The New Geography of Global Civil Society: NGOs in the World City Network

Recent research on the geography of NGOs in Global Civil Society yearbooks has emphasized a north-west European bias. This has been taken to imply that global civil society is but a pale geographical shadow of the power concentrations in global economy and governance. Using an interlocking network model and data on 74 global NGOs with offices across 178 cities, NGO connectivity values for cities show that there is a ‘global South’, especially sub-Saharan African, geographical bias. Nairobi is the most connected world city with respect to NGO activities. This marked contrast to recent received wisdom implies a diffuse network power relationship. To the extent that global NGOs reveal the new geography of global civil society in a space of flows, these results support a positive interpretation for NGOs contributing to an emancipatory global agenda. In the first yearbook of Global Civil Society (Anheier et al., 2001a) the geography of its subject is given prominence. In the introductory chapter, the editors note that ‘in particular, one of the most striking findings of the Yearbook is that global civil society is heavily concentrated in north-western Europe’ (Anheier et al., 2001b, p. 7 [emphasis original]). They illustrate this with a table that identifies the top countries that are the ‘focal points’ of globalization, international rule of law and global civil society (Anheier et al., 2001b, pp. 8–9). Three indices of each category are included and the 11 countries that appear in six or more lists are highlighted: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. The ‘heavily concentrated’ geography could hardly be more clear-cut. But is it? Is this the right ‘space’ for measuring these activities? In Castells’s (1996) terminology, is this ‘space of places’—countries—really how geographical focal points should be identified? Globalizations December 2004, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 265–277 Correspondence Address: Peter J. Taylor, Department of Geography, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK and The Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, 1021 Prince Street, Suite 100, Alexandria, VA 22314, USA. 1474-7731 Print=1474-774X Online=04=020265–13 # 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080=1474773042000308604 A preliminary answer to this question is provided by scrutinising Anheier et al.’s (2001b, p. 9) list of NGO host countries in which Belgium is ranked first in terms of NGO density per million of population. Why Belgium? It is not necessary to go back to the original data to realize that the process operating here is a desire of NGOs to be in and around Brussels, not because it is in Belgium but because it is the political and administrative center of the EU. Clearly it is the city that is the attraction, not the country. In general, it can be noted that it is cities as coordinators of ‘spaces of flows’ (Castells, 1996) rather than countries that constitute geographical ‘focal points’. In the second Global Civil Society yearbook (Glasius et al., 2002), Sassen (2002) makes the case for a city-centerd interpretation of global civil society and her approach is developed in some detail in this article. Specifically, the global location strategies of a large number of NGOs are measured and analyzed within the framework of the contemporary world city network. The argument is that NGOs as major constituents of the global civil society organize their activities through cities across the world thus creating their particular space of flows through the world city network (Taylor, 2004). In this way we investigate the claim of a ‘north-western European concentration’ in the context of a new global space of flows. The basic finding of this article is that the geography of NGOs is more global than previous studies have led us to expect. Thus global civil society does not replicate the geography of economic globalization; it is creating its own new geography. This revision of received wisdom on the geography of global civil society is based upon a new methodology that focuses upon the networks of NGO activities across cities: NGOs are treated as one of the makers of the contemporary world city network (Taylor, 2004). The credibility of the revised geography is grounded in the integration of a formal network model specification with large-scale data collection. Thus it is with these items that we begin before presentation and discussion of the new and surprising results. NGOs and Global Civil Society Although it is commonly agreed that global civil society is a ‘fuzzy concept’ (Anheier et al., 2001b, p. 11; An-Na’im, 2002; Chandhoke, 2002) with its ‘organizational infrastructure’ still in a ‘state of flux’ (Anheier and Themudo, 2002, p. 191), nevertheless Keane’s (2001, p. 23) description provides the essence of the subject: ‘Global civil society is a vast, interconnected, and multilayered social space that comprises many hundreds of self-directing or non-governmental institutions and ways of life’. Through its ‘cross border networks’ global civil society is constituted of ‘chains of interactions linking the local, regional and planetary orders’ (p. 24), This new social world is constituted by ‘networks, coalitions, partnerships and social movements’ (Anheier and Themudo, 2002). This article provides an appropriate depiction of the geography of social activities in contemporary globalization. This is a necessary starting point for interpreting global civil society and its relations to other aspects of globalization. We achieve this through a large empirical study of NGOs since these have come to be identified with global civil society—in Chandhoke’s (2002, p. 38) words, ‘NGOs play a large-than-life role in global civil society’. So much so that it is often found to be necessary to proffer a reminder that global civil society is actually more than the activities of just NGOs (e.g. Anheier et al., 2001b, p. 4; Chandkoke, 2002, p. 38; Anheier and Themudo, 2002, p. 191; Kaldor, 2003). While accepting the latter, NGOs remain the obvious foundation for describing the geography of global civil society and thus will feature as the institutions we measure and analyze below. 266 P. J. Taylor