or groups link for joint
  action without building a physical or formal
  institutional presence
• Networks have no person at the top and no center
• Networks have multiple nodes where collections of
  individuals/groups interact for different
  purposes, e.g., businesses, ethnic groups, crime
  cartels
• Govts, by contrast, are quintessential
  hierarchies

7
Global Civil Society?

• civil society arena of social activity outside
  of state family
• commonly understood to be composed of the range
  of voluntary organizations that operate on a
  not-for-profit basis, outside the market
• NGOs are key actors
• NGO (nongovernmental organization) voluntary
  organization not part of the local, state, or
  federal government that is established for a
  particular cause or interest, e.g., human rights,
  the environment, consumer protection, etc. also
  known as "citizen groups
• global civil society refers to voluntary social
  organization at the global level, in
  international institutions such as the UN, the
  IMF/World Bank, the World Social Forum, etc. it
  is composed of the network of nongovernmental
  organizations that focus on international issues
  (INGOs, international nongovernmental
  organizations) or cooperate and collaborate
  across borders

8
Is global civil society a new Babel or a new
global elite?

• New technologies and forms of organization may
  promote "political and social fragmentation by
  enabling more and more identities and interests
  scattered around the globe to coalesce and
  thrive
• Citizens groups with transnational
  interests/identities just like the super-rich
  frequently have more in common with counterparts
  in other countries, industrialized or developing,
  than with countrymen

9
The Boomerang Pattern

• Researchers studying transnational advocacy
  networks that link NGOs across borders highlight
  a new pattern of political change
• boomerang pattern State A blocks redress to
  organizations within it they activate network,
  whose members pressure their own states and (if
  relevant) a 3rd-party organization, which in turn
  pressure State A

10
Advantages of NGOs

• In many countries they deliver services that
  faltering govts can no longer manage
• NGOs are nimble, quicker to respond to new
  demands and opportunities
• Their loyalties and orientation are better
  matched than those of govts to problems that
  demand transnational solutions
• In closed, undemocratic regimes, local NGOs can
  leverage transnational links to pressure their
  govts

11
Disadvantages of NGOs

• NGOs are special interests, accountable to their
  funders
• NGOs have limited capacity for large-scale
  projects, and as they grow, the need to sustain
  growing budgets can compromise their independence
• The growth of NGOs may be used to justify
  government downsizing, further undermining state
  authority and capacity
• There are roles that only the state can perform
• e.g., employment security, environmental
  protection, consumer protection, health and
  safety, national security

12
Democracy

• Democracy is a certain class of relations between
  states and citizens
• A regime is democratic to the degree that
  political relations between state citizens
  feature broad, equal, protected and mutually
  binding consultation
• broad equal citizenship and protected
  consultation
• (Tilly, Democracy, 2007)
• What happens to mutually binding consultation in
  a state dominated by NGOs?
• Accountability problem

13
Haiti Is culture the cause of underdevelopment?

• David Brooks, The Underlying Tragedy, NYT,
  1/14/2010
• it is time to put the thorny issue of culture
  at the center of efforts to tackle global
  poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a
  history of oppression, slavery and colonialism.
  But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing
  pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless
  dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But
  so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in
  much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican
  Republic share the same island and the same basic
  environment, yet the border between the two
  societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on
  earth with trees and progress on one side, and
  deforestation and poverty and early death on the
  other.
• As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book
  The Central Liberal Truth, Haiti, like most of
  the worlds poorest nations, suffers from a
  complex web of progress-resistant cultural
  influences. There is the influence of the voodoo
  religion, which spreads the message that life is
  capricious and planning futile. There are high
  levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is
  often not internalized. Child-rearing practices
  often involve neglect in the early years and
  harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
• Were all supposed to politely respect each
  others cultures. But some cultures are more
  progress-resistant than others, and a horrible
  tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

14
Or the history of colonialism?

• Jesse Lemisch, George Clooneys Haiti and
  Beyond, New Politics, on the Haiti telethon
• But, in most of the show, politics were
  verboten, as was anything about the history of
  the place.
• This left the audience to think that a terrible
  natural disaster had befallen Haiti, but ignorant
  of the
• country's origins in a successful slave rebellion
  (with US support for French efforts to crush it)
  more
• than a century of French draining the economy for
  the money value of the slaves they had lost
• 19 years of occupation by the US Marines US
  complicity with the Duvaliers after earlier
  support,
• exiling of Jean-Bertrand Aristide on a US plane
  the banning of the left party, Lavalas the
  crimes
• committed against the Haitian economy by
  neoliberal economics via such institutions as the
  IMF
• (which, amidst the earthquake announced a wage
  freeze for public employees in Haiti.).
• This all added up to an unnatural disaster
  enormous poverty, flight from the countryside to
  the city
• as the result of the destruction of Haitian
  agriculture by US dumping (rice) and the promise
  of low
• wage manufacturing jobs (which didn't
  materialize) once crowded in the city, they put
  anything
• over their heads that they could, and of course
  these poor structures easily collapsed. Cutting
  down
• trees to make charcoal was one of the few ways of
  getting money, and that produced deforestation
• which produced floods. It denies history to see
  the US as free of responsibility for these
  things.
• Brooks has all but told us that they are a nation
  of welfare queens. http//www.newpol.org/node/2
  05