arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

In its most general sense, the term "civil society" refers to an autonomous, self-organized public and multiple forms of civic initiative. In the context of the civil rights movements of Eastern Europe, the term characterized a movement of dissidents, whose independent media projects supported the general demand for freedom of assembly, opinion, and organization. The phrase "international civil society" is often used to describe the plurality of non-state actors, whose transnational activism has placed questions of environmentalism, human rights, or the structure of international financial institutions on the agenda of world politics.

"Civic" Society & The Ethos of Self-Organization

Concepts like civil society are most often discussed in a national context. A recent examples is the report of the Enquete-Commission of the German Bundestag on "The Future of Civic Engagement." Here, a "civic" society is defined as a national network of self-organized associations outside of state, economy, and family, committed to a variety of charitable efforts.

The analysis of various forms of "self-organization" ultimately aims at a new division of labor between state, economy, and society. The key concepts of the report suggest what such a new social order might look like: the vision of an "enabling state" reduced to its "primary" responsibilities is central to its argument. Measures to improve the "efficiency" of public administration are accompanied by a valorization of self-organization. Through the "openness" of its institutions, the state facilitates self-organization in the name of "participatory justice." Add to this the commitment of corporations encouraged to assume civic responsibilities as "corporate citizens." The principle of subsidiarity serves as main criterium of this reordering of responsibilities: once a new "culture of the social" has been established, the state will only have to intervene whenever the "ressources" of civil society have been exhausted.

Outside of the traditional mechanisms of acculturation and social integration like churches, schools, political parties, or labor unions, alternative forms of mobilization and organization have emerged. The vision of a "civic society" is, therefore, trying to identify new mechanisms that might build a sense of mutuality and solidarity within an increasingly heterogeneous citizenry. In addition to affirming the complementary principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, the report introduces the notion of "social capital" to describe the knowledge of structures of cooperation and accountability, but also experiences of commonality and mutuality. Both result and prerequisite of self-organization, "social capital" becomes the most important ressource of a "civic" society that can no longer count on extensive public support.

"Civic" Society - More than a Neoliberal Project

The vision of a "lean" and "enabling" state along with a self-organizing dynamic of mutual support is part of what has generally been described as "neoliberalism." In analogy to a self-regulating market, a self-organizing civil society emerges that assumes responsibility for the majority of tasks now associated with the welfare state. Under the banner of subsidiarity, an autonomous practice of solidarity is turned into a general social obligation, structural requirement of a self-organizing citizenry. The "lean" state will focus primarily on issues of domestic and national security along with economic development. New social policy projects are acceptable only in so far as they improve the attractiveness of a location - city, state, or nation - for development and investment. The elaboration of the concept of a "civic" society is thus also a matter of legitimating the transformation of the welfare state.

Whenever "state" and "society" are thought to be independent entities, civil society appears as neutral terrain of conflict resolution, and its material constitution - the conditions and principles of its operation - remains obscure. According the the philosopher Antonio Gramsci, civil society as a specifically bourgois form of self-organization serves to establish cultural hegemony: the concept of a "civic" or civil society itself turns into a terrain of social conflict and counter-hegemonic contestation. The question is whether the concept of a "civic" or civil society can be shifted from its neoliberal connotations toward a more radical reappropriation of the political.

This applies to the concept of self-organization as well. Borrowed from the natural sciences, the metaphor becomes the vehicle of a biologization of the social: self-organization becomes a "natural" mode of social being. Because its compatibility with the imperatives of a general deterritorialization and flexibilization is rarely questioned, critics see in the grand concept of "self-organization" little more than the fetish of an apolitical rhetoric of adaptation.

And yet, anti-neoliberalism doesn't always do justice to the general ethos of self-actualization and -organization that influences the debate over a "civic" society. The desire for autonomy and self-determination is actually profoundly at odds with statist traditions that reduce citizens to mere objects of bureaucratic management. There is general support for an opening of the state through the extension of grassroots mechanisms of participation (plebiscites), the need to codify a "freedom of information" in the sense of free access to public documents is widely recognized. The autonomy of individual actors could be greatly enhanced through new forms of labor organization or childcare services. There is an abundance of creative examples on what a different division of labor between state, economy, and society might look like - the political controversy over the role the structures of civil society could play is, after all, just beginning.

