A Partnership of Convenience? Transnational Civil Society, International Organisations and Practices of Global Order

The opening up of international organisations (IOs) to the participation of civil society organisations (CSOs) is considered one of the most profound changes in global governance in recent decades (Tallberg et al. 2013; Sommerer and Tallberg 2017; Risse 2002; Jönsson and Tallber 2010; Avant, Finnemore, and Sell 2010). Since the 1950s, CSOs have continuously gained access to IOs in all policy areas, at all stages of the policy-making process, and in all world regions (Tallberg et al. 2013, 235). This trend accelerated in the 1990s, as massive protests and growing transnational activism led to a significant increase in civil society participation, thereby creating more avenues for access to IOs (Tallberg et al. 2013, 263; see also Gregoratti and Uhlin 2022; Scholte 2017). Today, civil society participation has become an integral part of global governance and takes numerous forms regarding extent, formalisation and institutionalisation, reflecting its deep integration into the architecture of global governance (Scholte 2004; Uhlin and Kalm 2015; Pallas and Uhlin 2014; Steffek, Kissling, and Nanz 2008).

From a normative perspective, the inclusion of transnational civil society in global governance has been commonly seen as having a potentially democratising effect on IOs and thus as a remedy for the democratic deficit of global governance (Bexell, Tallberg, and Uhlin 2010; Pallas 2013; Scholte 2011; Steffek, Kissling, and Nanz 2008; Tallberg and Uhlin 2011). As Pallas (2013, 9)notes, a “multiplicity of hopes” was attached to the democratising potential of transnational civil society. It has been argued that global civil society could give voice to marginalised groups and act as a “transmission belt” between global rule-makers and their constituencies (Nanz and Steffek 2004, 323). Moreover, civil society participation was said to enhance the accountability of IOs and contribute to the emergence of a global public sphere (Nanz and Steffek 2004). In short, CSO participation became essential for assessing the democratic qualities of IOs and global governance in general (Uhlin and Kalm 2015, 3). Capturing these normative expectations, Dingwerth (2014, 1126) speaks of an emerging norm of global democratic governance in academic discourse, which also informs global governance and the practices of IOs themselves (see also Dingwerth, Schmidtke, and Weise 2019; Grigorescu 2015).

These considerations are particularly relevant as today’s global governance is essentially carried out by IOs whose influence and competencies are expanding (Zürn, Binder, and Ecker-Ehrhardt 2012; Zürn 2018; Avant, Finnemore, and Sell 2010). Recent research shows that IO authority, i.e. the formal competence to make binding decisions and/or judgements, is at an unprecedented level (Zürn, Tokhi, and Binder 2021, 439). Moreover, as Kreuder-Sonnen and Rittberger (2023, 66) argue, this formal competence is likely to translate into a growing de facto exercise of authority, as it is, for example, reflected in the increasingly intrusive policies enacted by IOs such as the WTO or the IMF. In short, IOs are influential actors that not only undermine national sovereignty in various ways, but also exercise power through informal rules and practices. As central pillars of the existing global governance regime, IOs determine political problems, shape policy discourses, design and implement projects, as well as develop and interpret global rules and norms (Barnett and Finnemore 2004). The increasing political authority acquired by IOs has not only made them focal points of political protest and transnational activism (O’Brien et al. 2000; Gregoratti and Uhlin 2022; Volk 2018), but has also led to demands and efforts to democratise IOs through the involvement of CSOs (Steffek, Kissling, and Nanz 2008; Uhlin and Kalm 2015; Bäckstrand and Söderbaum 2022).

While the inclusion of CSOs is rightfully seen as increasing the representativity and public accountability of IOs (Holzscheiter 2016), most empirical research on the democratisation of global governance through civil society participation has yielded rather disappointing results (Hack 2020; Dany 2012; Steffek and Ehling 2008; Scholte 2012). Within the broader spectrum of transnational actors, transnational corporations and economically powerful actors, such as well-funded NGOs from the Global North, often enjoy greater access, wield disproportionate influence and tend to be overrepresented when engaging with IOs (Tallberg and Uhlin 2011, 216). Dingwerth (2014, 1125) succinctly summarises the core obstacle to CSO inclusion when he asserts that the main democratic deficit “does not lie in the fact that access [to IOs] and control over them is formally limited, but in the fact that it is informally restricted through a plethora of democracy relevant structural inequalities that pervade global politics”.

