WHO GETS INCLUDED? IGOs, GOVERNMENTS, AND NONSTATE ACTORS

M.J. Peterson

Department of Political Science mjp@polsci.umass.edu Thompson Hall University of Massachusetts - Amherst Amherst MA 01003 USA Prepared for delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association Boston, MA 29 August - 1 September 2002 Uploaded to PROceedings 16 August 2002 *Ingrid Rodrick '03 provided bibliographic assistance.

Who gets included? IGOs, governments, and nonstate actors

[This paper is not a work of systematic social science; it is a preliminary reconnaissance.] Introduction Nonstate actors, particularly nongovernmental organizations, have received greater attention from IR scholars in the last decade as it has become more apparent that there is much in the process and outcomes of world politics that cannot be understood without taking their activities into account. Assessments of the gains or losses accruing from their activity have varied considerably. Much of the literature on multinational enterprises and other forms of transnational business management has viewed them as instruments through which small elites dominate the rest of the worlds population. Much of the literature on NGOs, in contrast, has treated them as the building blocks of a global civil society that will usher in an age of peace, truly democratic governance responsive to all people, human rights, social and economic equality, and environmental sustainability. Treatments of transnational crime networks are largely condemnatory, while treatments of religious groups, radical movements (of right or left), ethnic diasporas, rebel groups, and transnational ties among political parties vary with the political sympathies of the writer. This paper will look at one aspect of nonstate actors activities, the relationships that have developed between intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and other nonstate entities. IGOs are distinct from the others in being the acknowledged creations of states having such resources, tasks, and authority as the member governments are willing to confide in them. They also provide the forums in which governments shape such elements of global or regional governance as they care to create. To the extent that IGOs have realms of autonomous action and acquire legitimacy in their own name, they also emerge as independent actors motivated to pursue self-preservation and self-promotion as well as the tasks member governments assign to them. Other nonstate entities are generally created by individuals and groups acting independently of any government, though it is well known that some are created by governments and a larger number actually depend heavily on government funding. These other nonstate entities also have their own goals, preferences, and self-advancement concerns; many of these lead them to try influencing the evolution and practice of global governance. Interactions with individual governments are a major part of that influencing process, but to the extent that issues are raised in or functions entrusted to IGOs, other nonstate entities find it prudent and efficient to follow and try to influence their activity as well. IGO-other nonstate entity contacts have developed in two streams. The first is the formal system of consultative relations or other observer status that became a common feature of IGO strcutures after World War II. The second is the informal relations that have evolved over the years as IGOs and some nonstate entities have recognized mutual gains from association or collaboration. The relation is not strictly two-sided because the governments of any IGOs member states pay attention to and can influence the IGO-other entity relationships. On the IGO side, member governments must approve the terms of any formal relationship and can use their votes, budget contributions, and ability to act outside IGOs to affect the range of informal practices. On the nonstate entity side, government-created nonstate entities and independent ones that later become dependent on government resources or choose on their own to support a particular governments foreign policies provide some governments with additional sources of influence in the IGO processes.

Formal Relations between IGOs and other Nonstate Entities

Establishment of the League of Nations in 1920 and its replacement by the United Nations in 1945 made a major change in the shape of IGO-nonstate entity relations because of their character as a global general purpose organization where any international issue not already handled in another IGO (and even some already handled in other IGOs) could be raised for discussion. While many continued to focus efforts on national governments and more specialized IGOs, the League and the UN provided a central focus for effort (e.g., Barrett and Frank 1999: 213; Berkovitch 1999: 109-110), particularly among the NGOs.

After considering the possibility of placing relations with NGOs on a formal footing in

1921-23, the League Council opted for leaving matters to be settled informally (Chiang 1981: 35-38). Yet the League Assembly and Council did include NGO representatives as "assessors" on many of the League Committees established to study various problems. Assessors could speak in committee meetings, present reports, propose resolutions, and serve on subcommittees. The Assembly and Council made no particular provision for NGO access to their own sessions or at League-sponsored diplomatic conferences; NGO representatives had to find places in the public gallery if they wished to observe a particular meeting. The only exception came during the 1932 Disarmament Conference, which held one Plenary Meeting for Hearing Public Organizations and allowed NGOs to submit petitions to the delegates via the League Secretariat.

By 1936 relations had become more distant. NGO representatives included in

committees were appointed as "corresponding members" rather than assessors, allowed to communicate with their committee in writing but able to participate in meetings only when explicitly invited. The League secretariat also limited its formerly extensive contacts and cooperation with NGOs. Several explanations of these changes have been proferred, ranging from greater bureaucratization of the League secretariat and League bodies making them less receptive to NGO input, difficulties of maintaining older practices with the increasing number of NGOs interested in participating in League activities, and conscious political retreat from contact occasioned by rising international tensions after 1933. However memory of the earlier League practices remained strong, and many NGOs were determined restore a closer relationship as the UN was being formed in 1944-45.

Defining the sorts of that entities count as NGOs and deciding which of them should be

included in any formal arrangements have been contentious questions from the start. Constent with League practice, drafters of the UN Charter conceived of NGOs as independent organizations, having members in at least two countries, formed and supported by their members, and pursuing goals other than profit-making, seizure of political power, or activity generally regarded as illegal. This definition excludes business firms (national and multinational alike), transnational crime networks, and rebel or revolutionary movements.

Article 71 of the UN Charter, which committed the United Nations to creating a more

formalized system of IGO-NGO relations, was the result of a sharp controversy fed by World Federation of Trade Unions efforts to secure special status in the UN system. The WFTU had been formed among the British Trade Unions Congress, the US Congress of Industrial Organizations, the Soviet Union federation and most European union federations to replace the older International Federation of Trade Unions which had excluded the Soviet unions. WFTU leaders proposed that their organization, which claimed to speak for 67 million workers around the world, be invited to the San Francisco Conference and have observer status in the General Assembly and Security Council plus permanent voting membership on the Economic and Social Council. The Soviet government strongly supported these proposals, suggesting that WFTU be

an observer on par with the public international unions in the process of becoming UN Specialized Agencies. These proposals elicited opposition from both governments and other NGOs. Other NGOs used debate over the WFTU demands to advance their own claims for participation rights, but were not ready to support any one organizations effort to claim special status for itself. Governments had two reasons to oppose. Continuous voting membership in the ESC would give WFTU superior participation rights since they anticipated adoption of the draft Charter providing for rotation of ESC seats among UN member states. Many governments also realized that Soviet support for the WFTU claims was part of an effort to supplant the International Labor Organization as the primary multilateral forum for addressing labor issues (Cox 1974: 211; Chiang 1981: 45-48).

In the end, neither WFTU nor any other NGO was invited to send observers to the San

Francisco Conference, though a large number of NGOs had access to the negotiations through leaders of American NGOs appointed as advisors to the US delegation. Article 71, which originated in these channels, was less ambitious than WTFU proposals because it confined formal relations to the ESC but more open in that it by including "NGOs" in general rather than naming any particular ones (Chiang 1981: 45-48; Jacobson 1957). It also established government delegates as the gatekeepers by confiding the task of developing eligibility criteria and determining which NGOs satisfy them to the Economic and Social Council.

Article 71 marked an advance in the publicly-visible status of NGOs, but also placed

them a bit more at arms length because the new system made no provision for NGO representatives to serve on UN bodies. Persons active in a particular NGO might be selected for one of the various permanent or ad hoc expert committees established by the General Assembly or another UN body, but like the other members they would be selected for expertise in the matter at hand and serve in their individual capacity. On occasion an NGO is asked to prepare a study for an ESC Commission or committee. Yet unless a government decides to include someone from an NGO on its delegation, there is nothing in the UN system matching the League use of assessors.

