Restricting NGOs: From Pushback to Accommodation

Author's Introduction Civil society has become one of the most popular concepts within international development discourses. But, what is civil society? Civil society is defined as an arena of collective social interaction situated between the state, market and household, encompassing a range of non‐state organisations, groups and associations, including non‐governmental organisations (NGOs). The article assesses the range of different interpretations of civil society highlighting its diverse makeup at local, national and transnational scales. Why has civil society become so important within international development? Democracy and delivery of services . As people organised collectively against totalitarian regimes in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Global South, civil society emerged as a manifestation of democratisation processes. The neoliberal agenda also wanted to capture and channel civil society to foster democracy, but also to take on service delivery functions as the role of the state diminished. This article outlines how these roles relate to two theoretical viewpoints – the Marxist or Gramscian that sees civil society as a site of resistance and counterhegemony, and the liberal democratic that views it as a beneficial force for good. Civil society in practice. In the 1990s, development agencies championed civil society from an undertheorised liberal democratic viewpoint as a saviour or ‘magic bullet’ as it channels more and more funds via NGOs. But, civil society has increasingly been criticised as undemocratic, unable to reach the poor and unaccountable. This article describes this evolution. The emergence of global or transnational society . In these days of globalisation, global civil society is increasingly important. This is neither civil society at a global level, nor is it a unified global force for good, lobbying and challenging the neoliberal order. Instead, viewed as ‘transnational civil society’, it is a complex mix of competing, overlapping and intersecting groups that operate beyond national borders for a range of reasons. Especially important actors in transnational civil society are diasporic civil society groups in the form of migrant associations. This article argues that as international migration increases, these groups are growing in economic, social and political importance, yet we do not know very much about them. Author Recommends Anheier, H., Glasius, M., and Kaldor, M. (eds) (2004). Global civil society 2004/5. London: Sage. This book is one of the annual reports on the nature of global civil society produced by the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics. It has a range of interesting articles and is available to download at http://lse.ac.uk/Depts/global/yearbook04chapters.htm Howell, J., and Pearce, J. (2001). Civil society and development: a critical exploration. London: Lynne Rienner. This book provides an excellent overview of the theoretical and empirical debates about civil society at a national level. It provides a range of examples from around the developing world. Lewis, D., and Opoku‐Mensah, P. (2006). Moving forward research agendas on international NGOs: theory, agency and context. Journal of International Development 18, pp. 665–675. This article is an engaging review of the main themes revolving around civil society and development in relation to international NGOs in particular. Mercer, C. (2002). NGOs, civil society and democratization: a critical review of the literature. Progress in Development Studies 2, pp. 5–22. This article is an excellent state‐of‐the‐art review of the relationships between civil society and democratisation from a development perspective. It outlines the main theoretical approaches and assesses them in relation to development policy. Mitlin, D., Hickey, S., and Bebbington, A. (2007). Reclaiming development? NGOs and the challenge of alternatives. World Development 35 (10), pp. 1699–1720. This article outlines the issue of why NGOs have been so popular with development agencies and why this popularity is on the wane. Mohan, G. (2002). The disappointments of civil society: the politics of NGO intervention in northern Ghana. Political Geography 21, pp. 125–154. This article outlines the main thinking about civil society and then illustrates it with an interesting case study from Ghana. Munck, R. (2007). Global civil society: royal road or slippery path? Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 17, pp. 325–332. This article is one of the most‐up‐to‐date accounts on the advantages and disadvantages of global civil society. Useful Links http://www.jhu.edu/~ccss/ website of the Centre for Civil Society, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA. This site reports on policy‐related research on civil society and other more practically oriented projects. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CCS/ website of the Centre for Civil Society, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. This site publishes a range of research papers on civil society and runs academic events. http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/</jats:ext-lin

Memory production, vandalism, violence: Civil society and lessons from a short life of a monument to Stalin

