The interaction between corporations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has become an important topic in the debate about corporate social responsibility (CSR). Yet, unlike the vast majority of academic work on this topic, this book explicitly focuses on clarifying the role of NGOs, not of corporations, in this context. Based on the notion of NGOs as political actors it argues that NGOs suffer from a multiple legitimacy deficit: they are representatives of civil society without being elected; the legitimacy of the claims they raise is often controversial; and there are often doubts regarding the legitimacy of the behaviour they exhibit in putting forward their claims. Set against an extended sphere of political action in the postnational constellation this book argues that the political model of deliberative democracy provides a meaningful conceptualization of NGOs as legitimate partners of corporations and it develops a conceptual framework that specifically allows distinguishing legitimate partner NGOs from two related actor types with whom they share certain characteristics but who differ with respect to their legitimacy. These related actor types are interest groups on the one hand and activists on the other hand. In conclusion it argues that a focus on the behaviour of NGOs is most meaningful for distinguishing them from interest groups and activists.

Do international institutions actually contribute to building a lasting peace? Counter-examples and criticisms abound: failures and submissiveness to the interests of the most powerful states. As diplomats, practitioners with these institutions, and experts in their fields, the contributors to this volume underline the strengths and weaknesses that these international actors have created and will not abandon. Their research and investigations reveal that despite the fact that it is possible to wage a war against the will of international institutions, it has become almost impossible to make peace without them. The issues examined--collective security, disarmament, mediation, peace building, human security, reduction of poverty and inequalities, international criminal justice, and multilateralism--make this edited volume a key reference work on international organizations.

Adams surveys the impact of transnational organizations and NGOs on Latin American politics since 1990. The transition from military to civilian rule in Latin American countries has benefited local progressive forces, but resilient remnants favoring the past's authoritarian politics have compelled organizations like the UN, IMF, OAS, and World Bank to engage in various campaigns to deepen democratic institutions and norms. Adams argues that to understand current political transformations in the region, one must consider the existing role of external organizations. Latin America is offered as a prime example of the increased influence transnational authorities have over political decisions that had long been the exclusive prerogative of national governments. Beginning with the Latin American experience, Adams reviews the contemporary character of power and politics in the area, outlining how democratic transitions have been limited. UN human rights and reform initiatives are considered. Adams scrutinizes the work of the World Bank, the IMF, and the Inter-American Development Bank to modernize public administration, strengthen political institutions, enhance transparency and accountability, and fortify civil society. He also examines the work and impact and the Organization of American States and various global citizens groups.

"Popular struggles in the global south suggest the need for the development of new and politically enabling categories of analysis, and new ways of understanding contemporary social movements. This book shows how social movements in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East politicize development in an age of neoliberal hegemony"--

The development and use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has been a contentious topic for the last three decades. While there have been a number of social science analyses of the issues, this is the first book to assess the role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in the debate at such a wide geographic scale. The various positions, for and against GMOs, particularly with regard to transgenic crops, articulated by NGOs in the debate are dissected, classified and juxtaposed to corresponding campaigns. These are discussed in the context of key conceptual paradigms, including nature fundamentalism and the organic movement, post-colonialism, food sovereignty, anti-globalisation, sustainability and feminism. The book also analyses how NGOs interpret the debate and the persuasive communication tactics they use. This provides greater understanding of the complexity of negotiations in the debate and explains its specific features such as its global scope and difficulty in finding compromises. The author assesses the long-term interests of various participants and changes in perceptions of science and in public communication as a result. Examples of major NGOs such as Greenpeace, Oxfam and WWF are included, but the author also provides new research into the role of NGOs in Russia.

Who should provide food, and through what relationships? Whose livelihoods should be protected? For over 20 years the peasant farmers of La Via Campesina have been engaged in the fight against injustice, hunger and poverty under the banner of food sovereignty, 'the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems'. They campaign for healthy, sustainable alternatives to an industrial food system controlled by agribusiness companies and the architects of unfair trade agreements. This book draws on grounded case studies of agrarian movements in the Americas and Europe as exemplars of a 'power shift,' as local opposition scales up to global action in an effort to wrest control of our food away from transnational corporations and back to communities.

