Civil Society and the Problem of Global Democracy

Abstract

This essay criticizes the increasingly popular idea that global civil society (GCS) represents a model or framework for democracy in the age of globalization. After briefly reviewing the arguments supporting this democratic conceptualization of GCS, I distinguish two models of civil society at the state level on which these claims rest and show that neither successfully survives transposition to the supranational setting. In both cases the purported democratic functions and effects of civil society depend on assumptions that do not hold globally. Despite the important achievements of many global actors and movements, I conclude, GCS does not adequately conceptualize global democracy or democratization. This failure points to broader epistemological problems in how we theorize global democracy and politics.