The findings show not only that the attempt at inclusion has effectively produced exclusions in many different ways, but also that basic requirements for political equality are currently not being met (Risse 2002; Scholte 2011; 2012; Steffek, Kissling, and Nanz 2008; Tallberg and Uhlin 2011). This includes the “unequal distribution of material resources as much as inclusion/exclusion resulting from formal systems of accreditation or the mastering of globally accepted terminologies of advocacy” (Holzscheiter 2016, 207). In a similar vein, Tallberg et al. (2013, 259) note that while “these patterns are well known to national and international officials, it is very rare that IOs explicitly attempt to address such biases through strategies designed to include marginalized groups”. Collectively, these studies show that formal inclusiveness does not ensure more equal participation (Pouliot and Thérien 2018, 168). Instead, CSOs engaging with IOs not only encounter a social realm that is highly stratified and characterised by persistent inequalities and power structures that benefit some CSOs more than others, but also tend to reproduce a global order of domination.

These findings reflect a current development in International Relations (IR) that places forms and dynamics of inequality and, with that, solidifying asymmetrical relations in global politics centre stage (Bially Mattern and Zarakol 2016; Fehl and Freistein 2020a; 2020b; Pouliot 2016; Viola 2020; Daase and Deitelhoff 2019; Zürn 2018). Fehl and Freistein (2020b, 286) draw attention to the key role that IOs play in “continuously reproducing, but also transforming various forms of global social inequalities and global patterns of social stratification”. IOs are not only agents of the reproduction and transformation of inequalities but also constitute sites where “state and non-state subjects struggle over social hierarchies (Fehl and Freistein 2020b, 287)”. In sum, IOs are conceptualised as “embedded in multiple, broader global inequalities of power, wealth, or prestige” and they “are criticized for perpetuating or reinforcing these inequalities” (Fehl and Freistein 2020a, 252). Existing proposals either conceive of global governance as an emerging order of domination (Daase and Deitelhoff 2019), a global governance system consisting of patterns of authority (Zürn 2018), or see global governance as characterised by the exercise of international public authority (Bogdandy and Venzke 2014) or the emergence of a new global governmentality (Neumann and Sending 2007; 2010).

Through this development, notions of hierarchy are replacing anarchy as the defining structural feature of global order and for the analysis of global politics (Bially Mattern and Zarakol 2016; Zarakol 2017; Lake 2009). Instead of the traditional assumption of anarchy beyond the nation state, international relations are characterised by manifold and partially overlapping relations of super- and subordination (Daase and Deitelhoff 2019; Anderl et al. 2019). In short, whether articulated in the vocabulary of hierarchy, rule, authority, or hegemony, all proposals conceive of global politics as characterised by unequal power relations and conflict. At the same time, the question of democratising global governance arises with increasing urgency if international relations can no longer be understood as a sovereignty-based construct of intergovernmental cooperation, but must be conceived as a process of the formation of a global order characterised by manifold unequal power relations that potentially limit national political self-determination and directly affect the lives of individuals (Volk 2022).

The aims of this special issue

This special issue explores the ambivalent role of civil society actors in global governance, focusing on the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion generated by the opening up and assesses their participation in terms of both normative gains and losses. In other words, our ambition is to analyse how the participation of civil society actors contributes to the (re)production, contestation and transformation of a global order of domination. To this end, we conceptualise the opening up of IOs to the participation of civil society actors as a set of social practices (Adler and Pouliot 2011a), and focus on the practices that reproduce, contest and potentially transform an emerging global order. In doing so, we connect the debates on the processes and character of global political order and research on the democratisation of global governance through civil society participation in a practice theoretical perspective.

