| Non-governmental political networks have inched their way into a decision-making arena historically dominated by governments and intergovernmental institutions under the general heading of "global civil society." The notion of a global civil society signifies that political decision-makers are to be held accountable to the interests of the global citizenry, or the global public. To different degrees, elements of the global political establishment have come to accept these norms, re-presenting themselves as "global governance institutions" and at least in some cases changing their institutional practices to demonstrate their commitment to the global public. My goal in this work is to explain the emergence and partial institutionalization of the global governance norms. I review how two current approaches---"world polity theory" and the social movements model---explain this emergence and find both approaches to be lacking. Specifically, neither is able to provide a history that simultaneously appreciates the historical specificity of struggles to change the establishment and the relatively independent role that the ideas themselves have in determining that struggle. To specify the role of ideas, I provide a thick cultural history of transnational decision-making beginning with the creation of the international development system after World War II and ending with the establishment of global governance ideals in the 1990s. I show how this history consists of three general models for legitimate decision-making: the expert-driven interventionism of the 1960s and 70s, the market-driven competition of the 1980s, and the notion of direct democratic participation found in the governance model. These three models overlap in one critical way: the proponents of each claimed that their models were the best foundation for realizing the modernist project of universal self-determination. After detailing each paradigm's relationship to this Enlightenment mythology, I show the role of ideas to be independently causal in this history in two ways: first, in the creation of a new transnational identity and solidarity among the members of the global civil society; and second in determining their ability to challenge the legitimacy of the establishment's Enlightenment narrative and replace it with their alternative. |