Article 71 was fleshed out by ESC Resolution 2/3 of 1946, which established three

"classes" of NGO relationship. Category C status, for NGOs concerned mainly with disseminating information or influencing public opinion, carried only the right to get copies of ESC documents and send observers to ESC and ESC committee or commission meetings. Category B status, given to organizations with special competence in one of a few areas of ESC concern, allowed NGOs to send written documents to the UN Secretariat for circulation to the ESC. Category A status, given to NGOs with a basic interest in most economic and social issues coming to the ESC and closely linked to the economic and social life of the areas where their members live, conveyed the widest rights. Organizations of labor, of management and business, of farmers, and of consumers were specifically mentioned as the main candidates for this status. Category A NGOs could circulate written documents to ESC members, propose items for discussion to the ESCs Agenda Committee, and make oral statements at ESC meetings (ESC Resolution 2/3 of 1946, discussed in Chiang 1982: 88-92).

The initiative for seeking consultative relations was left to the NGOs, with the ESC

defining criteria for eligibility to guide decisions accepting or declining particular requests. Resolution 2/3 established six criteria defining the eligible NGOs: 1) aims and purposes conforming to the spirit, principles, and purposes of the United Nations, 2) concern with matters within ESC competence, 3) recognized standing in its field, 4) a membership representative of a substantial number of the organized persons in its field of interest, 5) an established headquarters, an executive officer, and a policy-making body, and 6) an international

membership. This last qualification, which would exclude organizations with members in only one country, was applied strictly to applicants for Category A status, but both Category B and the Register included a number of national NGOs. Criteria 3 through 5 were meant to exclude temporary or ephemeral groups; while 1 and 2 could be used to exclude organizations with goas regarded as contrary to UN purposes or who had no strong interest in economic and social issues.. Criminal organizations would clearly be screened by the first, and organizations concerned primarily with disarmament or peace could be excluded under the second.

The long contention among NGOs and governments triggered by continuing WFTU

efforts to secure special status took on greater Cold War coloration as East-West divisions hardened in 1947-48. Even after WFTU efforts were scuttled in late 1949 when the noncommunist Western members of WFTU left the organization to form the rival International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, East-West contentions over which NGOs should be accorded what status continued. Weary of the arguments, the ESC sought to streamline procedures in its Resolution 288B of February 1950 (Chiang 1981: 102-104). This maintained three degrees of status, but altered the system considerably. Category C became The Register of organizations eligible to attend UN Department of Public Information briefings and get copies of ESC documents, but no longer able to send observers to ESC meetings. The ESC created a separate 7-member Committee on NGOs to make preliminary decisions about status, review the status of NGOs on the lists, and handles most interaction with NGOs. NGOs wishing to address the ESC or one of its committee now requested permission through the Committee, and Category A organizations proposing agenda items now submitted them to the Committee on NGOs, which would then decide whether to transmit them to the Agenda Committee. Category A NGOs were to be limited to one statement per item, subject to approval by the ESC Committee on NGOs, with a second statement allowed if they had proposed the agenda item being considered. Finally, the criteria for eligbility were amended to add a requirement that NGOs in formal relations with the ESC support the work of the United Nations.

The Committee on NGOs operated as governments intended, and a number of

organizations identified with the Soviet bloc did lose Category B status in the early 1950s. Cold War polemics between NGOs abated after the USSR decided to join ILO in 1954, but did not entirely disappear. Even in 1971 the Soviet bloc was proposing to deny Category B status to certain NGOs with social democratic leanings (UN Yearbook 1971: xxx). A new complaint arose after Third World governments became more numerous in the UN. After the ESC was expanded from 18 to 27, and the Committee on NGOs from 7 to 13, to accommodate Third World demands for greater participation in its work, Third World delegations began insisting that the ensemble of NGOs selected for consultative status be more representative of the world as a whole, and Soviet bloc delegates joined in criticism of the current list as too Western-heavy. Press revelations in early 1967 that a number of US and Western European-based NGO were funded by the US Central Intelligence Agency fuelled demands that consultative status be reserved for NGOs not dependent on government funds. These concerns triggered new debates resulting in another revision of the rules regarding consultative status (Chiang 1981: 109-133).

ESC Resoluton 1296 of 1968 altered the rules and extended ESC Committee on NGOs

authority. Demands to exclude NGOs receiving government funds were revised as it became apparent that a wide variety of NGOs get some funding from governments and that excluding those receiving government funding would exclude the government-created NGOs common in the Soviet bloc and many Third World states. In the final version, NGOs having or seeking consultative status were required to specify their funding sources and to receive most of their financial resources from their own members (Chiang 1981: 77). Other government irritations were reflected in instructing the ESC Committee on NGOs to review NGOs' status periodically,

granting it explicit authority to suspend or withdraw an NGOs status, and specifying three conditions when suspension or withdrawal are appropriate: 1) if an NGO abuses its status by systematically engaging in unsubstantiated or politically motivated acts against member states contrary to and incompatible with the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, 2) if there exists substantiated evidence of secret governmental financial influence to induce an organization to undertake acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the Charter, or 3) if an NGO has not made a positive or effective contribution to ESC work in the preceding three years.

The concurrent review of the existing lists of organizations in consultative relations did

not lead immediately to a significant weeding out, but some sorts of organizations were particularly vulnerable under changes made in Resolution 1296. NGOs in Category 1 (formerly Category A) were now required to have a considerable membership broadly representative of major segments of population in a large number of countries. Human rights groups in Category 2 (formerly Category B) were required to be concerned with human rights issues generally, rather than the rights of a single nationality or the situation in one or a few countries (Chiang 1981: 134-136). Human rights groups irritating particular governments were particularly likely to be singled out in the periodic reviews, and a coalition of Third World authoritarian and Soviet bloc governments did use the new qualification to exclude NGOs concerned mainly with Soviet dissidents and to de-list a number of Jewish organizations (Chiang 1981: 136).

The formal rules and the whole set of informal practices regarding NGO participation in

UN-sponsored global conferences (see ESC Resolution 1993/80) were reviewed again in 1993-96 after the growing numbers of NGOs desiring consultative status and the end of the Cold War created very new conditions. The rules established in ESC Resolution 1996/31 maintained the three-tier system of consultative relations with the ESC, though renamed the various forms of relations and altered the eligibility requirements for and privileges of NGOs in each. The new rules specified that national, subregional, regional, and international NGOs were all eligible to apply for consultative status, with national affiliates of international NGOs already having consultative status eligible separately if including them would help ensure wider participation by NGOs based in developing states or countries in transition. The new status of "organizations in general consultation" replacing Category 1 continued to reserve this status for international NGOs, but added a proviso that they should not only be concerned with a broad range of issues before the ESC but also be able to make substantive and sustained contributions to UN work on those issues. The new status of organizations in special consultative relations replacing Category B and the Roster were explicitly opened to national NGOs, and expectations of contributions to ESC work within their field of endeavor added.

Again human rights NGOs received special attention in defining the eligibility for

consultative relations. With national NGOs eligible for consultative status, this could no longer focus on the range of persons an organization sought to assist. Instead, the new criterion focused on normative commitments by requiring that human rights organizations in consultative relations work in accordance with the spirit of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the [1993] Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. All project a universalistic vision of human rights regarding civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights as an indivisible ensemble.

