The Democratization of Global Governance through Civil Society Actors and the Challenge from Political Equality

Introduction

Understood in the abstract, the ideal of democracy, ‘the rule by the people’, contains a form of political rule or organization where the members have an equal say in the decision-making. Although there are numerous different models of democracy, most of them assume that civil society plays a vital role for democracy by displaying the interests, preferences and will of the people and by promoting a political culture of ‘democratic’ norms in the society. There is of course also a myriad of theories about what civil society consists of, but on a broad outlook, the term ‘civil society’ is typically used to describe those actors and institutions that are distinct from the business sector and from government and governance arrangements, such as non-governmental organizations and social movements. Apart from these general characteristics, however, there is disagreement over what role, more specifically, civil society should play to strengthen democracy.

In a global context, in the literature on the role of civil society in global democracy, one of the most influential approaches is the transmission belt model, which has gained increased popularity not only among political theorists (Dryzek, 2006, 2009, 2011; Kuyper, 2016; Stevenson and Dryzek, 2012, 2014) but also among empirical social scientists (Bäckstrand, 2006, 2011; Nanz and Steffek, 2004, 2008; Stevenson, 2014, 2016) in the last years. Emerging within a deliberative framework, largely inspired by Jürgen Habermas’ theory of deliberative democracy, this model depicts transnational civil society as a transmission belt between the public sphere and decision-making loci – or in the terminology used by its proponents, between the public space and the empowered space – where it is assumed that civil society actors contribute to the democratization of global governance by transmitting people’s preferences, beliefs and opinions from the public space to the empowered space through involvement in the political decision-making.

The overall aim in this article is to show that this model is misconstrued and generates erroneous prescriptions of how transnational civil society actors should act to democratize global governance. More specifically, two claims are made. First, I argue that the transmission belt model fails because insofar as civil society has formalized influence in the decision-making, it is illegitimate, and insofar as it has informal influence in the decision-making, it is legitimate, but civil society’s special status as transmitter is dissolved, since all actors in the public space have an equal status as transmitters in the intended sense. Second, I argue that civil society is better understood as a transmission belt, not between the public space and the empowered space (decision-making loci), but between the private space (lifeworld) and the public space. If this view is plausible, it is here that civil society has a distinct role to play for democracy with its unique capacity to stay attuned to concerns in the lifeworld and to communicate those in a publically accessible form. Without a vigorous civil society knitting the private space to the public space, the public space could not perform its democratic function as a sounding board for societal problems in need of political solutions. On this view, rather than seeking proximity to the empowered space by having a say in the decision-making, civil society must be (sufficiently) autonomous of the empowered space to fully develop its democratizing potential in this transmitting role. The article ends by meeting the argument from feasibility, namely, that the motivating force of the transmission belt model is that under current non-ideal conditions, civil society is the best means we have for democratizing global governance through its involvement in the decision-making. Here it is argued that apart from being more justified, the suggested alternative view of the role of civil society is also more feasible, since it does not require that civil society actors fulfil any criteria of transparency, inclusion, authenticity, consequentiality or responsiveness, and the like, in order to contribute to the democratization of global governance, as demanded by the transmission belt model.

The key motivation for conducting this study is twofold. With regard to the critical analysis of erroneous ways of theorizing the proper role of civil society actors in the democratization of global governance, this is not primarily a philosophical exercise but is meant to offer theoretical tools for social scientists in general. Within social sciences, there is widespread hope that civil society has a crucial role to play for the democratization of global governance in times of globalization. Yet, the tools used to theorize this role have been both conceptually and normatively imprecise. With regard to the constructive part of the argument, the analysis is driven by a suspicion that there are many ways in which civil society actors may contribute to democratization that are underappreciated and therefore undertheorized because democratic theory generally tends to (over)focus on decision-making. However, this is only one of several key functions for a political system to function democratically.

In developing these arguments, the article unfolds in four sections. First, I sketch the main assumptions of the transmission belt model (I). Thereafter, the argument in support of the first claim is developed (II), followed by a defence of the second claim (III). In the fourth section, I respond to the argument from feasibility (IV), whereas the last section concludes (V).