The main challenge for a sustainability transition is to scale up successful solutions. Upscaling requires coalitions of public, private, and civil society actors who align their motivations. Pathways to upscaling may involve leveraging a dominant player's market power, integrating successful initiatives into public policy, or reinforcing government-led change with private efforts. Various actors agree to collaborate to take advantage of their complementary capabilities, e.g., government policies facilitate private action, market incentives reward progressive actors while government sanctions punish laggards, actors take up different tasks of the policy cycle, and large players absorb and disseminate pioneer efforts. To achieve durable impacts, the upscaling of solutions to reach sustainability must continually maintain a balance of incentives among key actors. We identify general lessons for successful upscaling that provide insights on the importance of motivating actors, designing collaborations for lasting success, and incorporating concerns of developing countries.

Who can lead the world on human rights?

Although created as a court for an economic union, the Court of Justice of the East African Community has assumed a prominent role promoting respect for human rights. 3This project considers two related questions. First, I ask why the East African Court is pursuing this strategy, and what the opportunities and risks are for doing so? Second, the project tests the EACJ’s experience against prevailing theories of delegation to international tribunals: (i) ICs as Agents (ii) ICs as Trustees (iii) the Altered Politics Framework (iv) Constrained Independence Theory and (v) Bounded Discretion Theory. A major insight that emerges from this paper is the lack of a theory of delegation to account for international courts in developing countries. This paper points to the gap in the literature in appreciating how regional courts in developing countries with poorly functioning political systems where Executives and Legislatures have little or no legitimacy have assumed broad powers otherwise left to the political branches in developed democracies. To the extent that the conditions for application of contemporary delegation theories do not exist in developing countries, this poses a major challenge to delegation literature. I argue that the EACJ’s human rights jurisprudence is best understood against the fact that EAC governments have not been strong in their adherence to protecting and promoting human rights. They have been reluctant if not sometimes hostile to judicial enforcement of human rights even within their own domestic courts. This is a major reason why EAC governments have chosen not to confer human rights jurisdiction on the EACJ.As such, the EACJ’s human rights jurisprudence is creating new understandings of legality that these states do not subscribe to at home. On their part, EACJ judges have engaged in such decisions, in part, as a strategy to gain, promote and then protect their institutional power. In so doing, EACJ judges have made it a priority to make the court more effective and accessible to East Africans. They entrepreneurially built the EACJ’s role in the integration process through innumerable formal and informal contacts with lawyers, civil society groups, governmental agencies of EAC member States among others. As a result, the EACJ has developed a strong reputation within multiple networks of civil society, professional and other groups at the national and regional levels as a defender of human rights, the rule of law and good governance. These groups have in turn served as an insurance mechanism against extensive clipping of the EACJ’s jurisdiction or its suspension. They have also provided a continuing stream of cases that have demonstrated that there is a demand for the EACJ’s human rights case law. In exercising its power to decide human rights cases, the EACJ has done so with caution. This caution is necessary because there is no history or tradition of courts and law serving as a restraint or constraint on the exercise of state power in East Africa. Without the historical and cultural underpinning that gives courts and law legitimacy and authority to rule against powerful actors, the EACJ is heralding the recent arrival of political accountability through judicial review mobilized in large part by lawyers and lawyer-groups.Ultimately, this paper argues that human rights litigation in the EACJ is best seen as part of a broader strategy of judicial institution building by its Judges and Registrar together with the political mobilization by lawyers, lawyer groups and other civil society organizations. This litigation is giving voice to actors who did not have such legal recourse to advance their claims in the past. This mobilization is particularly important because discredited political institutions – parties, legislatures and executives – are not regarded as avenues of addressing the concerns of ordinary citizens in their own national jurisdictions.

