From the landmines campaign to the Seattle protests against the WTO to the World Commission on Dams, transnational networks of civil society groups are seizing an ever-greater voice in how governments run countries and how corporations do business. This volume brings together a multinational group of authors to help policy makers, scholars, business people, and activists themselves understand the profound issues raised. Contributors include Fredrik Galtung, Rebecca Johnson, Sanjeev Khagram, Chetan Kumar, Motoko Mekata, Thomas Risse, P.J. Simmons, and Yahya Dehqanzada.

Transnational civil society is often seen as an important contributor to the democratization of global governance. In their engagement with the World Bank, however, transnational civil society organizations prioritize pre-existing mission over responsiveness to claimed stakeholders and undercut the authority of developing country governments.

In a world that is increasingly disillusioned with formal politics, people are no longer prepared to wait for governments and international institutions to act on human rights concerns. This book identifies activism as a key means of realizing human rights and as a new form of politics. Fighting for Human Rights documents and compares successful high profile campaigns to cancel debt in the developing world, ban landmines and set up the International Criminal Court as well as emerging campaigns that focus on HIV/AIDS, environmental justice, democratization and blood diamonds.

For many commentators, global civil society is revolutionising our approach to global politics, as new non-state-based and border-free expressions of political community challenge territorial sovereignty as the exclusive basis for political community and identity. This challenge 'from below' to the nation-state system is increasingly seen as promising nothing less than a reconstruction, or a re-imagination, of world politics itself. Whether in terms of the democratisation of the institutions of global governance, the spread of human rights across the world, or the emergence of a global citizenry in a worldwide public sphere, global civil society is understood by many to provide the agency necessary for these hoped-for transformations. Global Civil Society asks whether this idea is such a qualitatively new phenomenon after all; whether the transformation of the nation-state system is actually within its reach; and what some of the drawbacks might be.

A comprehensive look at the global movements that are transforming international relations.

This book discusses the penetration, growth and operation of transnational civil society (TCS) in China. It explores impacts on the incremental development of China's political pluralism, mainly through exploring the influences of the leading TCS actors on the country's bottom-up and self-governing activist NGOs that have sprung up spontaneously, in terms of capacities, strategies, leadership and political outlook, as a result of complex interactions between the two sectors.

Civil Society: Ideas, Interpretations, Transgressions is essential to learning about the place and importance of civil society in creating and maintaining a liberal democracy. Edyta B. Pietrzak takes us on a journey of interpretation, addressing the critical role the idea of a civil society has for our world and how it has evolved over time. She uncovers the meanings of theories and clarifies ways of thinking that are sensitive to peculiarities, intermittences, contrasts, or unique things. Part I introduces the theory and key terms. What is the public sphere and how can it be understood? Is it synonymous with civil society or does it only establish its area of activity? It aims to illustrate how social life has changed over centuries and its basic components have been experienced and interpreted in various ways. Part II represents a collection of interpretations and approaches to the idea of civil society. Pietrzak begins with the traditional Republican interpretation, continues with liberal, Hegelian, sociological, and historical‐materialistic interpretations, and concludes with modern communitarian and neo‐liberal concepts. Part III reminds us that civil society is not an abstract concept, nor does it exist in a vacuum or out of context. When describing the process of change and transformation in civil society, reference must be made to transgressions. Here we learn about issues such as transnational civil society, citizenship and diversity, feminist citizenship, and civil society in the era of the Anthropocene, to name a few.

John Keane, a leading scholar of political theory, tracks the recent development of a big idea with fresh potency - global civil society. In this timely book, Keane explores the contradictory forces currently nurturing or threatening its growth, and he shows how talk of global civil society implies a political vision of a less violent world, founded on legally sanctioned power-sharing arrangements among different and intermingling forms of socio-economic life. Keane's reflections are pitted against the widespread feeling that the world is both too complex and too violent to deserve serious reflection. His account borrows from various scholarly disciplines, including political science and international relations, to challenge the silence and confusion within much of contemporary literature on globalisation and global governance. Against fears of terrorism, rising tides of xenophobia, and loose talk of 'anti-globalisation', the defence of global civil society mounted here implies the need for new democratic ways of living.

This edited volume addresses how transnational interactions among civil society actors in Asia and its sub-regions are helping to strengthen common democratic values and transform dominant processes of policymaking and corporate capitalism in the region. The contributors conceive of transnational civil society networks as constructive vehicles for both informing and persuading governments and businesses to adopt, modify, or abandon certain policies or positions. This volume investigates the role of such networks through a range of interdisciplinary approaches, bringing together case studies on Asian transnationalism from South, Southeast, and Northeast Asia across four key themes: local transformations and connections, diaspora politics, cross-regional initiatives and networks, and global actors and influences. Chapters demonstrate how transnational civil society is connecting people in local communities across Asia, in parallel to ongoing tensions between nation-states and civil society. By highlighting the grassroots regionalization emerging from ever-intensifying information exchange between civil society actors across borders – as well as concrete transnational initiatives uniting actors across Asia – the volume advances the intellectual mandate of redefining ‘Asia’ as a dynamic and interconnected formation. Transnational Civil Society in Asia will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, politics and Asian studies more broadly.