movements; the World Trade Organization and labor; the World Bank, the WTO,
and the environmental social movement; and the International Monetary Fund
and social movements.
A key new source of information and analysis is theYearbook on Global Civil
Society( 2001 , 2002 , 2003 , 2004 ), put out by the London School of Economics. The
Yearbooksanalyze and describe a variety of forms of individual action by which
people outside the governmental and corporate sectors aim to inXuence global
issues and institutions. TheWrstYearbook( 2001 ) laid out a normative conception of
civil society as an emerging arena for global civic action that connects people across
borders. Its conceptual frameworks lay out alternative ways of thinking about the
world in the era of globalization, in opposition to the ‘‘methodological national-
ism’’ that has dominated the social sciences and made it diYcult for policy analysts
and scholars to understand the role of individual agency in global aVairs (Kaldor,
Anheier and Glasius 2003 b; Shaw 2003 ; Beck 2003 ). Its chapters cover everything
from broad conceptual topics to speciWc issues such as civil society’s role in global
policies on trade, weapons of mass destruction, or violence against women, to
questions related to the nature and infrastructure of global civil society. It also
provides a useful chronology and other data on global civil society.
Increasingly, writing on civil society’s global roles is woven into larger works
concerned with global governance and authority in the international system
(Higgott, Underhill, and Bieler 2000 ). While it is not possible in the conWnes of
one chapter to cite, much less review, the vast literature on globalization, a few
examples are useful. The works of David Held and his colleagues (Held and McGrew
2002 ; Held and McGrew 2003 a; Held and Archibugi 2003 ; Held and McGrew 2003 b
provides a useful short summary), for example, broadly examined the emergence of
a global political sphere in response to the rapid increase in global public goods and
bads. Florini ( 2003 ) examined transnational civil society within the broader context
of global governance and the need to develop more democratic processes for
decision-making on how to address global issues. Scholte ( 2005 ) raised questions
about the value of relying on civil society involvement as a means of democratizing
globalization given the relatively small scale of such participating to date.
Most of the literature referenced above casts what is meant to be a disinterested,
objective eye on a political phenomenon of increasing interest. Others, however,
took a more negative perspective, arguing that the growing inXuence of INGOs and
other elements of transnational civil society is largely pernicious. The American
Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society brieXy sponsored an ‘‘NGOWatch’’
project whose website (which has since been taken down) argued that ‘‘The
extraordinary growth of advocacy NGOs in liberal democracies has the potential
to undermine the sovereignty of constitutional democracies.’’ Manheim ( 2000 )
analyzed campaigns directly by what he called the new anti-corporate left against
businesses. Anderson and RieV( 2004 ) provided cautionary words in one edition of
the LSEYearbook.
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