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Missing the target: NGOs, global civil society and the arms trade

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Abstract

Non-governmental organisation (NGO) activism on the arms trade is emblematic of the significant and emancipatory role attributed to civil society in post-Cold War international politics. Discussions of NGOs’ efforts are marked by a distinctively liberal understanding of civil society as an increasingly global sphere separate from the state and market, promoting progressive and non-violent social relations. However, there are significant conceptual and empirical problems with these claims, which I illustrate using examples from contemporary NGO activism on the international production of and trade in conventional weaponry. First, liberal accounts underplay the mutual dependence between the state, market and civil society. NGO agency is both constrained and enabled by its historical, structural grounding. Second, I argue for a more ambivalent understanding of NGOs’ progressive political value. While some NGOs may play a role in counter-hegemonic struggle, overall they are more likely to contribute to hegemonic social formations. Third, liberal accounts of a global civil society inadequately capture the reproduction of hierarchy in international relations, downplaying ongoing, systematic patterns of North-South asymmetry. Fourth, the emphasis on the non-violent nature of global civil society sidelines the violence of capitalism and the state system, and serves as a means of disciplining dissent and activism.

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Notes

  1. These organisations epitomise liberal claims about global civil society, and are the most prominent NGOs working on a range of arms trade issues. For an analysis of the work of other NGOs, relations within the wider NGO community, and the overall effects of NGO activism on the arms trade, see Stavrianakis (2010).

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to participants in the 2008 ISA pre-conference workshop and 2009 ISA conference panel on the theme of ‘Critiquing Liberalism’, and in the 2009 Millennium conference on ‘After Liberalism?’ for constructive engagement with the argument put forward in this paper. I thank Beate Jahn, Anthony Stavrianakis, three anonymous reviewers and the journal editors for comments.

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  1. Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9SJ, U.K.

    Anna Stavrianakis

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Stavrianakis, A. Missing the target: NGOs, global civil society and the arms trade. J Int Relat Dev 15, 224–249 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2011.22

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