The Transmission Belt Model

If democratic theory took a deliberative turn in the 1990s, it has taken a ‘civil society turn’ in the last decades when theorizing democracy of global governance arrangements. In light of the present circumstances of world politics, consisting of a growing asymmetry between rule-makers and rule-takers and inequalities among states, many democratic theorists investigate the role of transnational civil society actors – ranging from social movements to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – for achieving more transnational or global democracy. Transnational civil society actors are increasingly seen as a vital component of international politics. They steadily increase both in numbers and, some would argue, in political importance. Today, they interact with virtually all international organizations with various degrees of institutionalization and formalization (Charnovitz, 1997; Tallberg et al., 2013). The European Union, for example, consults a wide range of civil society organizations, and in global economic governance, the World Bank has established far-reaching interactions for at least two decades (Steffek et al., 2010: 100).

Instead of emphasizing juridical aspects, this what we may call ‘civil society view’ lays stress on core democratic qualities such as participation, inclusion, deliberation and transparency. It is argued that civil society offers a rich soil for reformulating democracy globally since it is inhabited by a growing range of social actors that create new political spaces, which are not delimited by territorial nation-state borders and therefore are more suitable for confronting the globalized political problems that we face today (Erman, 2013: 848). It is commonly argued that the participation of the transnational civil society in global governance will contribute to a democratization of world politics (Greenwood, 2007; Kohler-Koch, 2007; Steffek and Ferretti, 2009).

In theorizing how to re-establish symmetry between rule-makers and rule-takers in global politics, proponents of the civil society view commonly turn against cosmopolitan models of democracy, because even if cosmopolitan democrats reformulate sovereignty in functional rather than territorial terms, they still regard electoral representation and the juridicalization of international organizations through some idea of an overarching cosmopolitan law as essential for the democratization of global governance (Archibugi, 2000, 2002; Held, 2002). Being sceptical of the import of these traditional ‘statist’ features into global politics, advocates of the civil society view wish instead to democratize global decision-making through the increased involvement of civil society actors, which are supposed to represent (in a non-electoral way) marginalized groups and stakeholder interests and concerns in the decision-making (Charnovitz, 2006; Dryzek, 2006, 2009, 2011; Keck, 2004; Macdonald, 2008; Macdonald and Macdonald, 2010; Peruzzotti, 2006; Scholte, 2002, 2005, 2014; Stevenson and Dryzek, 2012, 2014; Van Rooy, 2004).

The most popular version of the civil society view in the current theoretical literature is what is sometimes referred to as the ‘transmission belt’ model. According to this model, deliberative democracy is the most viable theoretical tool for theorizing regional and global democracy, since a deliberative understanding of democratic collective decision-making is particularly well-suited for the non-hierarchical, non-electoral and non-territorial features of world politics (Eriksen and Fossum, 2000; Nanz and Steffek, 2004; Payne and Samhat, 2004; Schmalz-Bruns, 2001; Steffek, 2003). Instead of promoting democratization through law-making, the transmission belt model focuses on democratization through the strengthening of the discursive quality of global political processes via civil society. The model is depicted as consisting of three main properties: the public space, in which informal processes of will- and opinion-formation among citizens take place, the empowered space, in which authoritative collective decision-making takes place, and civil society acting as a transmission belt between these two spaces (Bäckstrand, 2006, 2011; Dryzek, 2006, 2011; Kuyper, 2016; Steffek and Nanz, 2004, 2005, 2008; Stevenson and Dryzek, 2014). ¹

According to this model, transnational civil society organizations mitigate the democratic deficit in global governance insofar as they function as an intermediary between the public space (transnational citizenry) and the empowered space (global decision-makers, such as international organizations), allowing the former to affect the deliberations and decision-making within the latter (Dryzek, 2011: 226; Nanz and Steffek, 2008: 8). It is argued that the transmission belt sidesteps the bottleneck of interest aggregation and representation through hierarchical state structures and instead channels political demands directly into international forums (Steffek et al., 2010: 101). In global climate governance, for example, ‘civil society can exercise discursive influence on formal negotiations and collective decision-making as well as promoting a transnational public sphere independent from sovereign authority’ (Bäckstrand, 2011: 6; see also Bäckstrand et al., 2010).

