Global Civil Society: The Rise of a New Global Actor?

The aim of this article is to provide some reflective views on the political origins of the epistemological process leading to the ontological notion of Global Civil Society (GCS). From this perspective, the GCS is depicted as a social construction inherent to the dynamics of globalization. It has become a social referent derived from biased cognitive perceptions acquired through, and based upon, information gathering from the media and other processed data sources. As a theoretical concept, GCS has been strategically adapted to the political objective of managing the growingly diversified expressions of knowledge awareness about transnationalized societal environment. The role of epistemic and other innovation communities, such as think tanks and discourse coalitions, is addressed and evaluated. From an international relations theoretical perspective, arguments are provided on why the GCS cannot be considered as a global actor. The article also addresses how and why the GCS tends to be politically and socially equated with resistance and/or anti-globalization movements, stressing some of the multidimensional effects stemming from this conceptual linkage and derived causality nexus. The vague and loose definition of GCS, and the constantly evolving societal contours of the notion, allow for the fuzziness of its conceptual meanng, operational milieu and analytical margins, as well as for the multiple, flexible, simultaneously transitory and diversified allegiances, including tactically space-time oriented in-and-out movements, thus providing for the strategically instrumental function ascribed to this “problem-solving” concept.