Reviewed by: Global Humanitarianism: NGOs and the Crafting of Community Chris Minnix Global Humanitarianism: NGOs and the Crafting of Community. By D. Robert Dechaine . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005; pp v + 185. $65.00 cloth; $22.95 paper. Since the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have played a significant role in shaping the policies, agendas, and discourses of the contemporary humanitarian movement. The expanding influence of NGOs in international institutions has radically altered previous conceptions of state sovereignty and has brought discussions of cosmopolitan politics and global civil society to the forefront of international relations. In the past two decades, NGOs have utilized advances in communicative technologies and increasing access to international institutions to create dynamic, interactive spaces for international solidarity and activism. The increased visibility and influence of NGOs has inspired a large body of interdisciplinary work that has regarded them as harbingers of a growing global civil society or international community. These advancements, however, have occurred during a period where the economic and cultural forces of globalization have created significant challenges for international solidarity. In many studies of globalization, claims for the emergence of a global civil society are critiqued for ignoring the political fragmentation, economic colonization, and cultural homogenization that has accompanied this new sense of global connectedness. In Global Humanitarianism, D. Robert Dechaine presents a compelling and thorough analysis of the role of NGOs in symbolically framing and materially coordinating an international community capable of responding to the fragmentary forces of globalization through the shared discourse of universal human rights. Dechaine, a rhetorical scholar and professor of cultural studies, demonstrates the need to ground interdisciplinary discussions of international community and global civil society in the communicative practices of NGOs. In place of these terms, Dechaine suggests that "global rhetorical culture" more [End Page 157] fully captures the dynamic, discursive struggle of NGOs to symbolically frame an international community based on the public deliberation of universal humanitarian principles (18). As agents within this rhetorical culture, NGOs utilize their "symbolic resources" to "'conjure' a global humanitarian community into existence as a collective or 'people' united in the furthering of humanitarian goals" (20). NGOs frame this community in a contentious discursive context, in which their rhetoric of community is often placed in opposition to the fragmentary discourses of state sovereignty, economic globalization, and political nationalism. Human rights NGOs, as less powerful actors in international politics, utilize their rhetoric to reframe the dominant cultural and ideological terms that structure public awareness, and understanding of international politics and international community. Developing a methodology for the ideographic analysis of NGO discourse based in the work of Michael Calvin McGee, and Celeste Condit, and John Lucaites, Dechaine argues that NGOs are involved in a hegemonic, discursive struggle to construct the social reality and "public morality" of global civil society (22–3). Through his analysis of these ideographs, he traces the dynamic, contentious relationship of NGO discourse to the alternative articulations of community constructed in the discourses of states, international institutions, and other transnational actors. Humanitarian NGOs draw from a rich ideographic context that reflects the historical development of human rights norms. In his second chapter, Dechaine traces the historical genealogy of human rights and humanitarian NGOs, arguing that changing geopolitical conditions have shaped the emergence of international humanitarian NGOs and have fostered the development of global civil society. He argues that a new, universal "ethos" of international community has emerged from the human rights movement and is embodied in the ideographs of "<human dignity>, <universality>, <brotherhood>, <duty>, and <democracy>" that are constructed in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (49). NGOs actively and dynamically frame and invoke international solidarity and community through their articulation of these ideographic terms in their campaigns and public rhetoric. The ideographs of universal human rights empower humanitarian NGOs with a universal rhetoric that can be read against discourses of political and national interest. As NGOs work to galvanize political will on the issues they address, they utilize this rhetoric to link actors across national, political, and ideological borders, symbolically framing and materially linking the actors of their rhetorical cultures. In chapters 3 and 4, Dechaine applies his ideographic analysis...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to better understand agenda setting by international human rights organizations in the online environment and at the same time contribute to agenda‐setting theory. The role of non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) in the area of human rights is clarified, and agenda setting and related concepts are discussed.Design/methodology/approachThe study focuses on how attention is drawn to human rights issues in online communication by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International. A content analysis of online forums of HRW and Amnesty International was conducted by monitoring their web sites and Facebook and Twitter pages over a period of three months. In addition, two expert interviews with representatives of Amnesty Finland were conducted to better understand how the organization's online communication activities relate to its policies in drawing attention to human rights.FindingsBased on this study, drawing attention to human rights issues is a goal that leads to active online communication. NGOs aim at attracting attention to their issues online by initiating a dialogue via online forums and motivating the public to participate in activities that may influence the media and the political agenda. The existing agenda‐setting research tends to emphasize the role of journalists in setting the public agenda, and mentions NGOs primarily as a source for journalists and as a political player. The online environment shows, however, that these NGOs mostly aim at setting the public agenda to create social change, while the media and political agenda are also not forgotten.Research limitations/implicationsThis study suggests that the interdependence of the media, public and political agendas is more complex than has thus far been considered in agenda‐setting theory, especially in the current online environment. It investigates online agenda setting by two international NGOs, but does not discuss the role of the media or the public at large in their relationship with these NGOs. As this study has a limited time frame, a content analysis over a longer period and interviews with representatives of a wider variety of NGOs could be a next step. Future research could also compare the online communication of NGOs with that of profit organisations.Practical implicationsThe findings show how agenda setting is supported by intricate multi‐platform activities in the present‐day online environment by the organizations studied in order to initiate a dialogue on societal issues. This suggests that in the online environment, the media, public and political agendas are becoming increasingly interrelated and within this triangle the public agenda seems to be gaining further in importance.Originality/valueThe impact that NGOs have on today's society is growing, and hence studying their online agenda setting is valuable from the perspective of corporate communication. International NGOs early on recognised the value of online communication.

