Civil Society Consultations: Explaining Why and How

Abstract

Civil society actors have rapidly risen to prominence in global politics in recent decades. For example, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines is a coalition of CSOs that worked with the UN and governments to produce the Mine Ban Treaty in 1997 that 159 states are now party to. The coalition of CSOs was given a seat at the table for all diplomatic meetings leading up to and during the negotiations of the Mine Ban Treaty (ICBL 2012). This trend of civil society involvement in policymaking is observable across a range of governance institutions, including the UN, the WTO and the African Union (AU). Increasingly, actors involved in such governance arrangements demonstrate a willingness to interact with civil society groups that monitor and publicize their activities, underscored by Scholte’s observation that civil society engagement “is now part of the daily fare of politics” (2004, p. 214). ASEAN’s shift to engage CSOs parallels this trend.