Democratic Credentials or Bridging Mechanisms? Constituents, Representatives, and the Dual Politics of Democratic Representation

Abstract

In the past decade, civil society organizations (CSOs) have gained great prominence at all levels of governance. At the local level, NGOs and other types of advocacy organizations are now an established presence in the domestic field of democratic politics and have expanded upon the traditional understanding of lobbying to include this new group of public interests organizations. At the global and regional levels, advocacy networks play a very active role promoting campaigns and rallying transnational constituencies around different causes, ranging from human rights to environmental issues. As they gain greater visibility and assume new responsibilities, some concerns have been raised around the democratic credentials of CSOs. It is thus common to hear objections from elected officials, corporations, or governments concerning the unrepresentative and unaccountable status of NGOs, complaints about NGOs’ freedom from scrutiny through formal accountability mechanisms, which other organizations are subject to, as well as skepticism about the alleged contributions that non-governmental actors truly make to the agenda of democratization of domestic and global institutions. Thus the issue of the democratic credentials of different actors emerges as a relevant question both at the domestic and global level.