The function of civil society actors to transmit citizens’ concerns and interests into the decision process of the empowered space is served in two main ways. To begin with, it is stressed that civil society actors should act as transmitters by lending a voice to the global citizenry and take into consideration the input of stakeholder concerns through informal channels, aiming at opening up relevant discourses to a wider public and informally influence global decision-making. In order to successfully represent and speak for the global citizenry through such informal means, however, and ‘push global governance towards democratization’, civil society actors must also have a formal role in the decision procedures: their participation must be institutionalized so that they get formal access to the decision-making arenas (Nanz and Steffek, 2008: 14). Any democratization via civil society involvement therefore requires participation rights for non-state actors and clearly defined rules of collaboration, to govern the interaction between civil society actors and international organizations. Only in this way are civil society actors acknowledged as ‘legitimate interlocutors in political debate’ (Nanz and Steffek, 2008: 14).

In order for civil society actors to contribute to the democratization of global governance arrangements by engaging in these informal and formal processes and hence realize the ‘transmission belt ideal’, proponents agree that they have to fulfil certain criteria (Steffek et al., 2010: 101). Since these actors are supposed to constitute a transmission belt and give voice to citizens globally, ‘we cannot avoid the question of their internal functioning’, because the transmission belt model presumes that such actors have the capacity ‘to represent elements of a global citizenry’ (Steffek et al., 2010: 104). And it is here that deliberative democracy becomes most useful conceptually and normatively, the argument goes, since it is not premised on a traditional numerical understanding of political representation but on the representation of interests, values or discourses.

There is no shared set of criteria that civil society actors must fulfil in order to contribute to the democratization of global governance through their involvement in the decision-making. Rather, proponents of the transmission belt model emphasize different (albeit overlapping) criteria as central. On Jens Steffek et al’s view, for example, civil society actors are voluntary associations mobilizing around certain problems and concerns and may only claim to be representative of their supporters, members and beneficiaries (Steffek et al., 2010: 104). They must consult their supporters, members and beneficiaries on policy-relevant decisions as well as be accountable to their constituency in order to be legitimate. The capacity to fulfil the ‘transmission belt ideal’ is measured by the authors in terms of five normative criteria: participation, inclusion, transparency, responsiveness, and independence (Steffek et al., 2010: 101).

The criterion of participation, for instance, requires participation in the civil society organization by members, supporters, and beneficiaries. While members often acquire a formal status by paying fees, supporters are individuals who share the aims of the organization (Nanz and Steffek, 2004; Steffek et al., 2010: 105). And the case for the inclusion of beneficiaries are made by pleading to the fact that ‘they are directly affected by the advocacy work or service provision’ of the civil society organization (Steffek et al., 2010: 106).

The criterion of inclusion, furthermore, is essential for assessing the democratic quality of the decision-making. It requires that all possible arguments of those possibly affected by a decision are included in the deliberative process (Nanz and Steffek, 2005: 377). However, since civil society organizations, unlike international organizations, are engaged in advocacy for specific concerns rather than issuing binding rules, they should not be required to speak for all potentially disadvantaged addressees of governance but only of those within their own current constituency, i.e. their members, supporters and beneficiaries (Steffek et al., 2010: 109–110).

The criterion of transparency concerns the access to accurate and comprehensible information about decisions and decision-making processes. Not only authoritative entities (empowered space) need to fulfil the criterion of providing information to the general public and the participants involved, but civil society organizations themselves must do so in order to contribute to democratization (Nanz and Steffek, 2005: 375). From a deliberative point of view, transparency is a precondition for well-functioning deliberative processes within a civil society organization. While this does not mean that information must be actively disseminated, it requires that the means and procedures for acquiring information is provided (Nanz and Steffek, 2005: 375; Steffek et al., 2010: 113).