Human rights are fundamental rights and freedoms that are inherent to all individuals, regardless of race, sex, nationality, religion or any other status. However, despite their formal recognition in international law, these rights are not always guaranteed in practice. Countless individuals around the world continue to suffer from systemic discrimination, injustice, violence and the denial of fundamental freedoms. In such contexts, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have emerged as key actors in the promotion and protection of human rights. Operating independently of state institutions, NGOs play a multifaceted role: they raise awareness of human rights violations, provide legal aid and psychosocial support to victims, monitor abuses, and hold governments and other powerful actors accountable. Their efforts often extend beyond advocacy to include outreach, research, education, and policy development. This paper examines the expanding role of NGOs within the international human rights framework, highlighting their diverse functions and their growing influence in shaping both local and global responses to human rights abuses. The discussion also considers the challenges these organizations face, including political resistance, security risks, and financial constraints, as well as ongoing efforts to advance justice, accountability, and dignity for all. Keywords: Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Human rights system, Leading International NGOs, Advocacy, Legal Assistance, Challenges, Types of non-governmental organisations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Legitimacy.

The Covid19 pandemic has changed society's spatial practices substantially. Large-scale social restrictions, lockdowns, and the obligation to wear masks have changed the way humans relates to each other personally and politically. This article discusses how the pandemic has shaped civic space of women activists and how women activists maintain and create civic space amid the pandemic and democratic regression. The data source of the article is collected through online survey of 20 women activists and in-depth online interviews. The results show that civil society organizations in Indonesia are under immense pressure due to pandemic and democratic regression. For civil society organizations, their space is limited by various legal regulations and various violence and stigma aimed at civil society activists. More than that, for women activists the pandemic also provides additional domestic burdens which make the space for women activists increasingly limited. In the midst of these obstacles, our research shows that women and civil society activists do not reduce their intensity in maintaining the civic space.

GENERATING MOMENTUM TOWARDS COMMUNITY ROLES IN UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGE: KEY OUTCOMES OF A SERIES OF STATE-CIVIL SOCIETY CONSULTATIVE PROCESSES

