Mary Kaldor

The idea of global civil society

The main argument of this article is that the idea of global civil society challenges the concept of international relations. It traces the evolution of the idea of society and argues that civil society has always meant a rule-governed society where rules were based on some form of social contract among citizens. Historically, civil society was always territorially tied and contrasted with international relations between states. What changed in the 1980s and 1990s was the global dimension of civil society—a social contract is being negotiated across borders establishing a set of global rules involving states as well as international institutions. The article ends by asking whether September 11 and the war in Iraq mark a reversion to international relations.

Human security: a new strategic narrative for Europe

This article examines the potential of human security as a narrative and operational frame for the European Unions external relations. Human security is about the security of individuals and communities and it links physical and material security—‘freedom from fear’, and ‘freedom from want’. The article addresses both the lexis (language) and praxis (practice)of human security in relation to the EU. Much of the language currently used in EU external relations, particularly crisis management, civil—military cooperation and conflict management, already contains elements of a human security approach. At the same time, the concept of human security goes beyond these terms and if formally adopted and elaborated could greatly strengthen the EUs role as a global security actor. The article develops five principles of human security—human rights, legitimate political authority, multilateralism and regional focus—and makes the case that the application of these principles would increase the coherence, effectiveness and visibility of EU missions. The article concludes that the adoption of a human security approach would build on the foundational ideas of Europe in overcominga history of war and imperialism and could help to rally public opinion behind the European idea. More importantly, it would contribute to closing the real security vacuum that exists in large parts of the world today.

Democratization in central and east European countries

The misery of Eastern Europes small nations .. causes such great suspicion and irritation in Western European observers. [This] leads many people to conclude that the entire region.. .should be abandoned to its fate...This regions inability to consolidate itself is not due to its inherently barbarian nature, but to a series of unfortunate historical processes which squeezed it off the main course of European consolidation...We should not give up on the idea of consolidating this region if for no other reason than for the fact that today, after 30 years of great confusion, we can clearly see the course of consolidation; after the passing of mutual hatreds, occupations, civil strife, and geno-

The ‘Bubbling Up’ of Subterranean Politics in Europe

This article presents the findings of a collaborative research project involving seven field teams across Europe investigating a range of new political phenomena termed ‘subterranean politics’. The article argues that the social mobilizations and collective activities in 2011 and 2012 were probably less joined up, more heterogeneous, and, perhaps, even, smaller, than similar phenomena during the last decade, but what was striking was their ‘resonance’ among mainstream public opinion—the ‘bubbling up’ of subterranean politics. The main findings included: • Subterranean political actors perceive the crisis as a political crisis rather than a reaction to austerity. Subterranean politics is just as much a characteristic of Germany, where there are no austerity policies, as other countries. • Subterranean political actors are concerned about democracy but not as it is currently practised. They experiment with new democratic practises, in the squares, on the Internet, and elsewhere. • This new political generation not only uses social networking to organize but the Internet has profoundly affected the culture of political activism. • In contrast to mainstream public debates, Europe is ‘invisible’ even though many subterranean political actors feel themselves to be European. The research concludes that the term ‘subterranean politics’ is a useful concept that needs further investigation and that Europe needs to be problematized to seek a way out of the crisis.

`Civilising' Globalisation? The Implications of the `Battle in Seattle'

The Third Ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which took place in Seattle between 30 November and 3 December 1999, broke up without agreement on a new Millennium Round of talks to further liberalise world trade. There was conflict within the official meeting among the representatives of governments especially between the rich and the poor countries, who felt excluded from the key decision-making bodies. And there was conflict with nongovernmental groups, both those that were officially registered and participated in a symposium with official delegates the day before and those who were only able to protest in the streets outside. The list of the 700 NGOs that were registered for the meeting reads like a rollcall of global civil society. The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution and the AntiSlavery Campaign jostled side by side with the Kenya National Farmers Union, the Canadian Broiler Hatching Egg Marketing Agency, the Dutch Association of World Shops, the Federation of Japan Tuna Fisheries Association, the Georgian Environment and Biological Monitoring Association, the Kalahari Conservation Society (Botswana), the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, the Snack Food Association, the Sierra Club, Public Citizen, the Swiss Coalition of Development Users, the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme, the World Rainforest Movement, and the AFL-CIO to name but a handful. And of course outside, there were anarchists who attacked the offices of US global corporations like Starbucks and The Gap, there were people campaigning to free Tibet, and there were many locals as well. There are two interpretations of what happened in Seattle. One holds that the protesters represented a form of anti-systemic resistance and that the break up of the talks inside marked a setback for globalisation, the beginning of what could become a new phase of ‘de-globalisation’. The other holds that what happened was a victory for political globalisation or globalisation from below, the ‘coming out party’, to quote the New York Times, for global activism or for global civil society.