The criteria for evaluating NGOs also underwent some revision. All of the 1968

requirements were retained, with greater emphasis on securing greater participation from non-Western parts of the world and on the nature of NGOs internal structure. The requirements that an NGO have a headquarters, a policy-making body, and an executive officer remained in place,

so could be applied against tiny groups and those whose activities made them relectant to announce their address. The 1996 rules further specified that applicant NGOs must have a democratically adopted constitution instituting a conference, congress, or other representative body for policy-making, an executive organ responsible to that body, and have a representative structure and possess appropriate mechanisms for accountability to members who shall exercise effective control over [the NGOs] policies and actions through the exercise of voting rights or other appropriate democratic and transparent decision-making processes (ESC Resolution 1996/31, par 9 and 12). On the financial side, NGOs seeking consultative status were expected to derive the main part of their funds from member contributions, with other private donations and government subventions to be stated in their financial reports to the ESC Committee on NGOs.

Governments concerns were reflected in reaffirmations of the distinction between the

nonvoting observer status accorded to nonmember states and consultative relations with NGOs, a requirement that the government of that country be consulted before a national NGO is included, and that the consultative arrangements not overburden the ESC or convert it from a body for coordination of policy and action to a forum for general discussion. The ESC Committee on NGOs retained authority to review relations with each individual NGO and recommend suspension or withdrawal of consultative status. Resolution 1996/31 also included three conditions under which suspension or withdrawal was defined as appropriate, but these had changed considerably since 1968. They now included 1) engaging in a pattern of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations including unsubstantiated or politically motivated acts against Member States incompatible with those purposes and principles, 2) substantiated evidence that the NGO is influenced by the proceeds of internationally recognized criminal activity like illegal drug trade, illegal arms trade, or money laundering, or 3) has failed ot make a positive or effective contribution to ESC activity in the preceeding three years.

The privileges of each status remained similar, though tighter limits on the length of

written statements (2000 words for NGOs in general consultation; 500 for the others unless the ESC or its Committee on NGOs allowed a lengthier statement). On the other hand, the rules did make specific reference to the possibility of being invited by the ESC or any of its commissions and subsidiary bodies to prepare a study on some question before it, and these were not subject to the length limits.

Contentions over applications for and continuations of consultative status continue.

Governments still select particular NGOs for special scrutiny, and organizations arousing the ire of a powerful state or a bloc of states is likely to find itself excluded (Paul 1999: 314). NGOs also expressed dismay that the ESC Committee on NGOs was granting consultative status to a number of government-organized organizations (CONGO 1999: 154; Paul 1999: 314), thereby "undermin[ing] the essential character of legitimate NGOs" (CONGO 1999: 154).

The public international unions established in the 19th century underwent a similar shift

from entirely informal to partly-formal and partly-informal relations with NGOs active in their field of competence as they became UN Specialized Agencies after 1945. Their formal systems of relations strongly resembled the ESC scheme. Nearly all specified that participation was open to NGOs, and most adopted differentiated classes of relationship. Though typically involving fewer NGOs, the Specialized Agencies' relationships have been subjects of contention and revision over the years.

FAO developed a three-tier scheme of consultative status for broadly representative NGOs like the Federation Internationale des Producteurs Agricoles, the Alliance Cooperative Internationale, the World Federation of Trade Unions, and the World Association of UN Associations; special consultative status for more specialized NGOs like the Association International des Producteurs dHorticulture and the Association Universelle dAgriculture Scientifique; and liaison arrangements for NGOs regarded as less able to contribute to implementation of FAO programs (Stosic 1964: 255-61).

Even with national employer associations and national trade union federations having

formal roles and their own distinct votes in member state delegations, ILO also developed formal consulting relations with transnational associations of employers (International Chamber of Commerce), of labor unions (WFTU and ICFTU), of farmers, and of cooperatives (Stosic 1964: 226-241). In 1948, it made provision for consultation with NGOs having a substantial interest in a wide range of ILO activity and granted them rights to send representatives to ILO meetings. Other NGOs sought consultative relations, but both governments on the ILO Administrative Council and worker and employer delegates of member states were reluctant to expand the list. The result was a 1956 decision to accommodate some of the others through provision for a second category of consultation on particular questions with NGOs whose interests extended to some aspect of ILO activity (Stosic 1964: 226-28 and 235).

Of all the Specialized Agencies, UNESCO has the most complex relations with NGOs, in

large part because it has been an active creator and funder of NGOs as well as an eager seeker of their cooperation in program implementation. Once it was settled that UNESCO would be an intergovernmental rather than a nongovernmental organization, its early leaders knew they they would need to maintain close cooperation with the intellectual and artistic communities possessing the knowledge and skills needed to fulfill UNESCO missions. In the late 1940s, UNESCO sought to fill what it perceived as serious gaps in the transnational organization of scientific, intellectual and artistic communities by encouraging formation of wider umbrella NGOs that would bring together existing scientific associations in related disciplines or create associations of like cultural institutions. Over the years UNESCO became a major disseminator of the idea that governments need national science policies and that scientif ic knowledge and scientific methods of inquiry should be applied to the betterment of human affairs (Crane 1974). Though UNESCO did not directly assist their creation, UNESCO's activities helped encourage the formation of what Evan Schofer called socially-oriented scientific NGOs (Schofer 1999: 259) concerned with putting science to work and with ensuring that decisions regarding use of new technologies or knowledge be made in democratic rather than technocratic ways.

Formally, UNESCO has three categories of consultative relations with NGOs. Between

1956 and 1995 they were labeled consultation and association, information and consultation, and mutual information but usually called Category A, Category B, and Category C respectively. After discussions of criteria for eligibility in 1961, Category A included the larger transnational scientific associations plus those of the general associations of labor unions, youth movements, womens organizations, and the cooperative movement in ESC Category A that had publicized UNESCO work in areas of their interest. Category B included the more specialist scientific associations as well as any NGO created by UNESCO or carrying out contract work for it that was not included in Category A (Stosic 1964: 274-276). In 1995 under the twin pressure of reduced budgets while US and UK withdrawals remained in effect and an explosion in the number of interested NGOs, the categories were redefined into Formal Associate Relations, Formal Consultative Relations, and Operational Relations, with the first two restricted to international umbrella NGOs (Martens 1999: 73). Currently 12 of the 16 NGOs in Formal Associate Relations are the international scientific and cultural NGOs founded by UNESCO

(Martens 1999: 78). The decision that member states should interact with UNESCO through National Committees for UNESCO, a compromise outcome of the early debate about whether UNESCO should be nongovernmental or intergovernmental, opens the possibility that members or leaders of national NGOs serving on the National Committee will be selected for the national delegation to UNESCO General Conferences and therefore eligible for election to subsidiary UNESCO bodies (Stosic 1964: 267-271).

UNESCO has provided financial subventions to selected NGOs from the start. Initially

these went to the organizations it created, but eligibility extended to any NGO helping implement UNESCO programs. The 30% reduction in UNESCO budget resulting from USA and United Kingdom withdrawals forced UNESCO to adopt new guidelines for subventions. The rules adopted in 1995 specify that no NGO should have subventions for more than 4 years and that preference should be given to newly-established NGOs in developing countries or countries in transition. This has altered the mix of recipients some, but not the tendency for a few organizations to receive most of the money (Martens 1999: 74-75).