If civil society actors have access to formal decision power, proponents of the transmission belt model often stress the need to put higher demands of democratic legitimation than if they act solely as non-electoral representatives via informal channels, since then they take part in the exercise of (coercive) collective decision-making (Kuyper, 2016: 308). ² In Jonathan Kuyper’s view, for example, legitimacy demands differ in the empowered and the public space. Whereas actors in both spaces may not harm those they affect, they only owe democratic standing to those affected if they become subjected to coercive decision-making in the empowered space. This is so because only actors who can make coercive rules, laws, and decisions should become legitimate by being held responsible to deliberative capacity in a demanding sense, which requires the fulfilment of three criteria: inclusivity, authenticity, and consequentiality (Kuyper, 2016, drawing on Dryzek, 2009). ³

In brief, inclusivity is considered essential since without equal inclusion we may have ‘deliberation but not deliberative democracy’, according to Kuyper (2016: 313). In a similar vein as Steffek et al., but with focus on interests rather than possible arguments, this criterion generates the duty of non-electoral representatives such as civil society organizations to include the interests of their constituency and not to exclude the interests of other subjected actors from the empowered space (2016: 315). This duty implies that a wide array of interests are articulated and ventilated so that individuals and groups can confront each other’s views and have an equal opportunity to influence the outcomes of the deliberation. The criterion of authenticity, moreover, demands that interlocutors deliberate in a non-coercive, reciprocal and generalizable manner. Their arguments must consist of ‘generalizable claims that connect their position with the interests of subjected and affected parties’ and thus move beyond self-interest (Kuyper, 2016: 315). Finally, the criterion of consequentiality requires that the outcomes of deliberation ‘reflect the process of deliberative preference formation’ (Kuyper, 2016: 313). In other words, generated laws, rules and regulations must reflect authenticity and inclusion (Kuyper 2016: 315). In sum, insofar as civil society actors act as non-electoral representatives in the empowered space, this threefold requirement must be fulfilled in order for them to contribute to the democratization of the system.

It is not clear in any of these accounts whether the proposed criteria are necessary and/or jointly sufficient for a civil society actor to be considered contributing to the democratization of global governance. ⁴ However, the most plausible interpretation in view of what is claimed is that all of them must be minimally fulfilled (and that they may be seen as ‘counting’ standards above this threshold, i.e. the more they are fulfilled, the more democracy is strengthened).

Political Equality and the Transmission Belt Model

What is of interest in this article is not primarily the content and status of specific criteria per se but the role ascribed to civil society actors that generates these normative prescriptions. To investigate this, let us start with a premise shared by deliberative democrats generally, including advocates of the transmission belt model. On this premise, democracy consists of a public space and an empowered space and democratic legitimacy is generated if and only if and because (a) deliberation takes place in both spaces through practices of opinion- and will-formation, and (b) the formalized decision procedures (empowered space) are sensitive to citizens’ concerns flowing from the public space such that they are reflected in the law- and policy-making. The question is, on what grounds do supporters of the transmission belt model assume that civil society actors have the special status of acting as a transmission belt here, transmitting citizens’ concerns by making representative claims on behalf of them through formal and informal involvement in the decision-making?

Consider first the claim about formal involvement in the decision-making of the empowered space. As we saw above, the democratization of global governance requires participation rights for non-state actors and formalized rules of collaboration to administer the interaction between civil society and global governance arrangements. Only this way may civil society become legitimate interlocutors (Nanz and Steffek, 2008: 14). Likewise, it is stressed that civil society actors may act as non-electoral representatives in the empowered space if they are held responsible to deliberative capacity through the fulfilment of the criteria of inclusivity, authenticity, and consequentiality (Dryzek, 2009; Kuyper, 2016).

