About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

20 Global Governance 419 (2014)
Janus-Faced NGO Participation in Global Governance: Structural Constrains for NGO Influence

handle is hein.journals/glogo20 and id is 435 raw text is: Global Governance 20 (2014), 419-436 Janus-faced NGO Participation in Global Governance: Structural Constraints for NGO Influence Charlotte Dany Increasingly, nongovernmental organizations participate in negotiations within international organizations as well as in global working groups and discussion forums. This trend is commonly said to enable the influence of the participating NGOs. Yet this article highlights the negative effects of the high level of NGO participation on the NGOs' influence. It shows, in the case of the UN World Summit on the Information Society, how the NGOs' influence is reduced to less relevant issues and how this influence turns out to be highly selective: while the views and demands of a few NGO actors are successful, more diverse views from the broader NGO com- munity become neglected. This suggests greater caution regarding the usual claim that more is necessarily better with regard to NGO participa- tion in global governance. KEYWORDs: NGO participation, structural con- straints, Internet governance, WsiS. FOR THOSE WHO SEEK TO ENABLE THE VOICE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN INTERNATIONAL politics, enhancing the parameters of the participation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)1 seems to be the best thing to do. Despite the notes of caution that more and more observers raise about co-optation or instrumen- talization, increased NGO participation is still regarded as the best way to secure that civil society has a say in global governance next to states and business organizations. The more NGOs participate, the better they seem to be able to influence the policy outcomes of international negotiations (e.g., by drafting texts of the policy documents or by explaining what they seek to achieve and why). Contrary to that common wisdom, in this article I empha- size some problematic aspects of far-reaching participation regarding the NGOs' ability to influence policy outcomes in global governance. I suggest that more participation is not necessarily better for the NGOs' influence; rather, NGO power is limited in specific ways by far-reaching participation rights. This is not to say that more participation means generally less influ- ence. I argue instead that increasingly institutionalized participation in global governance risks modifying and distorting what NGOs are able to achieve in terms of substantive policy outcomes. The Janus face is, for that reason, a good symbol for NGO participation in global governance. Janus faced means 419

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most