The vast expansion in the number of transnational and national NGOs has been reflected

in the increasing numbers of NGOs having formal relations with various parts of the UN system: Body 1960 1975* 1985 2000 ESC Category A/1 10 25 24 120 Category B/2 119 193 226 991 Register/Roster 205 442 395 865 UNCTAD General category -- 25 53 99 Special category -- 26 69 84 Register -- 2 data missing 12 UNIDO -- 32 56 124 FAO Consultative status 37 17 16 15 Specialized cons. St. 37 52 56 Liaison 20 71 107 110 IAEA 13 20 19 19 ICAO 27 35 29 29 ILO General 6 6 8 8 Regional 9 12 14 List 50 87 127 154 IMO 10 25 44 54

UNESCO 147 Association 35 44 17 plus 224 Consultation 167 ~200 64 plus 14 Information 109 ~200 237 WHO 54 105 154 192 WMO Consultative status 11 17 15 15 "working arrangements" -- -- 6 6

* 1975 for ESC; 1973 for the other UN bodies listed

(sources: Annuaire des Organisations Internationales 1960: Table II; Yearbook of International Organizations 1973: Table 2; 1987/88: entries for the individual UN bodies; and 2001/02: entries for the UN bodies; Yearbook of the United Nations, 1975, p. xxx.)

The NGOs in the most extensive category of relations with UN bodies and involved with

the largest number of them have been global, broad purpose organizations. In 1960, as in the 1950s, these were the International Cooperative Alliance, the International Chamber of Commerce, the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, the World Veterans Federation, the three largest international labor federations (World Federation of Trade Unions, International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, and International Confederation of Christian Trade Unions) and the World Federation of United Nations Associations. Some of the NGOs having Category B or 2 status with the ESC, including the World Youth Assembly, the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the International Standards Organization, and the International Catholic Union for Social Service, also had formal relations with several UN bodies (Annuaire des Organisations Internationales 1960: Table II). Most NGOs are more specialized groups active only with the UN bodies whose competence most closely matches their interests.

A separate set of rules regarding formal access has evolved for UN-sponsored theme

conferences. These emerged in 1970s, and later ones adopted modes of proceeding similar to those employed for 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. NGOs having consultative status with the ESC were invited to send observers to sessions of the preparatory commission and to the public plenary and committee meetings of the Stockholm Conference itself. Some NGO representatives were included in the Working Groups drafting resolutions for the conference, and eight prominent individuals were invited to address the conference. With UN secretariat encouragement and funding, Swedish NGOs ran a parallel "Environment Forum" (Feraru 1974: 34). ESC Resolution 1996/31 formalized these practices. It continued the practice of separate invitations for each conference, with the conference secretariat advising the government delegates on the conference preparatory committee in selection of the NGOs to be invited. Selection is to be guided by the criteria for consultative status defined by the ESC, and the conference secretariat is to work closely with the UN Secretariats Section on NGOs. Resolution 1996/31 further specified that NGOs in consultative relations with the ESC expressing an interest "will as a rule be accredited to the conference and that conference secretariats should consider the background and prior activity of other NGOs seeking participation. It also affirmed the practice that NGOs not having consultative status with the ESC but accredited to a particular conference will be invited to participate in conference follow-up sessions. In 1997-98, the ESC modified this by restricting continued participation in follow-up to the 1995 Womens

Conference and 1995 World Summit on Social Development to NGOs having or in the process of applying for consultative status (UN Yearbook 1996: 1368). However, the ESC has endorsed participation by NGOs without consultative status when an ESC subsidiary body was considering a topic directly of concern to them. Thus 28 NGOs of indigenous peoples were invited to participate in the Commission on Human Rights Working Group preparing a declaration on indigenous peoples rights (UN Yearbook 1996: 1368). Drawing on the explicit call to include "major social groups" contained in Agenda 21, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development maintains a separate list of NGOs collaborating in its work, which numbered some 550 in 1995 (Conca 1996: 114).

However, this formalization of the earlier practices came just as the pace of UN global

theme conferences was slowing down. There had been at least one theme conference a year since 1974, but by the mid 1990s member governments -- most vocally that of the USA -- keeping the UN on short finances and insisting on greater efficiency in the use of funds had forced a reconsideration of the conference schedule. As one NGO advocate observed, "NGOs greatly profited from these conferences, which provided ease of accreditation, intense interaction with delegates in the preparatory process, and outstanding networking opportunities" (Paul 1999: 302). They did not regard the shift to greater use of General Assembly Special Sessions as an adequate response because they offer less favorable conditions for NGO access.

The Informal Practices of Other Nonstate Entities Participation in IGO Activities

Formal access is a foot in the door, the usefulness of which depends very much on the

extent to which governments pay attention to the particular UN body involved. Access to ESC has been much less important than initially assumed because of the strong developing state preference, visible since the mid-1960s, for dealing with economic and social issues in the General Assembly (Feld and Jordan 1994: 223). Most of NGOs impact is felt through the informal relations that have developed among NGOs, IGOs, and governments. These can be analyzed by looking at five core tasks of IGOs engaged in the development and maintenance of global governance: informational, normative, rule creation, implementation, and rule supervision (list reordered from Jacobson 1984: 83).

Informal relations, even more than the formal ones, reflect IGOs' differing receptivity to

various types of nonstate entity. Even when most open to collaboration, League bodies and the League secretariat worked primarily with NGOs; revolutionary movements, political parties, religious groups, or business firms did not form part of the nonstate cluster in Geneva. Ethnic minorities In Europe and colonial populations elsewhere were the subjects of some League concern, but this was limited to groups covered by one of the post-World War I minorities treaties or to populations living in a Mandated Territory. Even among NGOs, League attention was very uneven. Students of the international womens movement (Whittick 1970; Berkovitch 1999: 110-18) note that the League paid little attention to womens organizations focused on womens issues rather than peace until the late 1930s while the ILO did take up issues concerning working women. Advocates of birth control, whether resting arguments on considerations of individual health and autonomy or the premises of the then-widespread eugenics movement, sought vainly to interest the League in what would now be called population questions. Neither delegates nor the League Secretariat were anxious to take up an issue they regarded as more domestic than international, and only one League-sponsored meeting -- a scientific conference run by the Leagues Institute of Intellectual Cooperation -- ever addressed the issue (Barrett and Frank 1999: 213 and note 18).

UN attention has also been uneven across types of nonstate actor. Rebel groups able to make plausible claims to fighting a colonial or (white) racist regime won general endorsement in General Assembly resolutions and their representatives regularly addressed the Special Committee on Decolonization. One group widely endorsed as a "national liberation movement" the Palestine Liberation Organization was even granted an observer status similar to that accorded nonmember states. The Southwest African People's Organization (SWAPO) developed extensive relations with UN bodies in 1971-1990 after the General Assembly revoked the South African Mandate and established the Council for Namibia as the de jure ruler of the territory pending its attainment of independence. SWAPO enjoyed wide support among member states, and the Council was careful to coordinate with it. The Organization of African Unity did recognize certain liberation groups as leaders of struggles against colonial or racist regimes, and even had a National Liberation Committee to assist them. However the committee had few resources and little authority, leaving the liberation groups to operate on their own (Bell 1974: 158). Nor were the member governments always of one mind on the matter. Morocco objected vehemently when Algeria and others proposed to include the Polisario among the recognized liberation movements as doing so entailed rejecting Moroccan claims to the Western Sahara. The ensuing contention brought the OAU almost to a standstill for a time. The UN and the Organization of American States later developed formal contacts with rebels in countries where they were encouraging and assisting negotiated settlements of civil war situations in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Durch 1993: chapters 20, 22, 23, and 24). Humanitarian relief efforts could easily involve working with rebel groups, though formal acknowledgement of this not occurred often. One of the few came in a 1991? agreement between UNICEF and the government of Sudan that UN-sponsored relief efforts could proceed even in rebel-held areas of the country. Ethnic groups not involved in civil wars or secession attempts, including indigenous peoples, won hearing in the UN Human Rights Commission. Since 1999, multinational enterprises have been included in the Global Compact. Most religious groups interact through their charitable organizations or organizational assemblies established as NGOs, though the Roman Catholic Church has been able to use the state-like character of Vatican City to also enjoy status as an observer state. Yet just as with the League, most UN collaboration with nonstate actors is with NGOs.