Effective protection of fundamental human rights is one of the main features of a modern democratic state governed by the rule of law. Non-governmental human rights institutions are an important component of the international human rights protection mechanism, as they operate at the local, regional, national and international levels. The relevance of the study is due to several factors, including: increased attention to human rights in the international legal system, increasing cases of human rights violations in the world, and the lack of effectiveness of national human rights mechanisms. Among other things, the Russian-Ukrainian war is of particular relevance, as the level of human rights violations in the conflict zone is extremely high. In view of this, a comprehensive study of the role of international non-governmental organisations in international human rights mechanisms is clearly relevant. The aim of the work is defining the role of non-governmental organisations in the international human rights protection mechanism and determining the forms of participation of international non-governmental organisations in the protection of human rights at the international level. The methodological basis of the study. In order to achieve this goal, an integrated approach is applied, which determines the use of general and special scientific research methods. In particular, the functional method was used to determine the functions of international non-governmental organisations in the field of human rights protection. The formal legal method was used to analyse the provisions of international legal acts. The systemic-structural method was used to identify the main features of the participation of international non-governmental organisations in the mechanism of human rights protection at the international level. The methods of analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, and analogy were also used to formulate conclusions and proposals. Results. The article examines the role of international non-governmental organisations in the international human rights mechanism. The study covers the results of the activities of international non-governmental organisations Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Federation for Human Rights, Human Rights First, Interights and other non- governmental organisations that draw the attention of citizens and governments around the world to human rights violations. It is noted that the activities of non-governmental organisations in addressing the issue of human rights protection are effective and have an important impact on the resolution of human rights violations. It is emphasised that the role of international non- governmental organisations is growing in the current context, as their activities have an impact on addressing human rights violations in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Geoffrey Robertson, QC, Crimes against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice, 2nd edn (Penguin, 2002), p. 473. Reed Brody, Smita Narula, Arvind Ganesan, Joe Stork, Joseph Buttigieg, Jacinda Swanson & Neve Gordon, ‘Human Rights and Global Capitalism: A Roundtable Discussion with Human Rights Watch’, Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2001), pp. 52–71. For example, the Human Rights Watch Arms Project report, Exposing the Source: US Companies and the Production of Anti‐Personnel Mines (April 1997), received specific funding from Radda barnen (Swedish Save the Children). At the time of the report's publication, the Arms Project also acknowledged funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ploughshares Fund and the Ruth Mott Fund. This section is based on much of the information available from the Human Rights Watch website. See http://www.hrw.org for additional information. See http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/china0803/ See http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/ukraine0803/ See http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/angola0803/ See Michael Ignatieff, ‘Human rights, sovereignty and intervention’, in: Nicholas Owen (ed.), Human Rights, Human Wrongs (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 52–87, for a more wide‐ranging discussion. Jeri Laber, The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age with the Human Rights Movement (Public Affairs, 2002), p. 134. See http://www.hrw.org/annual‐report/1998/20years6.html Human Rights Watch World Report 2001, ‘Introduction’. Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (Polity, 2003). Polly Toynbee, ‘Who's afraid of global culture', in: Anthony Giddens & Will Hutton (eds), On The Edge: Living With Global Capitalism (Vintage, 2001), p. 197. Anthony Giddens & Will Hutton, ‘Fighting back’, in: Giddens & Hutton, On The Edge, p. 222. See, for example: Sacrificing Women to Save the Family?: Domestic Violence in Uzbekistan, July 2001; Promises Betrayed: Denial of Rights of Bidun, Women, and Freedom of Expression, October 2000; and Hatred in the Hallways: Violence against Gay, Lesbian, and Transgendered Students in the U.S. Schools, May 2001. See, for example, Spreading Despair: Russian Abuses in Ingushetia, September 2003. See, for example: ‘Iraq: Mass Graves Still Unprotected’, available at http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/05/iraq051103.htm; and The Mass Graves of al‐Mahawil: The Truth Uncovered (May 2003), available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0503/ See http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/05/drc052103.htm Alex de Waal, ‘Becoming Shameless: The Failure of Human Rights Organizations in Rwanda’, Times Literary Supplement, April 1997, pp. 3–4. Brody et al., ‘Human Rights and Global Capitalism’. See also David Rieff, ‘The Precarious Triumph of Human Rights’, The New York Times Magazine, 8 August 1999, section 6, p. 37. See Sanford F. Schram, Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social Science and the Social Science of Poverty (University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 80. One forum for such censure has been the UN Commission on Human Rights, which has been criticised, however, in recent years for allowing a number of violating governments to assemble in the hopes, HRW would argue, of dampening its influence. Brody et al., ‘Human Rights and Global Capitalism’, p. 55. Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Project of Human Rights Watch Asia, The Small Hands of Slavery: Bonded Child Labor in India (September 1996), pp. 5, 6. Scared at School: Sexual Violence Against Girls in South African Schools (March 2001), available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/safrica/. Double Standards: Women's Property Rights Violations in Kenya (March 2003), available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/kenya0303/ ‘Editorial’, Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 12, No. 3 (2000). Robertson, Crimes against Humanity, p. 347. See http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/icc/us.htm Robertson, Crimes against Humanity, p. 369. See http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/icc/us.htm See http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/icc/docs/ken‐icc0909.htm Kaldor, Global Civil Society, p. 7. Afghanistan: The Massacre in Mazar‐i Sharif (November 1998), available at http://www.hrw.org/reports98/afghan/ Humanity Denied: Systematic Violations of Women's Rights in Afghanistan (October 2001), available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan3/ James D. Ross, ‘Promoting Human Rights’, Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2002), pp. 27–32. See also Closed Door Policy: Afghan Refugees in Pakistan and Iran (February 2002), available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/pakistan/ Human Rights Watch, September 11: One Year On, A Message to the Human Rights Watch Community, available at http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/09/sept11.html See http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/september11/opportunismwatch.htm Michael Ignatieff, ‘Is the Human Rights Era Ending?’, New York Times, 5 February 2002. See The Price of Oil: Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights Violations in Nigeria's Oil Producing Communities (January 1999), available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/nigeria/index.htm See http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/04/ecuador0425.htm See The Enron Corporation: Corporate Complicity in Human Rights Violations (January 1999), available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/enron/ Ibid. Peter T. Muchlinski, ‘Human Rights and Multinationals: Is There a Problem?’, International Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 1 (2001), p. 32. See, for example, U.N.: New Standards for Corporations and Human Rights, available at http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/08/un081303.htm No Financing for Russia's War in Chechnya (December 1999), available at http://www.hrw.org/press/1999/dec/chech1215.htm See http://www.hrw.org/asia/china.php See http://www.hrw.org/press/2000/06/ang0622.htm Muchlinski, ‘Human Rights and Multinationals’, p. 35. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAlison M.S. Watson Alison M.S. Watson, Department of International Relations, University of St Andrews, United College, North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, Scotland, UK. Alison M.S. Watson, Department of International Relations, University of St Andrews, United College, North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, Scotland, UK.