Japan was shaken by the 'double disaster' of earthquake and sarin gas attack in 1995, and in 2011 it was hit once again by the 'triple disaster' of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. This international, multi-disciplinary group of scholars examines the state and societal responses to the disasters and social crisis.

Geopolitical shifts, increasing demands for accountability, and growing competition have been driving the need for change within transnational nongovernmental organizations (TNGOs). As the world has changed and TNGOs' ambitions have expanded, the roles of TNGOs have shifted and their work has become more complex. To remain effective, legitimate, and relevant in the future necessitates organizational changes, but many TNGOs have been slow to adapt. As a result, the sector's rhetoric of sustainable impact and social transformation has far outpaced the reality of TNGOs' more limited abilities to deliver on their promises. Between Power and Irrelevance openly explores why this gap between rhetoric and reality exists and what TNGOs can do individually and collectively to close it. George E. Mitchell, Hans Peter Schmitz, and Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken argue that TNGOs need to change the fundamental conditions under which they operate by bringing their own "forms and norms" into better alignment with their ambitions and strategies. This book offers accessible, future-oriented analyses and lessons-learned to assist practitioners and other stakeholders in formulating and implementing organizational changes. Drawing upon a variety of perspectives, including hundreds of interviews with TNGO leaders, firsthand involvement in major organizational change processes in leading TNGOs, and numerous workshops, training institutes, consultancies, and research projects, the book examines how to adapt TNGOs for the future.

Is 'development' the answer for positive social change or a cynical western strategy for perpetuating inequality? Moving beyond an increasingly entrenched debate about the role of NGOs, this book reveals the practices and social relations through which ideas of development are concretely enacted.

Over the past decade, international human rights organisations and think tanks have expressed a growing concern that the space of civil society organisations around the world is under pressure. This book examines the pressures experienced by NGOs in four partial democracies: Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia and the Philippines.

In the first detailed study of how a major environmental NGO works transnationally, Brian Doherty and Timothy Doyle examine the relationships between the 74 national organizations of Friends of the Earth International. Drawing from a rich mix of survey data, interviews, archival sources and access to internal meetings, they show how FoEI has developed a distinctive international environmentalism, which allows for the differences in context between regions and across the North-South divide. Following the expansion of FoEI into the global South, the challenges it then faced over questions of ideology, organization and campaign strategy are examined over a twenty year period. The book demonstrates the development of an FoEI tradition of solidarity which accounts for its ability to overcome internal crises and pursue joint campaigns despite conflicting understandings of politics between its national organizations.

The Arab Spring put non-governmental public action centre-stage in the drive for greater social justice. Governments, politicians and international institutions increasingly court non-governmental public actors, engaging them in policy dialogue, inviting them to participate in the delivery of social services, and looking to them to re-invigorate democratic politics. This unique collection explores the different organizational forms, strategies and tactics that activists adopt to pursue social justice goals and analyses how histories of resistance impinge on contemporary activism in both positive and negative ways. The authors examine how established corporatist trades unions struggle to reform as new forms of labour resistance challenge their legitimacy and proximity to government. They analyse how non-governmental public actors negotiate various 'civil society dilemmas' that emerge in the new spaces for collaboration opened up by government, focusing particularly on threats to their values, autonomy and legitimacy. They also explore the efforts of non-governmental public actors to secure greater justice in the sphere of production and distribution, be that through co-operatives or through consumer rights activism around access to essential drugs.

Distinctions between the public and private have fashioned modern political life, as well as social theory. Globalization challenges these distinctions and sets the stage for new research questions about the dynamics of politics. Based on a constructivist framework, and drawing on original empirical research conducted in local, national and transnational settings, this volume explores the transformation of political practices across the public and private, as well as the domestic and foreign, and examines the role of a mediated global environment in shaping contemporary politics.

This book examines how international aid donors and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) can assist countries in the Asia-Pacific region achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The book examines the progress countries have made towards the MDGs and highlights the need to tailor the goals to individual country circumstances.