Informational.

The notion of informational activity can cover both the UN Department of Public Informations and other agencies efforts to publicize UN activity, and the efforts by any actor IGO, government, or non-state entity to advance conceptions of the issue at hand and the most appropriate way to structure the process of determining how to handle it highlighted in Jacobsons discussion. Both the League and the United Nations system have been receptive to NGO participation in these activities. The most general tier of informational activities involve NGOs on the Roster as well as in Categories 1 and 2, who are invited to regular UN Departent of Public Information briefings, its annual NGO conferences, and to its occasional special conferences on particular issues (e.g., the 1959 Conference of NGOs on UN Technical Assistance or the 1962 Conference of NGOs on the UN Development Decade). For NGOs, the informational merges into the normative, and they are particularly interested in using their access to international conferences and other connections with IGOs to advance their policy ideas.

Normative.

Identification of problems situations that can be improved through conscious human action develop out of notions of how the things work now and could be made to work in the future. Like governments, most nonstate entities seek to influence the direction of governance by

guiding the evolution of the worldviews, normative beliefs, and conceptual frames brought to bear on a particular question.

Such efforts have been a more prominent part of activity by religious groups, political

movements, and NGOs than by ethnic/national groups, business firms, or criminal networks, though even they have preferences regarding the ideational frameworks inspiring rule creation. Even when not engaged in proselytizing and encouraging conversion, religious groups carry strongly-held values into their action in the world; their ancillary activities like maintaining schools, colleges, clinics, hospitals, and community development projects also reflect their basic convictions. Transnational political movements of all persuasions exist to spread their ideology, and measure their success by how they fare in democratic or other modes of acquiring state power. This ambition distinguishes them from other nonstate entities, which seek to influence how governments exercise power but do not want that task themselves. Different sorts of NGO have advanced various worldviews, normative beliefs, and conceptual frameworks. The scientific and professional groups that began forming in the late 19th century shared certain notions of the predictability of the physical universe or of social life and of the proper way to go about acquiring and applying knowledge. The science in society organizations that began to emerge in the 1970s developed a stream of thought that had been implicit among many groups for some time in advocating application of scientific knowledge to social problems. The anti-slavery movement, which first acquired NGO form with the London-based Anti-Slavery Society in 1838, advanced a vision of human equality that also informed the later anti-colonial and human rights organizations. Environmental NGOs offer counters to what they see as modernity's estrangement from nature, with the features of the new relationship drawn differently depending broader ecological philosophy animating the organization's leaders and members.

Nonstate entities' efforts to contribute to normative frameworks can involve "insider"

strategies of working through established institutions, "outsider" strategies of mobilizing members for demonstrations and disseminating ideas through the media, or both. The multiplicity of insider channels available has become more apparent with recent studies of what analysis have called "private governance" -- transnational codes of professional conduct, product standards, best management practices, etc through such non-governmental venues as the International Standards Organization, stock exchanges, bond rating agencies, or product certification schemes (e.g., Cutler, Haufler and Porter 1999; Loya and Boli 1999).

The insider strategies depend heavily on webs of personal connections. Sometimes these

involve overlaps between IGO and NGO personnel. In the 1960s(?) Jim Grant was simultaneously Executive Director of UNICEF and President of the Washington DC-based Society for International Development (which continues to have a mix of UN system staff, government officials, NGO leaders, and academics in its activities). He used the Society to run three independent fora bringing together specialists from industrial and developing states to develop alternatives to the modernization theory dominating development discourse in the 1950s: a North-South Roundtable, an Alternate Development Strategies Programme, and a group on Grassroots Initiatives and Strategies. In the 1970s as president of the Overseas Development Institute, Grant continued this work by promoting the Physical Quality of Life Index (Wignaraja 1996: 74). The more enduring sorts of personal connections involve ongoing policy networks linking like-minded individuals in governments, IGOs, and nonstate entities.

Outsider strategies depend more on access to public places and media attention. The

official and unofficial Forums parallel to UN Conferences have provided conducive conditions for pursuit of outsider and mixed insider-outsider strategies by providing nonstate entities a focus for their own networking and position-development (e.g. Chan 1996). They are also occasions

when NGO activists assemble in large numbers and close to an inter-governmental conference to attract more media attention than they would otherwise garner. The street demonstrations that began to converge on meetings of the IMF and Word Bank in 1994 and WTO ministerial meetings in 1998 have been an even more thoroughly oppositional form of outsider strategy in which nonstate entities most thoroughly critical of current conditions advance their normative conceptions through photogenic forms of protest.

Governments are aware of both insider and outsider strategies, and seek to counter them

in various ways. Creation of government-organized NGOs is one counter-move, particularly noticeable in Latin America and the Middle East, which provides competition for local private initiatives. Some governments have been able to constrain internet-based mobilization by maintaining a state monopoly over internet service provision or taking other measures. Not surprisingly, governments counter-moves have included limiting nonstate actors ability to create striking scenes. Journalists in (then British) Hong Kong attributed the Chinese government's decision to provide facilities for the Womens Forum some 30? kilometers from the official site of the 1995 UN Conference on Women to Premier? Li Pengs desire to avoid a repetition of spectacle surrounding activists' hunger strike directly outside the conference hall at the 1995 Copenhagen Summit on Social Development (Davis 1996: 46). Though the IMF and World Bank still hold their meetings in Washington DC, WTO ministerial conferences and Group of 8 economic summits used concerns about terrorism to shift to more remote locations from which the host government could more easily exclude large numbers of demonstrators. The isolation inspires negative comment, but yields fewer images NGOs can re-use on websites and in publications.

Yet unsympathetic governments and IGOs are not the only obstacle to NGO normative

efforts. Often fractures within the set of active NGOs weaken the impact of all their normative activity by creating a cacophony of views from which governments and IGOs can select and/or by hindering inter-NGO coordination of effort. In the 1920s and 1930s, the ILO became a site of contention between the equal treatment wing of the international women's movement emphasizing the need for equal pay and similar treatment of all workers regardless of gender, and the workplace protection wing seeking differential rules regarding hours and job hazards (Berkovitch 1999: 105). Strong differences of world views and normative preferences views have divided environmental NGOs from the start. During and after the 1972 Stockholm Conference, tensions between the older conservation-oriented NGOs and the newer ecologically-oriented ones manifest in a sharp struggle for leadership of the umbrella coalition (Feraru 1974: 49). The struggle continued, but was sufficiently attenuated by effective mediation that a World Assembly of NGOs concerned with the Global Environment was able to assembly in Geneva in 1973 concurrently with the first session of the UNEP Council (Feraru: 36). Later discussions on climate change demonstrate what can happen if an issue begins to attract wider attention. The reatively few NGOs following discussions of climate change closely in the late 1980s formed Climate Action Network (CAN) to coordinate their efforts. Despite some differences in approach among both the three most active members -- Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the Worldwide Fund for Nature and the others, CAN developed and pressed a number of common positions. After adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the negotiating agenda shifted to development of detailed policy prescriptions. At the same time, climate change issues began attracting more media and public attention and more NGOs began following the discussions closely. About 40 were following the discussions and sending representatives to climate change negotiating sessions in 1991-92, and 275 in 2000 (Betsell 2000: 52-53). CAN expanded to include the newcomers organizations, but its leaders found themselves strained to perform the dual tasks of providing the newcomers with the information they needed to understand the details under negotiation and continuing to define a common NGO position on

substantive conference issues. CAN leaders began to hold separate "executive committee" meetings to hammer out substantive positions, triggering accusations of "hierarchy" and ignoring the concerns of most of the coalition in favor of emphasizing the positions of a small group of NGOs based in the industrial states (Betsell 2000: 63).

