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Globalization and Democracy 217

one has elected NGOs, they cannot claim to represent anyone but their
members. Their direct input into international political institutions, and
any infl uence they may have over the direction of global governance, is
not democratic because they have not tested their policy commitments by
putting them to a popular vote. In fact, NGOs tend to claim moral author-
ity for their causes rather than democratic legitimacy: they aim at univer-
sal justice (at fostering human rights or global standards for workers, for
example) or at increasing access to public goods for everyone (global
environmental sustainability or ensuring freedom of information).
However, it is argued that even the moral authority that the majority of
NGOs might legitimately claim on the basis of the validity of their aims
is tainted because of the close involvement of many with projects of
globalization led by undemocratic international political institutions.
Chandhoke argues that, as the Washington Consensus comes under
increased pressure, IGOs are now committed to building civil society
inside developing countries, by channeling funds through NGOs to realize
development projects, to build democratic capacity and further human
rights. They aim to secure the trust and participation of local citizens, she
argues, in order to facilitate the expansion of global markets. In this way,
NGOs are being used to legitimate the policies of the IMF, the World
Bank, and the UN, none of whom have a democratic mandate to interfere
in the affairs of sovereign states (Chandhoke, 2002 : Anderson and Reiff,
2005 ). According to these critics, then, “ global civil society ” is a not much
more than a new word for Western imperialism.
These are very telling criticisms and should give pause for thought to
those who effectively consider the aims they strive for as in and of them-
selves democratic, regardless of popular consultation or public opinion.
As Chandhoke argues, it is not enough to reply, as Lori Wallach, whose
organization Public Citizen organized the Battle for Seattle, to the ques-
tion “ Who elected you? ” simply to reply, “ Who elected them? ”
(Chandhoke, 2002 : 48). It is important rather to reflect on alternative

views of democracy to those of the political party and the ballot box. In
order to understand the democratic claims of social movements we need
to understand how activists use “ global civil society, ” not as a descriptive
or normative term, but strategically. For global social movements, “ global
civil society ” denotes how globalization can be prevented from destroying
civilized ways of life between the state and the market by resisting com-
modification, ensuring the environment is valued and cared for, and

making injustices into matters for public concern.
Here I will analyze the democratic legitimacy of global civil
society actors as of three different types. The fi rst I call “ alternative