In the waning years of the Cold War, the United States and China began to cautiously engage in cultural, educational, and policy exchanges, which in turn strengthened new security and economic ties. These links have helped shape the most important bilateral relationship in the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This book explores the dynamics of cultural exchange through an in-depth historical investigation of three organizations at the forefront of U.S.-China non-governmental relations: the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies, the National Committee on United States-China Relations, and The 1990 Institute. Norton Wheeler reveals the impact of American non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on education, environment, fiscal policy, and civil society in contemporary China. In turn, this book illuminates the important role that NGOs play in complementing formal diplomacy and presents a model of society-to-society relations that moves beyond old debates over cultural imperialism. Finally, the book highlights the increasingly significant role of Chinese Americans as bridges between the two societies. Based on extensive archival research and interviews with leading American and Chinese figures, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics and history, international relations and transnational NGOs.

This book explores the ways in which non-state actors (NSAs) in South Asia are involved in securitizing non-traditional security challenges in the region at the sub-state level. South Asia is the epicentre of some of the most significant international security challenges today. Yet, the complexities of the region's security dynamics remain under-researched. While traditional security issues, such as inter-state war, border disputes and the threat of nuclear devastation in South Asia, remain high on the agendas of policy-makers and academics both within and beyond the region, scant attention has been paid to non-traditional or 'new' security challenges. Drawing on various case studies, this work offers an innovative analysis of how NSAs in South Asia are shaping security discourses in the region and tackling security challenges at the sub-state level. Through its critique of securitization theory, the book calls for a new approach to studying security practices in South Asia - one which considers NSAs as legitimate security actors. This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, Asian security, Asian politics, critical security studies, and IR in general.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become ubiquitous in the development sector in Africa and attracting more academic attention. However, the fact that NGOs are an integral part of the everyday lives of men and women on the continent has been overlooked thus far. In Africa, NGOs are not remote, but familiar players, situated in the midst of cities and communities. By taking a radical empirical stance, this book studies NGOs as a vital part of the lifeworlds of Africans. Its contributions are immersed in the pasts, presents and futures of personal encounters, memories, decision-making and politics.

Most national taxation regimes afford certain privileges to non-governmental non-profit organizations of public benefit. However, cross-border extension of such privileges has failed to materialize in any significant way, despite various efforts and the existence of model treaty provisions and even draft NGO multilateral tax treaties. Although experts tend to oppose harmonization on the grounds that international privilege would sink to the lowest national level there does seem to be general agreement that tax incentives to encourage the cross-border activity of public benefit organizations should be clarified and augmented. The expert authors whose work is assembled in this book offer rich perspectives on this issue. Their various analyses include the following: detailed discussion of the objections of principle commonly advanced by states; the role of discrimination legislation in strategies to advance cross-border privilege; the continuing failure of political will to achieve changes in this area of taxation; the potential of reciprocal unilateral action; tax treaties and non-tax treaties with tax-related provisions; multilateral initiatives (OECD, UN, EU, Council of Europe, World Bank, regional treaties); and Documentation (International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation). Quite apart from its importance as an in-depth study of a taxation issue of significant social value, The Tax Treatment of NGOs will be of great assistance to NGOs and their supporters and benefactors. It opens the way to more vigorous lobbying power for the NGO community to influence changes in taxation law and policy.

Analysing the relationship between civil society and the state, this book lays bare the assumptions informing peacebuilding practices and demonstrates through empirical research how such practices have led to new dynamics of conflict. The drive to establish a sustainable liberal peace largely escapes critical examination. When such attention is paid to peacebuilding practices, scholars tend to concentrate either on the military components of the mission or on the liberal economic reforms. This means that the roles of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the impact of attempting to nurture Northern forms of civil society is often overlooked. Focusing on the case of Cambodia, this book seeks to examine the assumptions underlying peacebuilding policies in order to highlight the reliance on a particular, linear reading of European / North American history. The author argues that such policies, in fostering a particular form of civil society, have affected patterns of conflict; dictating when and where politics can occur and who is empowered to participate in such practices. Drawing on interviews with NGO representatives and government representatives, this volume will assert that while the expansion of civil society may resolve some sources of conflict, its introduction has also created new dynamics of contestation. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, development studies, S.E. Asian politics, and IR in general.

