Doing Democracy Differently

Front matter

Henrike Knappe

Doing Democracy Differently

Political Practices and Transnational Civil Society

Table of Contents

Introduction. u.a a A E

Part | Conceptual Foundations of Democratic Practice in

1 Practice Theory: a New Perspective on

Introduction

The transnational! realm is composed of many different individual and collective actors such as complex international bureaucracies, national government representatives, social movement coalitions and multinational corporations, which are connected through more or less formalized relations and a myriad of interactions, practices and dynamics. This configuration of the transnational space evolved over recent decades. The growing number of intergovernmental forums and transnational networks, which often consist of representatives from national executive organs and mainly unelected private actors (Chilton 1995; Dingwerth 2006; Tallberg et al. 2008) marks a disempowerment of national parliaments and an empowerment of executive authorities, who are sitting together as ministers, prime ministers or presidents at the negotiation tables (see e.g. Zürn 2002). At the same time, civil society organizations have built transnational coalitions, increased their influence as voices in global discourses as well as in formal hearings of international organizations and consequently managed to diversify and strengthen their relationships in the transnational arena. In this space of multi-faceted transnational relations, a democratic “system” is hardly imaginable. However, democratic theorists and International Relations (IR) scholars attempted to approach transnational democracy as a normative concept as well as an empirical study field. While normative concepts focus on the institutional architecture of a possible democratic system (Held 1995; Archibugi et al. 1998; Bohman 2007), empirical research mainly concentrates on the transnational civil society which is supposed to democratize the governance of international organizations and the transnational sphere more generally (see Beisheim 2001, Scholte 2007, Friedrich 2008, Beauzamy 2010, Macdonald and Macdonald 2010, Steffek et al. 2010, Hahn and Holzscheiter 2013).

Global governance scholars have already claimed that the different institutional preconditions of the global order demand a distinct institutional architecture of global democracy (MacDonald and Macdonald 2010). Nation state democratic institutions could not democratically control the multiple forms of public power of different state and non-state actors (ibid.). While democratic

1 The term “transnational“ refers to “interactions that cross national boundaries at levels other than sovereign-to-sovereign”, whereas the term “international” is used to describe interactions between sovereign nation states. As a more general term “global” refers to any “transborder interactions that include (approximately) the entire world system” (Hale and Held 2011: 4-5).

institutions work in centralized and hierarchically organized nation state contexts, transnational relations are characterized by complex and overlapping spheres of influence and power. An institution-oriented democratic theory is thus hardly applicable in the context of transnational relations. Practices and processes rather than institutions form the sphere of transnational relations. Thus, this study attempts to shift the perspective from institutional ideas of democratic legitimation to a practice-oriented approach to democracy and thus contributes to the debate about the democratic legitimation of transnational civil society in global governance and new forms of democratic practice in transnational relations.

The aim of this study is to explore political practices inside transnational civil society networks and to investigate the potential of a transnational democracy in one of the main areas of transnational relations, namely civil society networks. Civil society coalitions and networks as one group of main actors in the transnational sphere, act in an unclear and fluid sphere with many “formally-constituted political bodies such as the United Nations” that are either opponents or collaboration partners of civil society organizations (Dryzek 1999: 45). As civil society actors have the potential to democratize transnational relations and at the same time need to be critically scrutinized from a normative democratic perspective, this study attempts to deepen the understanding of the chances and problems of a transnational democracy brought in by civil society actors.

Transnational Civil Society

Civil society shall be defined in empirical terms and divided into social movement organizations (SMOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Social movements are investigated as a phenomenon since the 1970’s, whereas non-governmental organizations and research about them has emerged only in the 1990’s, with the growing internationalization and institutionalization of social movements. Both types of organizations are members in the two transnational civil society networks that will be examined in this study. While social movement groups are seen as more grass-roots oriented and less institutionalized, non-governmental organizations are also called the “tamed” social movement groups (Kaldor 2003) because they are much more professionalized and institutionalized and often focus on lobby activities rather than on public protest (Della Porta and Caiani 2009). Different typologies of social movements were developed based on the assumptions that social movements are historical phenomena, and as such, they cannot be generalized in abstract terms without considering their historical contexts and developments. Furthermore, social movements are structured phenomena, which can be situated between an “amorphous ad-hoc collective” (Raschke 1985: 17) and a highly formalized organization. In criticizing the rationalist explanation of social movement mobilization recent studies show that cultural aspects and explanations from social psychology are also relevant for the mobilizing potential of “newest social movements” (Day 2005; Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta 2001; Jasper 2007).