Restriction of civic space is widely understood as a condition that constrains the autonomous role of civil society organizations. However, this conceptualization is delimiting. This paper explores civic space as constituted in the dynamics between civil society organizations and state actors, contributing to an emergent shift to a more processual, relational and agential understanding of civic space, involving a redefining of civil society roles by state and civil society actors acting and reacting within their everyday work. We explore the case of India. Based on 36 interviews with state and civil society actors, the paper. shows how the state marginalizes civil society through three pathways: delegitimation, displacement and repurposing. A fourth pattern, however, qualifies this marginalization: political roles for civil society continue to be sought and found, depending on situations and the specific actors involved, based on their interpretations and political advantages at stake for them. The broader significance of these findings is, first, that everyday understanding and experience of civic space may prominently revolve around changes in civil society roles. Second, these changes in roles may best be understood at the level of concrete cases of relating and political contention, doing justice to the agency of the actors involved.

Transnational Advocacy, Global Civil Society? Emerging Evidence from the Field of Education

L'objectif des auteurs de cet article est double. Il s'agit d'une part de presenter une etude exploratoire sur les tendances actuelles temoignant de l'emergence d'un nouvel activisme non gouvernemental dans le champ de l'education et d'autre part de dresser un cadre analytique afin d'evaluer l'importance de cet activisme, en elaborant des concepts bases sur les recherches ayant porte sur les nouveaux mouvements sociaux et les debats theoriques actuels a propos de la societe civile mondiale.