In the waning years of the Cold War, the United States and China began to cautiously engage in cultural, educational, and policy exchanges, which in turn strengthened new security and economic ties. These links have helped shape the most important bilateral relationship in the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This book explores the dynamics of cultural exchange through an in-depth historical investigation of three organizations at the forefront of U.S.-China non-governmental relations: the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies, the National Committee on United States-China Relations, and The 1990 Institute. Norton Wheeler reveals the impact of American non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on education, environment, fiscal policy, and civil society in contemporary China. In turn, this book illuminates the important role that NGOs play in complementing formal diplomacy and presents a model of society-to-society relations that moves beyond old debates over cultural imperialism. Finally, the book highlights the increasingly significant role of Chinese Americans as bridges between the two societies. Based on extensive archival research and interviews with leading American and Chinese figures, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics and history, international relations and transnational NGOs.

This book explores the ways in which non-state actors (NSAs) in South Asia are involved in securitizing non-traditional security challenges in the region at the sub-state level. South Asia is the epicentre of some of the most significant international security challenges today. Yet, the complexities of the region's security dynamics remain under-researched. While traditional security issues, such as inter-state war, border disputes and the threat of nuclear devastation in South Asia, remain high on the agendas of policy-makers and academics both within and beyond the region, scant attention has been paid to non-traditional or 'new' security challenges. Drawing on various case studies, this work offers an innovative analysis of how NSAs in South Asia are shaping security discourses in the region and tackling security challenges at the sub-state level. Through its critique of securitization theory, the book calls for a new approach to studying security practices in South Asia - one which considers NSAs as legitimate security actors. This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, Asian security, Asian politics, critical security studies, and IR in general.

Human rights play a crucial role in today's international relations. They provide standards to which states must conform when dealing with their own citizens. Non-governmental human rights organizations remind states of their obligations in that field. Without this, human rights would have drifted to the bottom of the international agenda.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States was growing by fits and starts into its new role as a global power. Unlike European empires, it sought to distinguish itself as a new kind of power. Corporations and media outlets were spreading American brands, ideas, and commodities worldwide, increasing we would today call soft power. Meanwhile, American citizens and government officials grappled with their nation's rising prominence and debated how best to engage with the wider world. One of those ways was to use foreign aid to define the nation's new role and responsibilities with regards to the international community. This first book narrates the early history of American foreign relief and assistance as a way of guiding the international community in peaceful cooperation and modernization towards greater stability and democracy. It tells the story of how the United States government came to realize the value of overseas aid as a tool of statecraft. A prime case in point is the American Red Cross, a quasi-private, quasi-state organization. Established in 1882, the ARC was a privately funded and staffed organization, primarily dependent on volunteer labor. However, it shared a special relationship with the U.S. government, formalized by Congressional charters, which made it the "official voluntary" aid association of the United States in times of war and natural disaster. Together, international-minded American progressives-a generation of American health professionals, social scientists, and public intellectuals-made the ARC into a vehicle for the global dissemination of their ideas about health, social welfare, and education. They urged their fellow citizens to reject their traditional attachments to isolationism and non-entanglement and to commit to "humanitarian internationalism." Their international activities included feeding, housing, and anti-epidemic projects in wartime France, Italy, Russia, and Serbia; the development of playgrounds, education initiatives, and child health clinics in postwar Poland and Czechoslovakia; correspondence programs to unite American children and their international peers; and the extension of all of these efforts to U.S. territories, sites where the conceptual lines between foreign and domestic blurred in the U.S. imagination. This history calls attention to the ways that private organizations have served the diplomatic needs of the U.S. state, as well as been an institutional space for Americans who wanted to participate in international affairs in ways that deviated from official state agendas. By the mid-1920s, voluntary humanitarian interventionism had become the basis for a new set of American civic and political obligations to the world community.

Democracy and Interest Groups assesses the contribution that interest groups make to the democratic involvement of citizens and the generation of social capital. It examines how interest groups are formed and how they maintain themselves - focussing specifically on the supply-side dimension of group membership that is how groups generate and stimulate citizen involvement. The authors draw on new surveys of groups and group members and, more unusually, with non-participants. It also makes use of in-depth interviews with campaign group leaders and organizers.

Development was founded on the belief that religion was not important to development processes. The contributors call this assumption into question & explore the practical impacts of religion by looking at the developmental consequences of Pentecostal Christianity in Africa, & contrasting Pentecostal & secular models of change.