‘‘with the skills necessary to staVthe armies, pay the taxes, and turn the wheels
of industry’’ (Tarrow 1994 , 66 ). The communications and transportation
infrastructure created by the emerging states made it easier for geographically
separated individuals and groups to recognize common interests and join together
to carry out collective action independently of the state. And increasing
state penetration of society gave groups something to mobilize against. Much
state-building consisted of raising taxes and conscripting soldiers, both unpopular
extensions of state authority.
- 1 The Rediscovery of ‘‘Civil Society’’
Over the course of the twentieth century, in some cases the state became so
dominant and coercive that no political space was left within which alternative
societal groups could persist. Such was the case in the Soviet Union and, to a lesser
extent, some of its satellites. When the Soviet bloc began to disintegrate in the late
1980 s, the citizens and new governments of the former Warsaw Pact countries were
forced to rethink how modern democratic countries deal with the plethora of
collective action problems that face all modern societies. Thanks in part to the
urgings of Western, and particularly American, funding agencies, the creation of a
vigorous civil society was assumed to be a large part of the answer. Substantial
international aid soonXowed to new NGOs throughout the region in an eVort to
create rapidly a new non-governmental sector (Ottaway and Carothers 2000 ), and
the term ‘‘civil society’’ returned to the limelight.
At the same time, non-governmental actors in disparate parts of the world began
to develop increasingly strong ties with their counterparts elsewhere. Some litera-
ture has attempted to explain how and why those ties developed. Florini ( 2000 ), for
example, argues that global economic integration gave groups in disparate parts of
the world a common stake in common issues, at the same time that the sharply
dropping costs of transportation and communication made it possible for groups to
meet and work together, ties that often originated or were cemented at the enor-
mous global conferences organized by the United Nations in the 1980 s and 1990 s.
Just as a great deal of economic activity takes place in the ‘‘grey’’ informal sector,
much important citizen sector activity takes placeoutside of formal NGO and INGO
auspices. But while grey economic activity tends to remain local, the non-formal
citizen sector sometimes cumulates into transnational movements. INGOs are just a
piece of a larger phenomenon: the cross-border ties among groups that are neither
governmental bodies nor primarily proWt-seeking businesses. Some are amorphous
networks, able to mobilize thousands or millions of citizens to take to the streets in
various‘‘mobilizations,’’asinthevarious‘‘anti-globalization’’protestsorthemassive
anti-war demonstrations of early 2003. Some, like the various ‘‘social forums’’
international ngos 675