Approaches that can be associated with the “practice turn” in International Relations (IR) privilege practices as the central unit of analysis (Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, and von Savigny 2001; Adler and Pouliot 2011a; Bueger and Gadinger 2018; Neumann 2002; Pouliot 2016; Pouliot and Thérien 2023; Sundaram and Thakur 2021). Drawing on a variety of social theories and theoretical vocabularies to understand the significance of the everyday of world politics, practice theorists aim to develop new empirical accounts of how global politics is “produced and performed” (Nair 2021, 1304). Practices are most commonly defined as socially meaningful patterns of action that are based on shared understanding and thus rely on situated knowledge (Adler et al. 2011b, 6). As Cooper and Pouliot (2015, 336) point out: “Although practice rests on established ways of doing things, this does not preclude deviation, improvisation and calculation but, rather, defines the scope of agency.” Consequently, a practice approach allows to account for both stability and change in world politics (Adler et al. 2011b, 18).

Since this special issue understands global order as constituted by practices, the concept of (global) order and the concept of practices are inextricably intertwined: we are interested in how practices are socially ordering the international realm (see Sondarjee this issue). Against this conceptual backdrop, we study the extent to which the order of global governance and its ordering practices produce and reproduce hierarchical relations and power asymmetries. To this end, we scrutinise “how micro level everyday governance practices shape macro-level structures of domination that constitute the global social order: global lines of difference, or systemic inequalities in global governance”.¹ The study of everyday global governance is thus a way of getting at structural ordering processes, like structural power in global governance and the making of inequalities. Practice theory provides us with an opportunity to rethink the emergence, but also the contestation of a global formation of order from a micro-level perspective, focusing on the agency of civil society actors without neglecting the constraints of underlying power structures. This perspective lays the groundwork for an inquiry into the potentials and pitfalls of democratising global governance within the global political order. As such, it not only takes seriously the various processes through which global order is reproduced and contested, but might also indicate how it can be transformed.

Our endeavour is based on two claims. First, we contend that if one wants to think meaningfully about the potentials and pitfalls of democratic governance beyond the state, attention has to turn both to “the analysis of existing social conditions […] and to questions about the social forces and mechanisms that could at least move global institutions in a more democratic direction” (Little and Macdonald 2013, 790). Put differently, there is a need to engage with analyses of the current global political order to determine the scope for potential democratic practices. The term democracy serves here as a normative marker for evaluating processes of inclusion and exclusion. It points to the duality of normative gains and losses that arise through the participation of transnational civil society actors and their ongoing struggle for change.

This change can take different forms and shapes, such as “access to spheres of power” (Sondarjee this issue), “voice opportunity” (Mace this issue) for those affected by the output of IOs that is evaluated in terms of nature and scope of representation and extent of participation. It may also mean the “creation of dialogical spaces” or to “co-create visions for transformation”.² Thinking of democratic governance beyond the state as constituted by democratic practices, that is, as a process rather than a condition, allows us to identify, analyse and appraise practices that point to potentially meaningful forms of democratic change that can already be materialised in the present without neglecting that these processes “unambiguously fall short of realizing a more comprehensive notion of fully formed ‘democracy’” (Little and Macdonald 2013, 794).

The second assertion is that practice theorising is particularly well-suited to this endeavour. Privileging practices as our foundational analytical category allows us to zoom in on the internal dynamics and everyday practices of civil society participation in global governance (Holthaus 2021). By adopting a practice perspective, we employ a thicker notion of civil society inclusion in global governance – one that goes beyond the notion of institutional access as defined by Tallberg et al. (2013, 8). This enables us to gain deeper insights into how global governance operates beyond norms and formal rules. Following Adler et al. (2011b, 6), we conceive of practices as the “dynamic material and ideational processes that enable structures to be stable or to evolve, and agents to reproduce or transform structures”. Practices thus offer “empirical entry points into the fabric of the commonsensical representation of the global social order, a key ordering process in global governance”.³ By focusing on practices as the central unit of analysis to examine the interaction between civil society and IOs, we explore the complex micro-level dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that the opening up generates. This, in turn, allows us to capture the various processes through which global order as a macro-level structure is reproduced, contested, and potentially transformed within IOs.

