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Although also global civil society actors have gained influence since the start of the global justice movement with the uprising of the Zapatistas or the protest against a meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1999 in Seattle. At the same time – in the 1990s – the number of NGOs who have a consultative status at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations (UN) rose from 40 in 1948, when the UN was founded, to 3.382 in 2010 (ECOSOC 2010).
Research about these global civil society actors have been undertaken mostly under the umbrella of “Global Governance” as well as in the transnational movement or NGO research programs. Global Governance is a mixture of governmental and non-governmental, private and public actors which try to influence each other. Of course these actors follow different interests, e.g. Multinationals follow the interest of making profits which NGOs do not, but they have some common ways to influence politics. The ways in which these private actors influence global politics can be summed up in (1) lobbying, (2) the setting of global norms and standards and (3) sharing their expertise on certain subjects (Reinicke 2003: 19). Protest movement usually follow a slightly different agenda by focusing more on addressing the world public to put global political actors under pressure. More differences between protest movements and NGOs can be found in their organisational structures. The heterarchial way of cooperating with each other makes it almost impossible for movements to develop lobbying strategy. This ‘lobbying’ requires an effective and efficient way of organizing. The organizational forms of NGOs involved in Lobbying are therefore often comparable to those of private business companies (Mintzberg und Westley 2000).

Both protest movements and NGOs reveal misbehavior of Multinationals like the Killer Coke Campaign and call for boycotts (killercoke.org). Not least there exist manifold ways of interaction between Civil Society Actors and private enterprises. More and more unions plan for transnationally organized strikes (Tarrow 2003: 176). Civil Society Actors and Multinationals can also collaborate with each other (Klein and Siegmund, eds. 2010) or Civil Society Actors even try to influence enterprises as shareholders (Burgy 2013).

My research interest therefore is to gain more knowledge about how global civil society actors (NGOs and protest movements) built coalitions to influence beyond their thematic focuses and beyond their nation states. On this webside I want share with you some of my research results and in the future I would like to discuss different topics with you out there. So if you are interested please do not hesitate to contact me!

 

And thanks for visting my blog.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Christian Schroeder

 

References

 

Burgy, Catherine (2013): NGOs als Kapitalmarktakteure. Shareholder Engagement als Möglichkeit zur Einflussnahme auf Corporate Social Responsibility. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden; Imprint: Springer VS (SpringerLink : Bücher).

ECOSOC (2010), ‘Anzahl von NGOs weltweit bis 2010’ <http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/158268/umfrage/entwicklung-der-anzahl-von-ngos-weltweit-seit-1948/>, updated 3 Sep 2013, accessed 1 Oct 2013.

Klein, Simone; Siegmund, Karin (Hg.) (2010): Partnerschaften von NGOs und Unternehmen. Chancen und Herausforderungen. 1. Aufl. Wiesbaden: VS, Verl. für Sozialwiss.

Mintzberg, H.; Westley, F. (2000): Sustaining the Institutional Environment. In: Organization Studies 21 (1), S. 71–94.

Reinicke, Wolfgang H. (2003): Unternehmen und Zivilgesellschaft in der globalen Politik – Neue Rollen und Verantwortlichkeiten. In: Herbert-Quandt-Stiftung (Hg.): Jenseits des Staates? Außenpolitik durch Unternehmen und NGOs. Bad Homburg (Sinclair Haus Gespräche, 21), S. 17–24.

Tarrow, Sidney (2003): Power in movement. Social movements and contentious politics. 2. Aufl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Vitali, S., Glattfelder, J. B., and Battiston, S. (2011), ‘The Network of Global Corporate Control’, PLoS ONE, 6/10.