The new geography of global civil society: NGOs in the world city network

emphasized a north-west European bias. This has been taken to imply that global civil society is but a pale geographical shadow of the power concentrations in global economy and governance. Using an interlocking network model and data on 74 global NGOs with offices across 178 cities, NGO connectivity values for cities show that there is a ‘global South’, especially sub-Saharan African, geographical bias. Nairobi is the most connected world city with respect to NGO activities. This marked contrast to recent received wisdom implies a diffuse network power relationship. To the extent that global NGOs reveal the new geography of global civil society in a space of flows, these results support a positive interpretation for NGOs contributing to an emancipatory global agenda. In the first yearbook of Global Civil Society (Anheier et al., 2001a) the geography of its subject is given prominence. In the introductory chapter, the editors note that ‘in particular, one of the most striking findings of the Yearbook is that global civil society is heavily concentrated in north-western Europe ’ (Anheier et al., 2001b, p. 7 [emphasis original]). They illustrate this with a table that identifies the top countries that are the ‘focal points ’ of globalization, inter-national rule of law and global civil society (Anheier et al., 2001b, pp. 8–9). Three indices of each category are included and the 11 countries that appear in six or more lists are high-