Civil society and the problem of global democracy

This article criticizes the increasingly popular idea that global civil society (GCS) represents an appealing model of or strategy for global democracy. After briefly reviewing the arguments for conceiving global democracy and democratization in terms of GCS, it distinguishes two models of civil society's democratic role at the state level on which these claims rest. It shows that neither successfully survives transposition to the supranational setting. In both cases the purported democratic functions and effects of civil society depend on assumptions that do not hold globally. Proponents of GCS as a model of global democracy do not adequately conceptualize global democracy or democratization. This failure points to broader epistemological problems in theorizing global politics and global democracy. In place of strategies to extend and apply existing democratic theory globally, we need a theory of global democracy.