International Civil Society

Since the end of the Cold War, activists and scholars alike have celebrated the phenomenal growth of transnational social movements across the globe. For some, this new eruption of grass-roots political activism on a world scale - from the Rio Earth Summit to the Seattle anti-globalization protests - represents the emergence of a global or transnational civil society. This book provides a critical survey of recent approaches to the study of civil society and international relations, presenting an alternative historical and sociological account of the interaction between these two spheres. It makes a theoretical case for the importance of social movements in world politics arguing that modern social movements emerging out of civil society have been instrumental in shaping the contemporary international system.