Those characteristics already point to the peculiar practice of civil society, which is very contextualized, dynamic and embedded in diverse cultures and social environments. Transnational civil society organizations are often seen as the crucial mediators for transnational mobilization (Knappe and Lang 2014); they connect different public spheres and combine different local interests (Smith 2001:99). Transnational civil society networks are “bound together by shared values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of information and services” (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 2). Since the 1980’s NGOs have been interacting with each other in ever more networked and dense settings. Networks gave a more structured context in transnational relations. These networks are also understood as communicative structures and political spaces, where actors negotiate about the meanings of their “joint enterprise” (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 3). During the past two decades, transnational civil society actors have started to receive much more attention, contacts and influence in decision-making processes. The traditional role of civil society as a third sector between market and state, which organizes citizens’ interests and provides a space for public engagement, is no longer the only role of civil society. Members of transnational NGOs or SMOs have partly inherited the responsibilities of elected representatives in traditional democratic settings: they represent a certain constituency, campaign for their norms and interests, try to formulate and condense interests of their constituency, and finally sit at the decision-making table in order to decide public matters within a certain range. Many democratic theorists reacted to this development in conceptualizing new forms of democratic governance and political representation (Held 1995; Archibugi et al. 1998; Bohman 2007).

While transnational NGOs and SMOs are often seen as per se democratic, there are recent studies which show that civil society organizations do not always represent their constituency adequately (Hahn and Holzscheiter 2013) or do not even claim to be accountable to the beneficiaries of their political engagement (Steffek et al. 2010). Furthermore, it is criticized that transnational NGO campaigners “have drawn disproportionally from middle-aged adults, professional and propertied classes, men, Northern countries, whites, Christian heritages and urban dwellers.” (Scholte 2002: 296)

Now, with illiteracy rates in some parts of the world exceeding 80 percent, with Internet access virtually nonexistent in others, and with language skills, economic knowledge, and political education distributed extremely unevenly across the globe, realizing transparency and democracy in a meaningful normative sense is indeed a far-fetched dream. And what is more, hardly any global democracy activists are working to turn this particular dream into reality. (Dingwerth and Hanrieder 2010: 94)

Although transnational civil society seems to have a significant impact in the setting of rules and the promotion of norms, they often lack democratic legitimacy, e.g. the approval of beneficiaries. The normative claims made in this literature are that civil society actors from different backgrounds should participate equally in international institutions and transnational forums (Bendell 2006; Scholte 2007). Scholte argues that “If civil society is to make its full contribution to enabling public participation in global governance, then full recognition - and effective negotiation- of the world’s cultural diversity is required.” (Scholte 2002: 297). Equal participation is especially crucial in relation to inclusion of underrepresented groups and the accessibility of formation of opinions and decision-making for the general membership as well, and not only the active elite (Anheier and Themudo 2002). In a study on the participation patterns of Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Amnesty International in Great Britain, Jordan and Maloney (1997) state that the de facto decision-making in those campaign organizations can be at best termed ‘anticipatory oligarchy’?. Few very active members decide on behalf of the rest of the members anticipating their wishes and what is popular enough to gain support. Those democratic shortcomings in civil society networks become particularly apparent in the unequal participation of the different members and activists. Social inequalities for example are often rather reproduced than countered in civil society networks (Roth 2001; Tallberg et al. 2008; Beauzamy 2010). This leads among other things to the fact that global civil society engagement rests on avery narrow cultural base (Scholte 2002). This observed asymmetry in the transnational civil society is particularly virulent in the context of the global North-South divide and most often explained by the lack of capacities, such as financial resources, as well as language barriers and the campaigning focus on an affluent (Western) audience which is rather inclined to donate (Roth 2001). Particularly NGOs which are concerned with development and social change in the developing world are criticized for being disproportionately based in Western Europe and the US. This affects also the framing of topics and problems which differs between Northern and Southern NGOs, especially in issue areas such as human rights, gender politics or biodiversity issues. If there is no mobilizing potential in the Western world there will be no campaign about a certain topic (Roth 2001: 43). Furthermore, it is criticized that Northern NGOs pick Southern NGOs as coalition partners according to a suitable topic for donors and public attention and often it is not realistic that

