Civil society, global governance, and the quest for legitimacy

The chapter examines the role of civil society organizations in global governance. It begins with an analysis of the contextual conditions which allowed for the development of transnational activism in the last decades. It then identifies a number of challenges and opportunities for civil society in global governance which pertain to the current configuration of international affairs in terms of institutional and political power. It then unfold the main features of transnational activism in terms of organizational structure (in the form of transnational networks), repertoire of action (in the form of transnational campaigns) and in their politics of norms change which shape their advocacy. After this the chapter analyses the political opportunity structure within which transnational actors of civil society play. In the last part of the paper, the global unbalances in the geographical distribution of civil society organizations worldwide and the issue of legitimacy intended as in-between autonomy and cooptation are addressed.