An important reason for demanding this formalized access to the empowered space for civil society actors acting as transmitters globally is that in a global context, in contrast to the domestic context, there are few or no electoral mechanisms to secure that the opinions, interests and beliefs of the citizens will actually be reflected in the law- and policy-making. Moreover, through non-electoral representation actors such as leaders of membership-based organizations, judges, or public administrators may make representative claims of others beyond formal territorial boundaries (Kuyper, 2016: 310). Therefore, advocates of the transmission belt model argue that the standard (electoral) approach to political representation is not appropriate for assessing the democratic legitimacy of those actors. Instead, they commonly follow the ‘constructivist turn’ in research on political representation, which understands representation as an on-going and creative process of performative claim-making and separates this from the institutional form that representation may take (Bohman, 2012; Kuyper, 2016; Saward, 2006, 2010). Hence, in contrast to the standard approach, a constructivist account focuses on what is going on in representation rather than on whether it takes an electoral form in accordance with the standard view (Saward, 2006: 298).

In a nutshell then, with regard to formal involvement in the decision-making, advocates of the transmission belt model emphasize the role of non-electoral representatives in light of the lack of electoral properties in global governance, which under certain normative conditions allegedly may pursue equivalent functions (Dryzek, 2006, 2011; Kuyper, 2016; Macdonald, 2008; Scholte, 2014; Stevenson and Dryzek, 2012). The problem with this reasoning, however, is that the electoral/non-electoral framework misses the essence of what is at stake. It is not electoral mechanisms as such that are crucial from the standpoint of democracy, but political equality, i.e. that citizens have equal decision power (directly or indirectly) over public affairs. So, when theorizing normative criteria or standards of democratic legitimacy, it is political equality that is required – electoral mechanisms have only historically been the best means to achieve this (Erman, 2016). And to say that we do not need it because we do not have it is question-begging unless we are offered normative reasons either for why political equality can be secured by other means or for why political equality is not an essential property of democracy (for the latter, see Saunders, 2010).

A constructivist view of political representation is helpful only if it could be shown that representation as an on-going process of performative claim-making somehow managed to secure political equality by non-electoral means. But the normative soil for such an argument is thin and the prospects therefore bleak. In a democracy, all members are equally entitled to a ‘say’ in the formal decision-making, usually indirectly through the selecting of representatives. From a democratic viewpoint, there is no justification for lending civil society organizations a special normative status here, as self-proclaimed non-electoral ‘representatives’ of people’s concerns. Just because they have proven to have the capacity to sometimes do so successfully, it does not follow that they ought to. While it is fairly uncontroversial to assume that ought implies can, can definitely does not imply ought.

So far the claim about formalized influence in the decision-making. Does the transmission belt model fare better with regard to informal influence? Indeed, in one respect it does. In a democracy, political equality is not only a cornerstone in formal decision-making but also with regard to informal channels, since all citizens have the (equal) right to express their concerns in the public space, to be picked up by decision-making entities. In this sense, the public space is a fully open sounding board for problems in society that must be dealt with by the political decision-makers. To move away from elitist accounts of democracy, such as Schumpeter’s, deliberative democrats have always stressed the important role of informal contexts of communication found in the public space as complementary to the institutionalized political system. Without continuous pressure and input from the public space, the democratic process runs the risk of being reduced to a competition between leadership teams. Indeed, from a deliberative perspective, even if the formal decision procedure would fully satisfy the requirement of political equality, the exercise of political power is still not legitimate as long as it is insensitive to the input from these informal communicative channels (more on this in Section III).

The problem for the explanatory force of the transmission belt model is that since all citizens are equally entitled to engage in these informal processes, whether they do that through membership in a civil society organization, a union, a club or as individuals does not matter from the standpoint of democratic theory. Every social meeting in which actors take a second-person attitude and lend each other communicative freedom may unfold in the public space, which is open in principle. These encounters may then be expanded and even generalized as they become abstracted away from their local context of origin, for example, through the mass media. Opinion-formation comes from all quarters and takes many different forms, so apart from civil society actors, academics, think tanks, writers’ associations, individual citizen initiatives, churches, informal groups, and so on, may all contribute to the initiation of informal public influence by giving voice to societal problems and express public needs and interests. All these actors thus constitute a transmission belt in the sense that they rightfully may use informal channels to influence the empowered space.

