As the world becomes ever more tightly integrated, rapid economic, political, and technological changes create urgent new needs for global rules. Those needs raise pressing questions about who gets to make the rules. A swiftly growing number of coalitions of civil society groups now claim the right to a say in everything from nuclear arms control negotiations to the operations of multinational corporations. These transnational networks are much in the limelight, alternately portrayed as rock-throwing anarchists disrupting the serious deliberations of governments, or the last remaining hope for global peace and justice. Despite the hype, there has been surprisingly little rigorous analysis of the fundamental issues raised by this growing role of transnational civil society. Are these networks truly powerful, or merely good at attracting attention to themselves? How much of a role are they likely to play in addressing the world’s problems in the coming decades? What are their legitimate roles and what are likely to be their aims?
The Third Force sheds new light on the answers to those questions. Its six case studies compel recognition that these border-spanning networks are a real and enduring force in the international relations of the 21st century. That reality will require governments and corporations, the targets of civil society campaigns, to adjust their behavior and their decision-making practices. And, as Ann Florini argues, the networkers themselves need to recognize that their new influence imposes new responsibilities. Above all, those involved in transnational civil society networks must become far more transparent about who they are, what they are doing, why they are doing it, and who is paying for it.
The book grew out of a presentation given by Dr. Florini at a session on civil society and international governance at the 1998 Global ThinkNet Conference, sponsored by the Japan Center for International Exchange in Tokyo. That Tokyo meeting made it clear that the role of transnational civil society networks in global governance was both important and insufficiently examined, particularly by researchers outside the United States. Accordingly, JCIE asked Dr. Florini to direct a study that would bring together researchers from a variety of countries. Most of the authors she assembled are both participants in and analysts of the networks about which they write, a combination that provides them with unusual insight.
The Third Force provides a carefully-formulated framework of common questions for each case study, making it possible for the book to uncover broad trends. Its dispassionate analysis reveals not only how useful transnational civil society networks can be, but also how difficult it is for those networks to live up to the self-professed ideals that render their power legitimate.
The Japan Center for International Exchange and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace both believe that as globalization changes the identity of policy actors and transforms the processes of international relations, policy research institutes like ours must help policy makers and the public alike understand and respond to the challenges of this new era. The Third Force represents a major step forward in that understanding.
The ThinkNet conferences are the centerpiece of the Global ThinkNet project, which the Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) launched in 1996, with the generous support of the Nippon Foundation, to commemorate its twenty-fifth anniversary. The Global ThinkNet aims to strengthen cross-border intellectual networks among research institutions and researchers. Under its auspices, researchers from around the world collaborate on projects related to the themes of globalization, governance, and civil society.
Both of us would like to express our gratitude for the generous support of the Nippon Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, without which this project would not have been possible.