2 This term refers to the “iron law of oligarchization” conceptualized by Robert Michels (1989).

Southern NGOs are able to avail themselves of transnational networks and get prominent according to the urgency or relevance of the issue. Due to its heterogeneity transnational civil society is easy to get co-opted in particular by donors who fund selected projects or organizations (Fisher 1997). Thus, there is a strong criticism of the observed asymmetry mainly between Northern and Southern groups in transnational civil society networks. This inequality is mostly criticized with regard to the outreach dimensions of transnational civil society, for example public campaigning priorities or lobby activities in specific international organizations.

Democratic Practices in the Transnational Realm

Departing from this state of debate, the present study identifies a theoretical and an empirical research gap. First, the theoretical conceptualization of democratic legitimation inside transnational civil society networks has been neglected in the literature on democracy beyond the nation state as well as in the broad NGO-literature. While an overall institutional framework for transnational democracy seems problematic due to the instable structural contexts of transnational relations, the examination of practices on a meso-level between individual action and overall structure can give better insights on how democracy can develop in temporary, fluid and complex transnational networks. Such networks neither function like nation states nor like a multilateral international system. They are conceptually grasped as self-organized fora of communication, interaction and decision-making between “interdependent but operationally autonomous actors” (Sgrensen and Torfing 2007: 9). Thus, these network structures are best examined in the light of process- and practice oriented approaches to democratic theory, which has not been done so far to a great extent. These approaches can be found in concepts of participatory democracy, deliberative democracy, and more recently even in representative theory. In this context, democracy is broadly defined as “empowered inclusion of those affected in collective decisions and actions” (Warren 2006: 386). The conceptual question of transnational democracy in network contexts is relevant, but under-theorized and will therefore be a major element in this study.

The theoretical interest in transnational network democracy is inspired by the debate on how transnational democracy, with its specific characteristics, could be envisioned (Held 1995, 2003; Keohane 2003; Dryzek 2006) and how already existing transnational relationships between different types of actors can be evaluated in terms of their democratic quality (Friedrich 2008; Tallberg et al. 2008; Näsström 2010; Dingwerth et al. 2011). In order to analytically grasp transnational network democracy, the concept of practice is introduced and used as an analytical frame to detect democracy that is practiced rather than institutionalized in transnational civil society networks. Practices shall be defined as shared courses of action that are co-constituted by actors and structure and can be modified by the agency of the actors (Giddens 1984). Substantive and routinized practices are not only empirically better observable in transnational civil society than institutionalized settings, they are at the same time an interesting and innovative conceptual perspective for normative democratic theory and the question of how to think of democracy in transnational relations. Thus, this study attempts to conceptualize democratic practice within the theoretical framework of the three strands of democratic theory (participatory, representative, and deliberative democracy) through the lens of practice theory.