Hence, insofar as advocates of the transmission belt model argue that civil society has a special normative status as transmitter, the model is flawed. And if a weaker claim is made to the effect that civil society actors are just an example of rightful transmitters, the explanatory force of the model is weakened to such a degree that its attractiveness evaporates. In fact, in one important respect the model is flawed also in this weaker form, because since civil society actors have no privileged status vis-à-vis any other citizen or group to further attempt to influence the empowered space by making representative claims on behalf of stakeholders, there are no grounds for demanding that they should fulfil criteria of transparency, inclusion, authenticity, consequentiality, responsiveness, and the like, which the model demands.

The Public Space and the Autonomy of Civil Society

Let us move from the first claim to the second claim of the article. One explanation of the erroneous prescriptions generated by the transmission belt model could be traced to a ‘location’ problem. Obviously, the inference from the critical analysis so far is not that civil society has no role to play for democracy, it only suggests that it is not best depicted as a transmission belt between the public space (transnational citizenry) and the empowered space (decision-making loci). Rather, as will be argued in this section, if we are to use the transmission belt image for describing the primary role of civil society, this belt is better described as located between the private space (the lifeworld) and the public space. It is here that the distinct role of civil society is both crucial for the functioning of democracy and justifiable from the standpoint of democratic theory. As I argue below, without a robust civil society located here, the public space could not perform its democratic function as a sounding board for societal problems in need of solutions. On this alternative view, rather than seeking proximity to the political decision-making by seeking influence over the decision-making, civil society must act (sufficiently) autonomously from the empowered space to fully develop its democratizing potential in deliberative democracy.

The public space is a communication structure rooted in the lifeworld through the associational networks of civil society, consisting of NGOs, non-economic actors and voluntary associations that knit the public space to the private space. These more or less spontaneously arising movements, associations, and organizations stay attuned to the ways in which societal problems resonate in the private space, extract and transmit these reactions in amplified form to the public space (Habermas, 1996: 367). When the public space works well for strengthening democracy, it not only detects and identifies problems in the lifeworld with assistance from civil society, but also attempts to thematize these problems and suggest possible solutions in such a way that they might be taken up by formal decision processes of the empowered space (Habermas, 1996: 359).

To elucidate this view of the location of civil society, let me utilize Habermas’ distinction between what he calls ‘center’ and ‘periphery’. Even if the distinction was developed as part of a democratic theory for a nation-state context, it explicates aspects that are not only highly relevant also (perhaps even more so) for a global governance context, but also too often neglected in the literature on deliberative democracy. On this view, the center is constituted by the institutional complexities of the administrative, judicial, and formal decision-making entities, while the periphery is constituted by the informal and highly differentiated channels of communication, which makes up the public space. Above all, the center is distinguished from the periphery in virtue of its formal decision powers and prerogatives. What is important from the point of view of democratic theory is that democratic legitimacy depends on processes of opinion- and will-formation at the periphery, on the one hand, and that decisions can only be legitimate (i.e. binding) insofar as they pass through the formal decision channels of the center, on the other (Habermas, 1996: 354–356).

This dual character is often overlooked in the literature on global democracy, where proponents of deliberative democracy instead argue either that more deliberation in the periphery (public space) can compensate for the absence of formal decision procedures (empowered space), or that these informal channels must be channelled into formal decision-making through institutionalization. However, both arguments miss the key role of the public space in democracy, and therefore also of the distinct role of civil society. Two aspects are of particular importance to elucidate the role of the public space and civil society in deliberative democracy. First, for the public space to work well from a democratic point of view, it is dependent on assistance from civil society. Second, for civil society to achieve this it must remain sufficiently autonomous from the empowered space. Let me treat each aspect in turn.