The 1994 Cairo World Population Summit and follow-up meetings were marked by very

strong contention among NGOs, with development and reproductive health oriented advocates of population control on one side and opponents of family planning/birth control programs on the other. The former far outnumbered the later, but the efforts of a coalition of the Vatican, some Latin American governments, and some Moslem governments to weaken both the Action Plan adopted at Cairo and various follow-up activities kept the issue open and the inter-NGO contention alive (Fahey 1999). Though happening anyway (Davis 1996: 46) , the ongoing contention provided a conducive environment for efforts to reduce the differences in policy positions the development-oriented and reproductive health-oriented NGOs.

Though most normative activity focuses on issues, there is a stream focused on labeling

some nonstate actors as unacceptable because of the types of activity they undertake (see the definition of criminal groups in Gruyman 2000: 56) and inspiring action against them. Organized crime networks, both the main transnational criminal organizations Italian mafia, the "Russian mafiya," Colombian drug cartels, Japanese Yakuza, Chinese triads and the smaller criminal groups sometimes operating with the main ones and sometimes on their own are the most frequently mentioned targets. However persons, groups, and firms engaged in transnational activities coming under wide condemnation such as alien smuggling, sexual exploitation of children, or any of the modern forms of slavery" (debt bondage, forced labor, sexual or physical abuse of immigrant domestic workers, trafficking in persons for prostitution, and forced prostitution [list in Dunbar 1999: 117]) are also the targets of concerted international efforts. Racists are still routinely condemned, though with the fall of the last white racist regimes, attention has shifted to racist individuals and groups. Racism is the focus of one of the UN Commission on Human Rights' thematic mechanisms, and the work of the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (see, e.g. the 1999 report in UN Doc. E/CN4/1999/15) suggests that NGOs espousing far right or neo-nazi ideologies, racial discrimination against blacks or Arabs, anti-semitism, discrimination against Roma (gypsies) or against the Untouchables of India will not be welcome at the UN.

Some governments and NGOs have also sought to discourage the hiring of mercenaries,

but this effort has only scattered support. UN General Assembly condemnations have been confined mercenary involvement in overthrowing recognized governments, and the draft International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Funding, or Training of Mercenaries has attracted only 19 ratifications (UN Yearbook 1999: 608). Many governments, particularly in Africa, rely heavily on private security firms, of which Executive Outcomes was the best known until its dissolution in 1998, for military training, protection of major economic facilities, and maintenance of domestic security. Private security firms have also been involved in peacekeeping and ceasefire monitoring (Coker 2001: 194-199). Even some NGOs involved in humanitatian relief efforts in countries wracked by civil war or suffering a general breakdown of public administration have sometimes hired private security firms to protect their facilities and staff.

For many international and national NGOs, large corporations particularly

multinational corporations and cross-border business alliances are also targets to be treated with equal if not more presumption of nefariousness. Many have expressed considerable dismay at establishment of the Global Compact because it includes business firms and is organized as an

effort to identify and disseminate best practices rather than monitor and assess firm conduct by the yardstick of some externally-defined code of conduct. Others insist that if the UN is going to develop relations with business firms, that these be kept very separate from the formal consultative relations with NGOs and be governed by rules defining which firms are and are not acceptable participants (e.g., CONGO 1999: 154-155). Labor unions have often adopted a more convoluted position, both contending against MNEs on workplace issues and seeking to enlist the major Japanese and Western-based MNEs in campaigns to improve labor standards through private codes of conduct in areas of the world where governments resist upward harmonization of national standards (Josselin 2001: 175-76). Rule creation.

Except in ILO, where delegates sent by national trade union and employer associations also have it, the right to vote in IGO rule-creation remained confined to government delegates. NGOs and other nonstate entities that have not been assimilated to states and given observer status are allowed to address certain UN bodies in their own name, but the process is quite uneven and generally confined to subsidiary bodies or "informal sessions." Fairly typical is the decisoin during the UN General Assemblys First Special Session on Disarmament in 1978, that NGO observers would address only a designated meeting of the Committee of the Whole. The General Assembly's Fourth Committee, which deals with decolonization and administration of UN Trust Territories, did allow some individuals, including members of indigenous political movements and NGOs to make presentations regarding conditions in a non-self-governing territory, but most of these occurred in the Trusteeship Council or the Committee of 24. In recent years a number of UN bodies, even including the Security Council, have held informal sessions where NGO representatives make statements or presentations and engage in some give-and-take with delegates (Paul 1999: 301).

Thus most of NGOs and other nonstate entities participation in rule -creation occurs

through formulating and publicizing their own proposals, preconference lobbying of governments and their delegates, mobilization of public opinion in favor of or against particular initiatives, and during-conference statements, lobbying, and consultation with like-minded delegates. Delegates vary considerably in their receptivity to NGO contacts. Some delegates are expert in the subject at hand and need less assistance understanding the issue than the many diplomatic generalists who move among UN bodies on a relatively short-term basis and are more likely to be unfamiliar with the issues (see Brett 1995:109 on the UN Human Rights Commission). Others have instructions from their governments to avoid or to seek out contacts with NGOs generally or with specific ones.

Transnational and national associations of international lawyers have the longest, going

back to the latter half of the 19th century, and most active history of developing draft schemes of global governance which they then publicize and present to governments or IGOs. Though the UN has also developed expert committees the UN International Law Commission, the UN Commission on International Trade Law these have not entirely supplanted efforts of the Comite Maritime International (est. 1897), the International Law Association (est. 1889), and other groups. Their closest rival are the organizers of the Red Cross movement, who in the 1860s sought adoption of a multilateral convention guaranteeing the neutrality of Red Cross workers and their clinics and in the 20th century as the International Committee of the Red Cross spearheaded development of a series of multilateral conventions on protection of civilians, sick and wounded military personnel, and prisoners of war. NGOs concerned with wildlife have been active in developing the criteria for listing species for protection under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Human Rights NGOs were central to the drafting of

the Convention against Torture and elements of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Environmental NGOs pioneered and remain the most active producer of during-

conference information and comment materials meant to influence the course of negotiations. At the Stockholm Conference, Friends of the Earth and the editors of The Ecologist summarized conference proceedings and provided their own commentary on developments in a daily tabloid called Eco (Feraru 1974: 35-36). The Earth Negotiation Bulletin continues to provide daily summaries of UN-sponsored and other major environmental negotiations.

