Globalizing Civil Society: Interpreting International NGOs in Central America

Abstract

The globalization of capital in the years since the Second World War represents a profound challenge to the dominant world order. The implications of globalization for production relations and the role of the state are subjects of considerable debate. The theoretical tools for understanding the impact of globalization on the structure of world order and the relationship between the individual, groups and the world system is, however, still underdeveloped. Recently emerging literature on a ‘global civil society’ represents one way of conceptualizing current transformations of world order. Most importantly, however, this approach permits the reinsertion of questions of agency and democracy into the study of international political economy which, at times, is overwhelmed by the seemingly implacable forces of capitalist economic expansion and the consequent bypassing of the authority of the nation state, the primary focus of most democratic political action in the modern world.