In normative terms, the private space (lifeworld) is characterized by protection from publicity. But it is still essential for the public space because it is from the lifeworld that the public space nourishes, since it is from the lifeworld that the ‘bearers’ of the public space are ‘recruited’ and private concerns are translated to public concerns. The expectations on the networks of opinion- and will-formation in the periphery connected with deliberative politics are directed at the capacity to perceive, interpret, and present societal problems in ways that are both conspicuous and novel, to attract a wide range of actors (Habermas, 1996: 358). Civil society has a vital role to play here, with its unique capacity to transmit concerns from the private to the public space, since it is equipped not only to be attentive to problems emerging in the private space – in fact, it is in response to such problems that many civil society organizations emerge in the first place – but also to distil and communicate them in an extended and publically accessible form (Habermas, 1996: 367). Hence, on the view proposed here, civil society actors such as NGOs, social movements, interest groups, and voluntary associations, are primarily designed to generate public influence, not influence in the name of the public as non-electoral representatives, as presumed by the transmission belt model.

However, in order for civil society to successfully work as a transmitter between the private and the public space and fulfil these deliberative expectations, it must be sufficiently autonomous of the empowered space, by which I mean that the networks of public communication in the periphery are not institutionally tied to the main political institutions of the empowered space. With assistance from civil society acting autonomously in this sense, the public space has the advantage over the empowered space in a greater sensitivity of detecting and identifying new problems of a global-sized nature. Indeed, if we take a look at, for example, poverty in underdeveloped countries, the ecological threats in an overstrained natural environment, problems with the world economic order, increasing immigration, and global gender inequalities, barely any of these problems were initially brought up by the center. Rather, they were detected and problematized at the periphery, that is, in the global public space with help from transnational civil society (Habermas, 1996: 381).

Hence, it is the spontaneity of the flow from the private space to the public space, with backing from civil society, which makes the public space capable of being a warning system that is sensitive to all kinds of societal problems that may arise (rather than having a pre-set agenda, set by the center). This all-embracing sensitivity to societal problems would be damaged if the empowered space regulated the deliberations in the public space such that the involvement of civil society in the empowered space was formalized and institutionalized. If the latter were the case, the democratic function of being a warning system would be dissolved. There is thus another side to this too. Not only would a formalized role for civil society actors in the empowered space be undemocratic, as I argued in the previous section, it would also rob civil society and the public space of their unique democratic potential.

On the alternative view of the role of civil society sketched here, the normative demands suggested by the transmission belt model, such as criteria of transparency, inclusion, authenticity, consequentiality and responsiveness, do not make sense from the standpoint of democratic theory. Consider, for example, the criterion of generalizability, stressed by among others Dryzek and Kuyper. To function well as a transmission belt between the private and public spaces, civil society actors do not need to make their claims generalizable in order to contribute to democratic legitimacy in the overall political process or system. What they need to do, though, is to transform individual problems into questions of public interest inside the communicative structures of the public space so that they could be thematized and dramatized in a sufficiently persuasive manner to be taken up by the formal decision bodies. This is not a normative criterion for democratic legitimacy but simply a way to indirectly affect the empowered space by highlighting questions of public concern. When civil society works well, it is precisely in this way it assists the public space to perform its democratic function. Once such informally shaped public opinions do get picked up by the empowered space, however, they must be filtered through the formal procedures of opinion- and will-formation (which secures political equality) to transform into legitimate political decisions (Habermas, 1996: 371). It is then that they must be tested from the standpoint of the generalizability of interests or as forms of generalizable claims (i.e. not reducible to private interests).

Let me summarize the two arguments. First, assigning a special normative status to civil society as a transmission belt between the public space and the empowered space – through the involvement in formal decision procedures and in informal processes as non-electoral representatives – is unjustified from the perspective of democratic theory, since it would violate political equality, i.e., the equal decision power over public affairs. Second, rather being depicted as a transmission belt between the public space and the empowered space, civil society’s distinct role is better portrayed as a transmission belt between the private space and the public space.

From this, however, we should refrain from drawing two conclusions. With regard to the first argument, it is not the case that citizens involved in civil society organizations may not try to influence the decision-making in the empowered space. It is only the case that neither such organizations nor the members of such organizations have a privileged position in doing so. Rather, individuals as citizens do so on an equal footing. With regard to the second argument, it is not the case that the proposed view of civil society as a transmission belt between the private space and the public space presumes that civil society functions as a glue that somehow holds society together. Indeed, civil society actors often polarize the public by representing particular interests rather than provide social cohesion. ⁵ However, this is not problematic on the view proposed here. What is important, though, is that civil society transmits people’s – particular or general – concerns from the private to the public space by detecting problems and making them publicly visible, thereby generating different forms of more or less general public influence.

