Context, Role, and Legitimacy

Abstract

Although TCS is frequently heralded as a key component of more democratic global governance, a noticeable gap has been observed between the hoped-for impacts of TCS as a normative construct and the real-world impacts of the organizations of which it is composed. A number of researchers have called into question civil society organizations’ motivations, representivity, and democratic credentials (Bowden 2006; Cooley and Ron 2002; Foley and Edwards 1996; Nelson 1997b). Even among those authors that hold that civil society can contribute positively towards global governance, one finds a variety of competing and sometimes contradictory prescriptions for judging the democratic contributions of individual TCSOs or TCS as a whole.

Portions of this chapter were first published in Pallas, Christopher L. 2010. Revolutionary, Advocate, Agent, or Authority: Context-based Assessment of Democratic Legitimacy in Transnational Civil Society. Ethics and Global Politics, 3(3): 217–238.