NGO representatives sometimes acquire direct roles in drafting documents for

conferences. This is particularly common and most formalized in the UN Specialized Agencies where close cooperation with nonstate entities active in the Agencys particular field of competence is strongly institutionalized. In the ITU, employees of private telecommunications firms and telecommunications equipment manufacturers may serve as members of Consultative Committee Study Groups preparing draft technical standards. By the late 1990s, selected NGOs were participating as equal partners with UN agencies and governments in some UN bodies, including the Committee for the Promotion and Advancement of Cooperatives, the UNICEF/NGO Committee on Central and Eastern Europe, and the Safe Motherhood Initiative Agency Group (Ritchie 1997: 333).

Nonstate entities successes in guiding the normative evolution of an issue is greatest

when they can develop a broad coalition that includes important governments early on. The private effort to establish the International Red Cross in the 19th century acquired momentum when endorsed by governments. The governments of Prussia and other German states were particularly important because their familiarity with the Knights Hospitallers and their long tradition of tending to the battle -wounded allowed them to answer other governments concerns that civilian medical and relief personnel would get in the way of military operations and/or wither into ineffectiveness at the sight of battle (Finnemore 1999: 157). Similarly, the transnational campaign to abolish anti-personnel mines moved into the intergovernmental arena with strong support from the government of Canada, and assistance from the governments of France, Britain, and South Africa (Price 1998: 635-35). The same coalitional pattern (more often accidental than consciously arranged) can be seen in negative examples as well. The idea of negotiating a Multilateral Investment Agreement in OECD had already inspired opposition from Third World governments, which were largely excluded from the discussions, before the anti-MAI activists launched their internet campaign (Gamble and Ku 2000: 257). Governments had reached stalemate on several trade issues before the Battle in Seattle erupted.

Nonstate entities seeking tougher international standards on some issue also engage in

the forum shopping behavior familiar to students of tort law and regulation. On most issues, this is facilitated by a multiplicity of IGO bodies able to claim competence. The main IGO forums for current efforts to define global labor standards are the ILO, the OECD, the WTO, and the UN Human Right Commissions Subcommission for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights. Even IGOs having the same states as members present different opportunities because the organizations have different goals and national delegates are selected according to somewhat different criteria. Where the clusters of member states and/or the voting rules differ, the potential that different IGOs will adopt non-identical resolutions, codes, or draft treaties is even greater. Thus, for example, some advocates of more comprehensive labor standards regard the Subcommission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights code of conduct (UNHRC 2001) as preferable to others (Meyer and Stephanova 2001: 505 note 9). The search for stronger statements does not always stop with forum shopping among IGOs. Some of the NGOs active in

opposing large-scale national development projects (major dams, for example) pay little attention to the national rules of the country where they will be built and seek inspiration in international recommendations, the national law of states with stricter requirements on the type of project under discussion or more participatory regulatory processes, and industrial best practices (Bradlow 2001: 1544).

Implementation.

IGO and governments have been very receptive to NGO and other nonstate entities assistance in translating verbal commitments into real world results. Most of the 19th century public international unions depended on subventions from particular countries -- sometimes from formal government budgets but as often from the "personal" revenues of monarchs) -- and many of them collapsed when the subventions stopped during World War I (Murphy 1994: 83). The League of Nations was highly dependent on private funds for health, refugee, and disaster relief programs. Fridjof Nansen raised most of the funds for the refugee program he ran from government or private sources. The Rockefeller Foundation (USA) financed about 10% of the League secretariats economic programs and half of the health ones; the Carnegie Endowment, the Twentieth Century Fund, and the Word Peace Foundation also provided funds for League activities (Murphy 1994: 183).

UN reliance on private groups and funds to provide refugee assistance and other forms of

relief date back to the late 1940s. This began in 1946 when the US government concluded that UNRRA was actually serving to prop up the leninist governments formed or forming in Eastern Europe because it and its Western allies were paying most of the costs and Eastern European countries were receiving most of the assistance. (The agreement that UN members not invaded during World War II would provide UNRRA with the equivalent of 2% of their GNP meant the money flow involved was substantial.) The US government was able to get UNRRA disbanded and redirected reconstruction aid to its own bilateral programs, the Marshall Plan, and US-based charitable organizations like (Chabbott 1999: 234-235).

UNRRA was the last UN aid agency to have an assured financial base; the rest have been

funded mainly through voluntary contributions from member governments rather than the main UN budget. The vagaries of these contributions has pushed most of them into collaboration with nonstate entities. UNICEF quickly established a network of National Committees for UNICEF to raise private funds. FAOs national NGO committees undertake an annual Freedom from Hunger/Action for Development fund drive. Rotary International has been a major source of funds for WHOs program to eliminate polio (Beigbeder 1997).

Direct NGO participation in implementation is greatest in the areas of development

assistance and humanitarian relief. Even in the 1970s, before using NGOs as implementing partners became popular among government aid agencies, international NGOs based in industrial states were supplying more than $1 billion a year in technical assistance (Feld and Jordan 1994: 226). By the 1990s, a combination of international and locally-based NGOs had become the largest participants in development aid assistance out of a confluence of trends towards greater self-organization among populations in developing countries, greater aid agency reliance on NGOs for implementation (often to by-pass governments regarded as ineffective, corrupt, or nonexistent in the countryside), and greater belief in economic and political doctrines emphasizing private enterprise and civil society as sources of dynamism (e.g., Drabek 1987; Clark 1991; Smillie 1994; Uvin 1996; Sollis 1996;) UN system-NGO collaboration is also pervasive in humanitarian relief provided to refugees, victims of armed conflicts, and victims of natural disasters, with effectiveness ranging from low to considerable as both the UN bodies and

the NGs have learned how to work together more effectively. Over time there has been growing reliance on local organizations and locally-recruited staff.

Rule supervision.

Governments have typically been more eager for NGO help with rule -supervision when the needed monitoring involved tracking the behavior of nonstate actors than of government agencies or officials. Thus governments have raised few complaints about their heavy reliance on the IUCNs TRAFFIC network for monitoring compliance with CITES. They have also been content with the efforts of environmental groups to monitor and shame business firms into better compliance with environmental rules.

The limits of government tolerance for NGO rule -supervision directed at government

agencies have been expressed repeatedly in the UN Commission on Human Rights even though the UN bodies themselves acknowledge their heavy dependence on NGOs for information. Only in 1967 did the ESC authorize the Commission to discuss the human rights situation in a particular country, and only in 1970 did it start using the stream of communications from individuals about human rights violations that had been coming to the UN since 1945 as a basis for discussion (Donnelly 1998: 52). Governments remained sensitive on the issue, and NGO efforts to discuss particular cases of human rights violations in presentations to the Commission have triggered strong denunciations by the governments implicated. At its 31st session in February-March 1975, human rights groups circulated reports criticizing human rights violations in Brazil, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, South Africa, Syria, Turkey, the USSR, and Zaire. Several government delegates labeled them slanderous and abuses of the privilege of participating in Commission meetings (Commission report in UN Doc. E/5635, p. 19; noted in Chiang 1981: 1). 16 governments then proposed a resolution calling on ESCs Committee on NGOs to review the consultative status of NGOs and calling for any that failed to respect the confidentiality requirements of Commission discussions to be suspended from consultative status if NGOs continued such conduct which was ultimately adopted with little change as ESC Resolution 1919 (Chiang 1981: 2). Amnesty Internationals representative caused a similar flap in 1980 by starting a detailed discussion of two Argentine nationals experiences in detention. The Argentine, Ethiopian, and Uruguayan delegates objected that NGOs had no right to use their speeches to attack governments. The Jordanian chair left some more room for NGO participation than the aggrieved delegates would have liked in ruling that NGOs may not attack governments but may provide information about the human rights situation in particular parts of the world (Gaer 1996: 54). What is "information" and what is "attack" remains a contentious question and, as noted above, governments particularly vigilant in accepting human rights NGOs into consultative relations with the ESC since that is the basis of their participation in Human Rights Commission work. The separate expert committees established to monitor implementation of the various UN Human Rights Conventions also depend heavily on NGO-provided information. Their activity has inspired less contention, partly because the committees are expert rather than intergovernmental bodies (the argument in Brett 1995: 102) and partly because their mandates are limited to the rights covered in the treaty in which they are established and deal with reports submitted by governments unless a particular state has ratified an "optional protocol" allowing the body to discuss individual cases.

