Disciplining anti-poverty: The Global Call to Action against Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals in Malawi (original) (raw)
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Globalizations, 2011
This article investigates a significant actor within global civil society: the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP). GCAP claims to be the world's largest civil society alliance, and was the umbrella coalition behind the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign, as well as the annual Stand Up against Poverty mobilisations. GCAP is constituted by autonomous non-governmental organisation coalitions in over 100 countries.Utilising an actor-network approach, the article finds that while GCAP at a global level seeks to mobilise its members into radical structural critiques of global poverty, other discursive and ontological arrangements exist within the national coalitions. Drawing on interviews, group observation and documentary analysis with the GCAP national coalition in Malawi, the article explores the power of the UN Millennium Development Goals to construct and monitor consenting subjects where notions of social justice become discursively articulated with key neo-liberal tenets regarding the individualisation and responsibilisation of poverty.Este artículo investiga a un actor importante dentro de la sociedad civil global: el ‘Llamado global a la acción contra la pobreza’ (GCAP, por sus siglas en inglés). La GCAP se declara como la mayor alianza de la sociedad civil del mundo, y fue la red de la coalición que actuó en representación de la campaña ‘Hagamos que la pobreza pase a la historia’ en el 2005 y también en las movilizaciones anuales de la campaña ‘Levántate contra la pobreza’. La GCAP está constituida por coaliciones de organizaciones no gubernamentales autónomas en más de 100 países.Con un enfoque en la red social como actor, el artículo encuentra que mientras la GCAP a un nivel global, busca movilizar a sus miembros dentro de críticas estructuras radicales sobre la pobreza global, existen otros acuerdos discursivos y ontológicos dentro de las coaliciones nacionales. Con base en entrevistas, observación de grupos y análisis de documentales con la coalición nacional GCAP en Malawi, el artículo explora el poder de la campaña de los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio de las Naciones Unidas para construir y monitorear temas acordes, en donde las nociones de justicia social se vuelvan discursivamente articuladas con dogmas neoliberales claves, con respecto a la individualización y responsabilidad de la pobreza.本文研究全球公民社会中的一个重要行为者，即全球消除贫困联盟（GCAP）。全球消除贫困联盟声称是全球最大的公民社会联盟，并且是2005年“让贫困成为历史”运动以及每年一度“站起来反对贫困”大会背后的保护伞联盟。全球贫困联盟是由100多个国家的自治非政府组织联合组成的。运用行为体—网络路径，本文发现，当全球层面上的全球消除贫困联盟寻求动员其成员加入对全球贫困激进的结构性批判时，其他的话语和本体论筹划则存在于国家联盟之内。利用对马拉维GCAP全国联盟的采访、团队观察和文档分析，本文探讨了联合国千年发展目标的构建和监督同意主体的力量，此处社会正义概念在话语上被新自由主义关于贫困的个人化和责任化的关键信条表达着。
In Whose Name Are You Speaking? The Marginalization of the Poor in Global Civil Society
Global Policy, 2021
Global civil society is often uncritically seen as a democratic force in global governance. Civil society organizations claim to hold states and intergovernmental institutions accountable and channel the voices of the world's poorest people in policy making. Yet to what extent do they succeed in performing that role? This article assesses the representation of the poor in global civil society, with a focus on the negotiations of the Sustainable Development Goals, a process widely hailed as one of the most democratic ever organized by the United Nations. We first analyse how the poor and their local representatives are procedurally included in global civil society (procedural representation). We then quantitatively assess the actual representation of civil society organizations from the world's poorest countries in the civil society hearings of the SDG negotiations, where civil society was invited to speak on behalf of their constituencies (geographical representation). Finally, we evaluate the extent to which global civil society representatives who claim to speak on behalf of the poor legitimately represented the interests of these people (discursive representation). We found that global civil society fails to fully represent the poor on procedural, geographical and discursive terms, and eventually perpetuates postcolonial injustices in global sustainability governance. Policy Implications • In international institutions, civil society representation from the Global South must be drastically increased. • This requires, among others, global funding mechanisms to enable participation of, and prior regional consultation among, Global South constituencies. • Operational rules of global civil society networks must be radically transformed to allow for transparent, fair, and meaningful representation by organizations based in the Global South. • The United Nations and other agencies must ensure through clear rules and supportive funding mechanisms that civil society participation is geographically balanced. As an example, the majority of speaking slots for civil society in negotiations must be reserved for organizations based in the Global South.
Civil Society on Global Governance: Facing Up to Divergent Analysis, Strategy, and Tactics
VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 2006
This paper considers three different conceptualizations-three civil society perspectives-on global-scale economics and geopolitics, from standpoints that can be termed 'global justice movements', 'Third World nationalism' and the 'Post-Washington Consensus'. These three perspectives on the fusion of neoliberal economics and imperialist politics sometimes converge, but often are in conflict. From different analyses flow different political strategies, concrete campaigning tactics, and varying choices of allies. Much transnational social movement literature is bound up in the subjects' norms, institutions, values, logistics and organizational development (as well as issues and advocacy-as in the case of Millennium Development Goal and anti-poverty campaigning), and very little takes ideology and analysis seriously. The advent of the World Social Forum (WSF)-and sharp debates about its merits and capacities-gave rise to new literatures that put transnational networking at the centre of the analysis. However, since so many transnational networks have grown and prospered not through programmatic integration such as the WSF would suggest, but rather through sectoral processes, ideological analysis is that much more complicated. (There is no grand WSF political programme to consider, nor is there likely ever to be one generated through consensus within the WSF.) However, because neoliberalism and imperialism are the two economic and political sides of the same coin, it is logical to analyse the nature of analysis (and then strategies, tactics and alliances) that emanate from various oppositional forces.
The Role of Global Civil Society Advocacy in Advancing Global Governance
2020
Global civil societies (GCSs), which are also known as the non-governmental and non-profit global organisation, are foundational entities of transnational global advocacy networks where professional and nonprofessional gather to advocate and campaign towards ensuring global action for an issue of global concern. GCSs serve as a force of political change and democracy in global governance by reflecting people’s power in global politics and ensuring the application of democratic norms and values in global politics in an effort to address the problems of humanity with a system of democracy beyond the state (i.e. cosmopolitan democracy). They set global agendas for international debate based on information that legitimises their actions, and then influence states, IOs and ROs policy substances and institutional procedures that shape state’s behaviour in local and global politics. They also fill the gap that the non-binding nature of the global system of governance has resulted in terms of ensuring the full implementation of international laws mostly as it relates to human rights and human welfare within nation-states.