Introduction

For an increasing number of commentators, global civil society represents nothing less than the outline of a future world political order within which states will no longer constitute the seat of sovereignty, a status first bestowed on them by the Treaty of Westphalia in Europe (1648) and subsequently exported around the globe. For many, global civil society is revolutionising our approach to sovereignty as new non-state-based and border-free expressions of political community challenge territorial sovereignty as the exclusive basis for political community and identity (Falk, 1995: 100). This challenge ‘from below’ to the nation-state system is increasingly seen as promising nothing less than a reconstruction, or reimagination of world politics itself (Lipschutz, 1992: 391). Whether in terms of the democratisation of the institutions of global governance, the spread of human rights across the world, or the emergence of a global citizenry in a world-wide public sphere, global civil society is understood to provide the agency necessary to these hoped-for transformations.