The Argument from Feasibility

Let me conclude this article by bringing up a possible defence of the transmission belt model, which nourishes from an argument about feasibility (Erman, 2018a). In the last decades, the theoretical literature on global democracy has grown drastically, engendering a range of different proposals and models bringing democratic principles to bear on global governance (Archibugi, 2000, 2002; Held, 2002). Commonly, however, critics deride these proposals as being unfeasible (Dahl, 1999; Grant and Keohane, 2005; Keohane, 2006; Miller, 2010; Song, 2012). As an alternative, deliberative democracy is often stressed as being a more suitable approach for theorizing democracy in global governance in more realistic terms, since it focuses on democratization through the improvement of the discursive quality and is therefore fitting for the non-territorial, non-electoral, and non-hierarchical characteristics of global politics. For example, it has been argued that the representation of discourses globally is a more viable option for global democracy than the representation of persons, since we lack a well-defined demos globally (Dryzek and Niemeyer, 2008). It has also been argued that we may reject electoral and constitutional modes of democratic representation because a model of stakeholder representation, which attaches great importance to civil society, works well as long as public power is traceable, even if it is diffuse (Macdonald, 2008; Macdonald and Macdonald, 2010).

I suspect that an important motivating force behind the transmission belt model is a similar concern for feasibility, even if the feasibility conditions of the model are never made explicit. If this intuition is correct, one explanation for the insistence on the informal and formal involvement of civil society in the empowered space may have to do with an unarticulated background assumption that decision power for civil society in current global governance is better than preserving the status quo by neglecting the voices and interests of marginalized groups worldwide. In today’s globalized world, with unclear authority structures and a very unequal distribution of political power, it might be argued that civil society actors are the best we can hope for to represent those groups that are most vulnerable in society but are excluded from the decision-making.

However, on closer inspection, the alternative view of the role of civil society defended in this article is not only more justified than the transmission belt model, but also more feasible. As transmitters between the private space and the public space, civil society actors are not required to fulfil any criteria of participation, transparency, inclusion, authenticity, consequentiality or responsiveness, since they do not have any special status as non-electoral representatives. Insofar as basic rights are not violated and basic liberties are secured, civil society actors are free to act in ways they find appropriate to stay attuned to how societal problems resonate in the private space and to transmit them in an amplified form to the public space.

Conclusion

In this article, I have pursued to arguments. The first critical argument has tried to demonstrate the flaws of the transmission belt model, which is one of the most influential approaches to the role of civil society in the democratization of global governance. Against this model, I have argued that civil society actors should neither have formalized influence in the decision-making nor any special status with regard to informal influence. The second constructive argument has made the case that instead of seeing civil society as a transmission belt between the public space and the empowered space, it should in the first instance be seen as a transmission belt between the private space and the public space. I have argued that it is here that civil society plays its primary role for democracy due to its capacity to act as a sounding board for societal problems in need of political solutions.

These normative-theoretical findings do not only advance the debate in political theory, but also have important implications for empirical research. There is a broad interest in the role of civil society for the democratization of global governance within a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences. Under the influence of the transmission belt model, much theoretically-driven empirical research has focused on civil society’s access to and involvement in the decision-making in global governance. This has been problematic for at least two reasons. First, it has led to erroneous conclusions about global democracy, where every instance of civil society involvement in the decision-making has wrongfully been interpreted as an instance of democratization. Second, it has neglected the many functions that civil society actors may rightfully perform to strengthen global democracy, not only with regard to pre-decision functions such as problem identification and agenda-setting, discussed in this article, but also post-decision functions such as evaluation and monitoring (Erman, 2018a, 2018b). My hope is that the theoretical contribution made here can be useful for formulating new empirical questions about transnational civil society in global democracy, which utilizes a more robust conceptual and normative framework.