Civil Society as a Transnational Project

The national vision of the symbiosis between a self-regulating economy and a self-organizing civil society obscures the transnational dynamic of globalization. National and international activities of civil society actors, corporations, and above all the state have become deeply intertwined: the "lean" state, for instance, is one of the main protagonists in an accelerating deterritorialization of the global economy. States have yet to establish effective mechanisms of regulation on the transnational level to offset the destabilizing effects of deregulation on the national level. But the lament of a "loss of state sovereignty" is still more common than the sober acknowledgment that states themselves are, to a large degree, responsible for this development. In the meantime, the regulatory vacuum is being filled by others, primarily corporate institutions like the World Trade Organization or the World Economic Forum initiated and supported by global business elites.

The question of the possible elements of a future international civil society, including mechanisms of corporate accountability and non-military conflict resolution, might be made available to a transnational public, has moved to the center of the controversy around neoliberal globalization. Even within the limited context of the European Union, it remains unclear which forms of federalism and subsidiarity might be most effective in advancing civil and human rights. Movement activists have at least succeeded, however, in making these questions the topic of international debate.

Transnational Civil Society as Network Society

In 1998, a study published by the RAND Corporation, a think tank close to the US Department of Defense, warned that "social net wars" might constitute an important security threat in the future, not easily understood through traditional paradigms of national security. The analysis is based on the Mexican movement of the Zapatistas, who created international pressure on local governments through the transnational mobilization of civil society actors. The national vision of a civil society leaves no room for such a "trans-localism." On the contrary, the hope that increased civic activism will make up for social services no longer provided by the state seems animated by the assumption that the immediacy of social contact is the primary, if not exclusive source of authentic community and solidarity.

The term "network society," on the other hand, was coined to come to terms with the deterritorialization of new forms of community and organization. In the context of the material conditions of "access" to new mechanisms of political participation, it also raises the question of "participatory justice." Visions of an electronic public sphere, where a deterritorialized "demos" is expected to assert and reappropriate its sovereignty, often tend to abstract all-too-quickly from the material preconditions of political equality.

But even the paradigm of "self-organization" refers, at least implicitly, to the central promise of the new communication technologies: interactivity and networking. The "enabling state" appeals to this vision as well: the "openness" of its institutions will be demonstrated primarily in the context of the network society, facilitating the "interactive" shift from consumption to production, from information to self-organization. It remains to be seen whether the project of administrative reform and the creation of new "civic interfaces" between state apparatuses and citizenry will also extend the scope of political communication beyond its traditional limitations. Future mechanisms of an electronic democratization of the parliamentary system might, in turn, help develop "deterritorialized" mechanisms of accountability and participation on the transnational level.

The Privatization of World Politics

A great number of the non-state actors in the arenas of world politics are non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The somewhat vague term refers to a multiplicity of organizations within international civil society. Even though the most prominent among them - Greenpeace and Amnesty International come to mind - have been hailed as protagonists of a "world conscience," they cannot actually lay claim to a greater degree of democratic legitimation than the transnational institutions they would like to transform. Particularist interests are expanded into universal norms to force the "international community" to act on any number of - legitimate - issues. Their professionalization has increased the distance to their grassroots constituency. Often filling the vacuum left by the retreat of the state, many of them have come to assume-quasi-official responsibilities, especially in the areas of development and human rights. Observers have lost some of their early enthusiasm over the "NGO Revolution" and come to observe the dynamic of a "privatization of world politics" more critically. Once again, this raises the question whether a "global public" might have to create new mechanisms of accountability and control.

Transnationality & The Transformation of Citizenship

The question of the role of "citizens" is also a question of the nation which underwrites their legal identity and guarantees basic rights of participation. The discussion over the future of civic engagement must address that "citizens" active in transnational organizations increasingly intervene in political processes beyond national boundaries. Migrants, on the other hand, are involved in multiple forms of "civic" engagement even though the countries they live in may never fully integrate them into their legal order.

These development expose the limits of the concept of a - national or international - civil society, but also of traditional notions of citizenship and sovereignty. The philosopher Giorgio Agamben has therefore suggested to rethink our entire vocabulary of the political and take the figure of the stateless as point of departure. From their position, the mechanisms of exclusion that constitute a "civil" society are more likely to come into view than from the position of the "citizens" who can mobilize their legal identity without having to think about its conceptual and material conditions.

An exclusive focus on the actual - or apparent - "neoliberalism" of concepts like "civic" or civil society may not do justice to these questions. Ultimately, they represent an opportunity to take up and radicalize the controversy over how the structures of self-organization might be used, including the possibility to create alternative institutions for the self-organization of a deterritorialized multitude.

This article was published in Sand in the wheels -
Weekly newsletter of the international Attac movement
- n°141 – Wednesday 21 August 2002.

The author can be contacted at info@wastun.org - http://wastun.org/tapestry