American power: from ‘compellance’ to cosmopolitanism?

This article argues that the Bush strategy of ‘spectacle war’ is caught in an earlier Cold War paradigm primarily aimed at influencing American public opinion and that it fails to take into account the reality of the current global context, especially with regard to changes in the nature of sovereignty and in the role of military force. The United States, in its current posture, has the capability to be very destructive but is much less able to do ‘compellance’, that is to say, to impose its will on others. In particular, the current strategy cannot defeat terrorism. The article draws up a typology of different visions of how American power is, or should be, exercised based on different assumptions about sovereignty and military power. It concludes that American power can only be exercised constructively within a cosmopolitan framework. Such a framework is best suited to the containment, and possibly, the defeat of terrorism. It would contribute both to global economic growth and to American democracy.

The Global Civil Society Yearbook: Lessons and Insights 2001–2011

Tony Judt’s book, Ill Fares the Land (2010), and a pamphlet by Stephane Hessel entitled Indignez-Vous!, or ‘Time for Outrage’ (see Box 1.2) have been circulating among the European protestors of 2011. Both are passionate pleas for indignation against the overwhelmingly ideology of free markets and greed. Both are appeals to the young from older people close to their end — Judt knew he was dying when he wrote the book and Hessel, a hero of the French Resistance, is in his nineties. And both books are, perhaps not surprisingly, nostalgic, reinforcing Marx’s argument that when people try to change their circumstances they dress up in the clothes of the past; both yearn for a time in the post-war period, when people believed in universal welfare and in the possibility of a benign state guiding a creative market — the Social Democratic vision.

The EU as a New Form of Political Authority: The Example of the Common Security and Defence Policy

This article puts forward the argument that the EU should be understood not as a nation-state in the making but as a new type of polity that could offer a model of global governance. It uses the example of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) to illustrate the argument. It suggests that CSDP is designed to make a contribution to global security rather than to protect borders using military force, as in the case of classic nation-states. It proposes that CSDP should be explicitly based on the concept of human security and should acquire human security capabilities that include both military and civilians operating according to human security principles in a way that is more like law enforcement than fighting wars. To achieve this, the CSDP would require stronger political backing and this would mean increasing the representativeness and accountability of the EU. By the same token, an effective CSDP would increase the legitimacy of the EU.

Europe at the millennium

This article argues that the future of the European project depends on the capacity to maintain security. It traces the link between security and political institutions in the case of nation states and, subsequently, blocs. The security of nation states and blocs was defined in terms of the defence of borders against an external enemy and the preservation of law and order within borders. Today, the distinction between internal and external has broken down; ‘new wars’ are a mixture of war, organised crime and violations of human rights. Security can only be maintained through the extension of law and order beyond borders – through enlargement, migration and citizenship policies, and effective humanitarian intervention. Any other approach could lead to a reversal of the process of integration. This type of security policy is likely to be associated with a very different type of polity.

Reply to David Chandler

David Chandler’s critique of global civil society is a critique of the notion of civil society rather than anything specifically ‘global’. He objects to the concept of a communicative space where individuals debate public affairs on the grounds that it is too idealistic. Yet this has always been the meaning of civil society. It is only recently that the term civil society has come to be used synonymously with non-governmental organizations. It was Hegel (not me as David Chandler suggests) who defined civil society as an ethical realm. And what he meant, and this is also meant by the normative definition of civil society, was not so much a realm representing a particular ethical or moral outlook, as Chandler claims, but a realm where different values are debated. For Hegel, it was the realm where the particular (selfish interests) confront the universal (public concerns). When I say that civil society is a political project, what I mean is that, on the whole, better decisions are likely to be taken if they are based on public debate than if they are not. My own definition of civil society, which Chandler conveniently leaves out in a long quotation from my work, is the medium through which individuals negotiate and struggle for a social contract with the centres of political and economic authority. The use of the term social contract draws on enlightenment thinkers who pioneered the modern concept of civil society and the idea of legitimate authority or authority based on consent. Hence individuals have to be relatively free to negotiate such a contract. In theory, groups engaged in violence or negotiating exclusive contracts are excluded, though in practice the boundaries are never clear. This definition is close to the notion of a public sphere but puts more emphasis on politics and agency. Like the public sphere, the medium through which individuals negotiate a social contract has changed over time and this explains the changing empirical definitions of civil society. Over time, free public spaces get institutionalized and debate and negotiation move to new arenas. Thus, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries debates about public affairs took place in coffee houses and were reflected in parliamentary debates, which is why civil society at that time referred to a rule-governed society based on a social contract. In the nineteenth century, the spread of capitalism created autonomous spaces in the economy and debates involved the emerging bourgeoisie—hence for Hegel, and his definition was taken up by Marx, civil society was equated with bourgeois society. And in the twentieth century, the rise of workers movements and the emergence of mass political parties