In summary, by approaching global governance through the lens of practice we explore, connect and translate micro-level interactions in IOs to macro-level structures of order and domination. We thus side with the recent turn to micropolitics in IR (Solomon and Steele 2017) suggesting that micro-level interactions “are not epiphenomenal to systemic forces but precede macropolitical phenomena and are the enclosures where macropolitics are ‘enacted, embodied, and embedded’” (Solomon and Steele 2017, 270). Taking this approach when examining the opening up of IOs provides the analytical tools for “zooming in on IOs’ internal dynamics, daily practices, and performances of the practice of CSO inclusion” (Holthaus 2021, 1).

Against this background the contributions in this special issue evolve around three different but entangled themes:

(1)	the production and reproduction of global order within IOs

Through which practices is social order produced and reproduced in IOs? What are existing practices of participation, representation and deliberation? Who has the authority to decide what is considered legitimate? How are lines of inclusion and exclusion constituted?

(2)	the contestation of global order within IOs

To what extent can we observe fractures within the existing order? What does the analysis of deviance, resistance, sabotage or subversion look like in IOs? Which norms, values, policies and practices are contested?

(3)	possibilities/potentials for the transformation of global order

What are the normative expectations that can be established and maintained against this background? How do we interpret and classify the practices of reproduction and rupture within the formation of global order in terms of democratic theory? How can we adapt the idea of democratic governance beyond the state to the current context of world politics? Does the project of democratising IOs have to be abandoned or are there traces of democratic practices and thus of a formation of a global democratic order?

The contributions to this special issue

This special issue assembles articles that all adopt a practice theoretical approach, conceiving of IOs as key sites for the negotiation of the current global order. All of the contributions explore bottom-up micro-level social processes that centre around the dialectics of inclusion and exclusion (see also Pouliot and Thérien 2018). Moreover, all contributions are based on extensive fieldwork on which their theoretical reflections and insights are based.

In her article “Coloniality of Epistemic Power in International Practices: NGO Inclusion in World Bank Policymaking”, Maïka Sondarjee uses the example of the involvement of civil society actors at the World Bank under the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers to show that inclusive practices have not overcome the coloniality of epistemic power in North–South relations. Sondarjee argues that the reason for this lies in the World Bank’s unwillingness to democratise the capacity to influence meaning negotiation. There are still informal rules and practices in place between World Bank staff and actors of the “transnational civil society”, which are characterised by patterns of colonial and racist devaluation.

Christiane Cromm’s article takes a similar line, rejecting the hopes of democratisation associated with the opening of IOs such as WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund to the participation of civil society organisations. In her article “Speaking the Right Language: Transnational Rule and Symbolic Power in Dialogue Forums”, Cromm argues that the inclusion and participation of civil society organisations must ultimately be seen as the perpetuation of global rule, re-enacted in and through the everyday practices of IO-CSO interactions in dialogue forums. Cromm shows how dominant actors use these forums to successfully impose meanings (classifications, categories, normative standards) as legitimate and make CSOs adapt to the discursive conditions set by the institutions.

Henrike Knappe’s contribution takes a slightly more optimistic view of the inclusion of civil society actors in international organisations and the hope of initiating change through political participation. In “Political representation practice in global environmental politics. Feminist representation theory and the claims of marginalized youth groups”, she shows that despite their relative powerlessness in international forums and in their interaction with IOs, youth-led environmental and climate groups have succeeded in appropriating the concept of intergenerational justice and have been successful in their claim to represent future generations politically. Knappe sheds light on the complicated interplay between marginalisation and representation in IOs and contributes to the conceptualisation of political representation as a discursive practice of shaping the future by marginalised actors in the context of global climate policy.

With MERCOSUR and the Organisation of American States, Gordon Mace examines two IOs from the Global South. In his article entitled “Democratic Practices in MERCOSUR and the OAS: What Space for Transnational Civil Society?”, he shows that a relative opening to civil society organisations has taken place in both regional organisations, albeit with greater persistence in the case of the OAS. Mace shows that civil society organisations were involved to a significant extent in the OAS and, until the mid-2000s, also in MERCOSUR, albeit essentially as observers, without having a clear influence on the political orientation of the two organisations. Access has been unequal in both regions and not without some form of exclusion for those CSOs that lack expertise and material resources. However, the most acute threat to the inclusion of CSOs in the regional organisations, according to Mace, is the resurgence of power struggles between member states. These have turned the organisations into arenas for ideological conflicts and the clash of national interests, which are detrimental to opening up to and granting civil society actors the opportunity to participate.