Second, this study wants to fill an empirical research gap and open the black box of the most growing type of actors in global politics, namely transnational civil society networks. Although there are single studies of social movements observing the specific democratic practices of activists (Polletta 2002, 2006) and a huge strand of literature that refers to the outward dimension of transnational civil society (see e.g. Roth 2001, Scholte 2002, Tallberg et al. 2008; Beauzamy 2010, Dingwerth and Hanrieder 2010), the coalition building and participation within transnational civil society networks in view of democratic norms is under-researched. The empirical research interest of this study targets transnational civil society networks’ capabilities and potentials of democratic coordination in order to function as democratically legitimate actors in global politics. If they organized democratically internally, they can serve as an external control layer for international institutions and nation states by representing the underrepresented in the global system. Transnational activism and protest has been organized in network-like structures since it came into being (Tarrow 2006). Specifically the transnational civil society networks examined in this case study are very concerned with democratic procedures and principles. Thus, the practices of democracy that have emerged in these non-state network settings present an interesting and needed field of research to be examined. Empirical research thus far has focused on the democratic legitimation of transnational civil society with standards that conceptualize legitimation as external control that runs vertically either between civil society actors and international organizations, such as the United Nations (UN) or the World Trade Organization (WTO) (upwards), or between civil society actors and their constituency, namely the affected groups of individuals (downwards) (Steffek et al. 2010; Tallberg and Uhlin 2011). However, this research perspective neglects the internal and horizontal democratic legitimation that is at least equally important for transnational democracy. If transnational civil society networks function as external democratic control layers for international organizations or states, they should be themselves democratically legitimized. Otherwise, opaque and possibly corrupted interests could be the basis for a supposedly democratic legitimation of global politics.

Starting from these research gaps in a theoretical and empirical context, this study is structured in a threefold division: At first, the theoretical conceptualization of democracy as practice is done by combining practice theory with democratic concepts of participatory, representative and deliberative democracy. This first part is guided by the question of how democracy as practice can be theoretically conceptualized in transnational civil society networks. In a second step, the empirical analysis focuses on political practices in transnational civil society networks, thus opening the black box “civil society network” and exploring how participation, representation and deliberation practices form inside such networks. In a last step, the insights of the first two parts of the book are synthesized in a discussion targeting the question, in how far the reconstructed political practices are done in a democratic way.

The two cases of transnational civil society networks, namely Friends of the Earth (FoE) and the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), examined in this research study were chosen because they share the most common characteristics of transnational civil society networks and their relative power in global politics: Both are organized as networks of semi-autonomous member groups in different countries and have communicative power? through global campaigns as well as influence on international institutions or multinational companies‘. The member groups are independent organizations that also campaign in other contexts. Both networks claim to be grass-roots democratic. Despite their shared characteristics of transnational civil society networks, the two cases differ in their goals, internal relationships, targets, strategy and collective identity and thus provide a certain range of transnational civil society networks. The qualitative semi-structured interviews with activists of the two transnational civil society networks in Europe were analyzed and interpreted with a reconstructive method of text interpretation.

3 Following Habermas’ (1996) conceptualization of communicative power, many constructivist IR-scholars claim that NGOs can exert communicative power in convincing more powerful actors (most often states) to “change their minds” (Risse 2000: 19).

4 FoE has consultative status in different UN bodies; CCC successfully pressures many different companies to implement a code of conduct in bilateral negotiations. Besides this, both networks lead public campaigns that are widely taken up by the media. A detailed description of the influence and action repertoire of both networks is to be found in the case chapters (5.1 & 5.2).

Structure of the Book

The following part I of this book delineates the conceptual foundations of this study. After a general overview of the key concepts relevant for studying democratic practice in transnational civil society, relevant approaches of practice theory are outlined in order to conceptualize democracy as practice (chap.1). Practice theory can bridge the gap between normative democratic theory and empirical reality of transnational civil society networks. The two following chapters (chap. 2 and 3) review the relevant literature on participatory and deliberative democracy and democratic representation respectively. These two chapters are organized in two parts: (1) a general overview and discussion of relevant concepts and (2) a discussion on the applicability of these approaches to the context of transnational civil society networks.

Part II of this book is divided into four chapters. Chapter 4 outlines the methodology and research design of the empirical study. Chapter 5 is devoted to the exploration of the political practice in the two cases of Clean Clothes Campaign and Friends of the Earth. After the analytical heuristics for exploring the political practice of participation, representation and deliberation are presented, the cases are generally introduced (chapters 5.1 and 5.2). The results of the reconstructive qualitative analysis are then presented in chapter 5.3. After this descriptive part of the analysis, the critical discussion of the political practices is done in chapter 6. This chapter links back to the theoretical considerations of the first part of this book and thus combines normative democratic theory and the empirical results in a fruitful discussion about the democratic norms in political practices in transnational civil society networks. This book ends with general conclusions about the usefulness of the practice approach for transnational democracy and the implications of the findings for research on transnational civil society networks.