The Uneven Geography of Global Civil Society: National and Global Influences on Transnational Association

Recent decades have seen an explosion of transnational networking and activism, but participation varies widely around the globe. Using negative binomial regression, we explore how national and global political and economic factors shape this “uneven geography” of participation in transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs). Contrary to assumptions in popular discourse, we find a continued importance of the state and limited importance of global economic integration in determining participation in transnational associations. But while ties to the global economy do not significantly impact participation, a country’s links to global institutions enhance opportunities for transnational activism. Rich countries’ citizens are more active transnationally, but low-income countries with strong ties to the global polity are also more tied to global activist networks. This suggests that TSMOs do not simply reproduce world-system stratification, but – aided by a supportive institutional environment – they help sow the seeds for its transformation. Globalization, or the expansion of all types of social interactions across national boundaries, has led governments to turn increasingly to global institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations to resolve transnational problems. As this happens, social movement actors seeking to change local and national practices find that they must look beyond their national boundaries to do so. The global political context both expands and complicates the strategic choices available to those advocating political and social change. Activists increasingly need information and expertise relevant to transnational political arenas in order to pursue their social change goals. Therefore, it is not surprising that the growth of international agreements and organizations among governments has been accompanied by a corresponding proliferation of transnational civil society associations of all types. The dramatic growth in cross-border interactions among non-state actors has led scholars of transnational relations to call for an expansion of our traditional, state-bounded notions of civil society to account for a transnational public sphere (Guidry et al. 2000). Many speak of a “global civil society,” (e.g., Wapner 1996; Clark et al. 1998; Anheier et al. 2001; Warkentin and Mingst 2000) which we, along with Paul Wapner, define as “that dimension of transnational collective life in which citizens organize themselves – outside their identity with a particular state or their role as a producer or consumer – to advance shared agendas and coordinate political activities An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2002 meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago. We thank Ivana Eteroviç for her assistance with data collection and analysis as well as for her thoughtful input throughout the project. We are also grateful to Tom Hall, John Markoff, John McCarthy, John Meyer, Timothy Moran, Michael Schwartz, Sidney Tarrow, Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Andrea Tyree and Anne Reid for their feedback. Dina Rose and Monique Centrone provided useful comments on our analysis. Support for this research was provided by the World Society Foundation and the American Sociological Association’s NSF Funds for Advancing the Discipline Small Grants Program. Direct correspondence to Jackie Smith, The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, P.O. Box 639, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556-0639. E-mail: [email protected]. © The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, Volume 84, Number 2, December 2005 2005 throughout the world.” (2002:204). But there are strong reasons to be skeptical that this “global civil society” is “global” in the sense that it is broadly representative of and accessible to all the world’s citizens. Some analysts (e.g., Tarrow 2001a; Rootes 2002) question the very presence of a global civil society by pointing to the limits of its global-ness and the weakness of the actual transnational interactions it incorporates. They emphasize that national level processes and ideologies still dominate much of the discourse and strategic thinking of activists, who continue to organize around nationally defined aims (e.g., Imig and Tarrow 2001). Global Politics and Civil Society Globalization’s effect on social movement mobilization can be seen as parallel to the transformation of contentious politics during the rise of national states (cf. Tilly 1984; Markoff 2003). In a global institutional setting, movement efforts to shape the practices of a particular government require international legal or scientific expertise, understandings of the rivalries and practices of inter-state political bargaining, and/or capacities for mobilizing protests and otherwise bringing simultaneous pressure against multiple national governments. Activists thus need organizations that can facilitate cross-cultural communication and manage diversity in order to articulate and advance a shared agenda. It should not be surprising, therefore, to find that social movement organizations devoted especially to transnational level organizing and political action play key roles in global level contentious politics. Data from the Yearbook of International Associations show that the numbers of active transnationally-organized citizens’ groups (INGOs) grew from less than 1,000 in the 1950s to nearly 20,000 in 1999 (Union of International Associations 2004). Within this population of transnational voluntary associations, we find a subset of groups that are explicitly founded to promote some social or political change. Because such groups are more likely to be involved in processes surrounding social change, we focus our analysis on this smaller set of INGOs, which we call transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs). The population of TSMOs has also expanded at a tremendous rate over recent decades from fewer than 100 organizations in the 1950s to more than 1,000 today. At the same time, we see some expansion in the global reach of these organizations as more groups are based in the global South and as the sector expands to include other groups in society. However, a closer look reveals that participation in both INGOs and TSMOs varies dramatically across countries, and this is particularly true of countries outside the traditional core of the global economy. Data from the 2000 edition of the Yearbook indicate that core countries of the world system remain the most integrated, while later-industrializing regions are far less active in the international non-governmental and transnational social movement sectors. With regard to the broader population of INGOs, citizens in countries of the global North participate in an average of 2,600 organizations compared to an average of 613 for citizens in the global South. Moreover, there is far less variation in INGO participation across core countries than there is in peripheral and semi-peripheral countries. While the difference between core and non-core countries for TSMO participation is not as dramatic, citizens in core countries participate on average in nearly three times as many TSMOs as citizens in noncore countries. The average core country has members in 408 TSMOs, while the average outside the core is just 138 organizations. Citizens of France are most active in these groups, with 553 TSMOs and 3,551 INGOs reporting members in that country. At the other end of the scale of INGO participation are Afghanistan, North Korea and Oman, with an average of just 159 INGOs reporting members in those countries. Turkmenistan has the lowest involvement in TSMOs, with 15 organizations listing its citizens among their members. Of the 25 countries with the most active 622 • Social Forces Volume 84, Number 2 • December 2005