The conclusion, written by Leonie Holthaus and Anna Holzscheiter, takes a critical stance on central concepts (democracy, participation, CSO) as well as theoretical and research paradigmatic assumptions (practice theory, etc.) of the Special Issue. In their discussion of the values and limitations of practice theory, Holthaus and Holzscheiter point to the importance of capturing the entire spectrum of possibilities for action and interventions, especially in the case of those CSOs that have been diagnosed as marginalised. They warn against unquestioningly applying assumptions about the place, form and agents of power when analysing practices of global governance. Along the same lines, they also suggest rethinking the overly optimistic notion that CSOs are the quasi-natural drivers of democratisation in international organisations. Instead of reproducing an – also historically – implausible juxtaposition of IOs and CSOs in one’s own research, the aim should be to explore how the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion arise in the network of practices carried out by various actors.

Overall, this special issue offers insights into how practices of CSO participation reproduce, contest and to some extent transform global governance as an (emerging) global order of domination within IOs. The articles navigate a spectrum ranging from the successful integration of marginalised actors (Knappe), through instances where CSOs exert limited influence (Mace) and contexts that allow for some impact without altering structural inequalities (Sondarjee), to adaptation to institutional practices (Cromm). Altogether, the contributions suggest a recalibration of expectations towards the institutionalised participation of CSOs. The hopes once placed in civil society participation (and the normative quality associated with the opening up) have not been realised, and in some cases have even been inverted. Rather than acting as a catalyst for substantive change, participation frequently results in CSOs conforming to existing organisational practices. This tends to reinforce organisational logics, leading to their consolidation rather than fundamentally challenging or altering them. The research in this special issue therefore leads us to a more sceptical view of the transformative potential emanating from CSO participation. Our scepticism does not stem from an outright dismissal of the transformative capacities of CSOs, but from the observation that practices of participation often entrench CSOs within established logics, calling into question the extent to which they can disrupt and transform the existing global governance regime. This calls for a deeper examination of how practices of participation may inadvertently sustain and perpetuate the very structures they seek to change.

As we reflect on these findings, we may be at a crossroads for thinking about democratic governance beyond the state: Either we could acknowledge that CSO participation falls short of realising the promise of democratisation through CSO involvement and argue for abandoning the idea. Or, in contrast but complementary to research that has conceived of democratisation in terms of access, participation, deliberation and representation, we could propose a different way of thinking about democratic governance beyond the state. In this perspective, the democratisation of global governance might be neither a condition nor a long-term process leading to the establishment and consolidation of institutionalised democratic structures beyond the state. Instead, if we want to hold on to the project of democratising global governance, it may be more apt to conceive of democratisation not as aimed at something permanent and stable, but rather as a set of practices that sporadically and selectively disrupt prevailing organisational logics in different institutions and policy fields. These practices may not lead to solidifying democratic structures beyond the state, but through their re-enactment they may challenge the conditions of reproduction and articulate imaginaries for new practices of participation. In doing so, these practices can leave a lasting impression, provoke reflection and inscribe themselves in collective memory, thereby fostering the potential for transformation by challenging the status quo.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to all the participants of the “Democracy and Practices of Global Order” workshop held at Humboldt University, Berlin in July 2022, including Alice Chessé, Matthew Eagleton-Pierce, Leonie Holthaus, Anna Holzscheiter, Jutta Joachim, Henrike Knappe, Nele Kortendiek and Maïka Sondarjee, for inspiring discussions and stimulating critical debates on the “opening up” of IOs. At Global Society, we wish to thank Rubrick Biegon and Alexandre Christoyannopoulos for overseeing this project. Their support was indispensable to the realisation of this special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This publication is part of a project that has received funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), under the project “Participation and inequality ‘beyond the state’. An explorative study on the opportunities for participation of transnational civil society actors based on the example of institutions of global economic governance” [grant no 405222790].

Notes

1 We are thankful to Alice Chessé for this formulation.

2 We would like to thank Catia Gregoratti and Rachel Jordan for this helpful comment and formulation.

3 We are thankful to Alice Chessé for this formulation.