ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on whether the Ottawa Convention and the process leading up to it represents any real 'democratization' of international law, challenges the idea that there is even such a thing as 'international civil society', at least in the sense that it is democratic and comes from below, and disputes that there can be such a thing as 'democratic' processes at the global level. It expresses, by way of alternative, that the Ottawa Convention and the process leading up to it should be seen as a step in the development of global transnational elites at the expense of genuinely democratic, but hence local, processes. The Ottawa Convention represents, especially to the non-governmental organizations (NGO) activist community, the victory of what NGOs and now many others call 'international civil society'—the successful entry of international NGOs into diplomatic and lawmaking processes that hitherto have been reserved largely to states and international organizations, represented by officially recognized and accredited diplomats.