NGO collaboration in rule-supervision against undesirable actors is less controversial. However, much of the action involves national law enforcement rather than IGO programs. Yet the number of target organizations and the extent of their cross-border activity means that no one governments agencies can monitor all of their their activity and punish all their malfeasance

alone. Though bilateral cooperation such as Italian-US efforts against the mafia in the 1960s and 1970s (Gruymon 2000: 54) has reduced certain activities, most now involve activity spread across enough countries to require wider cooperation. Governments have progressively improved their cooperation through Interpol, but much police work still depends more on emergency calls and tips rather than on patrolling agents' observation of crime-in-progress. Nowhere (not even in the 20th century totalitarian countries) are the police and other government agents sufficiently numerous to keep their eyes on everything and everyone. Acknowledgment of this reality is becoming more widespread, with both governments and IGOs turning to contemporary communications technologies to elicit more information. Interpol has been upgrading its information circulation capabilities, and national police and intelligence agencies have been increasing their cooperation. As organized criminal groups and rebel or terrorist groups have come to cooperate more in particular operations or to provide contexts in which each other can maintain their organizations (see Galeotti 2001: 214-215), they create even higher concern.

Noncontentious NGO participation in rule -supervision also extends to nonstate actors whose overall purposes are legal but whose particular actions have violate national law or international guidelines about how to attain those legal purposes. The 2000 version of the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises requires each OECD member state that is home country to multinational corporations to establish a National Contact Point where other governments, affected persons, or NGOs can report any MNC behavior they believe violates the Guidelines (Meyer and Stephanova 2001: 510 note 24 and OECD 2000). Both IGOs and NGOs acknowledge that governments retain the most authority and resources for general police work, and are aware that the first step in securing effective police work involves provisions of national law defining undesired activity a illegal and establishing mechanisms for identifying and punishing offenders. It is generally the case, however, that some governments more actively pursue offenders than others. Much of the time, these differences do not appear to be significant, but there are times when the width of the gap in effort or the salience of the particular form of conduct increases to a point where other actors want to put pressure on the laggard governments to act. Efforts to slow down transnational crime and terrorist groups by clamping down on "money laundering" through banks in countries with permissive banking laws were limited as long as large numbers of governments sought to develop "offshore" banking industries. The OECD Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering increased the pressure on (mainly non-OEDC member) governments to tighten national banking laws and take action against money laundering by establishing an internet site which included listings of countries its members regarded as particularly lackadaisical in their policies. (Meyer and Stephanova 2001: 520, note 50.) Similar ventures have been proposed for other sorts of conduct. Elbowings in the Crowd of Nonstate Actors Observers of contemporary world politics agree that the explosion of nonstate entity numbers and activity owes much to a combination of political and material conditions. The end of the Cold War and the spread of democratization around the world opened more opportunities for cross-border contacts and activities as fewer governments sought tight control over them and the development of more rapid and pervasive telecommunication and information-dissemination technologies enabling even nonstate entities outside the political or economic mainstream to secure information, build or maintain contacts with likeminded counterparts in other countries, and coordinate activities. Though some observers argue that NGOs are now capable of building and maintaining channels of action entirely autonomous of governments and IGOs, others continue to believe that IGO connections continue to provide an important institutional support

for the global consciousness widely regarded as key to building and maintaining a global civil society. With this explosion of numbers and activity has come increasing tensions among nonstate entities. The longstanding tensions between labor and business, different ethnic groups, adherents of different religions, and adherents of different political ideologies remain strong. As various social movements have expanded and been expressed in a growing number of NGOs, additional patterns of tension have developed. Sometimes these resemble the tensions between radical and reformist political ideologies, with one wing of a social movement pressing for larger changes from the status quo than others. Some commentators (e.g., Moody 1997) see a similar division within the labor movement, with many unions in developing countries joining more radically anti-capitalist movement coalitions than their counterparts in the industrial countries. Even where trade unions in developing states follow more traditional forms of union activity, they differ strongly on some questions from their industrial state counterparts, as had become obvious in the debates over inclusion of labor standards in trade agreements. The strong tensions between environmental organizations and different wings of the population control movement were noted briefly above.

Just as Cold War divisions were reflected in the activities of different unions, cultural organizations, and other NGOs, the divide between industrial and developing states (the countries in transition are treated as a separate gorup but come in for much less attention) is widely perceived as marking the world of nonstate actors as well. The notion that NGOs based in industrial states (Northern NGOs in the typical jargon) and NGOs based in developing states (Southern NGOs) have very distinct positions is well established among activist and scholarly observers of the NGO scene. This, even more than the traditional UN emphasis on "equitable geographical representation," underlies the strong emphasis the ESC and other UN bodies have given to increasing participation by Southern NGOs in formal and informal UN-NGO relations. Much of the recent increase in the number of NGOs in consultative relations with the ESC and UNESCO involves including regional and national NGOs from Third World countries (see lists in Yearbook of International Organiztions 2001-02). While opening up opportunities for additional NGOs, it is causing some concern among the larger transnational federation NGOs. They have complained that the ESC and its Committee on NGOs is failing to notice their efforts to keep their Southern affiliates informed of developments, incorporate those affiliates' perspectives in their global positions , and bring persons from Southern affiliates to UN-sponsored meetings as part of the federation's team (CONGO 1999: ). Yet this perception does reflect what is known about the sources of these organizations' money. Both the ICFTU and the international trade secretariats derive most of their funds from their largest union members -- affiliates of the AFL-CIO in the USA, the German DGB, the Japanese Rengo, and the British Trades Union Congress (Josselin 2001: 178). Much the same is true of the main international human rights and environmental groups.

Another tension among nonstate actors arises out of differences in the basis of their

claims to a place at the table in any discussion of global governance. Perhaps the most pervasive is the tension between claims based on expertise and claims based on representation of important social sectors. Each has a long tradition of acceptance, but the conflicts between the two have become more acute in recent years with demands for democratization and transparency and accountability in governance. These have been addressed not only to political decision-makers, but to project planners, engineers, scientists, and other expert groups involved in particular areas of governance.

Yet even in this context substantive expertise and experience acknowledged by other actors, particularly IGOs and governments, remains a highly reliable source of entre and influence. This pattern has marked cooperation on "technical" and "administrative matters" since the founding of the Public International Unions in the 19th century, and a look at the lists of NGOs having consultative status or extensive collaborative relations with the Specialized Agencies reveals its continuing vigor. In areas where highly technical forms of expertise are not needed to understand issues and propose policies, notions of experience and competence have weighed heavily not only in UN system criteria for consultative relations but also in governments choice of NGO participants in the details of rule -making and implementation. Direct experience guides UN agencies' estimates of their NGO implementing partners' ability (and vice-versa).

Claims to inclusion based on representativeness of major social groupings are not new; they were part of the League's implicit selection rules and written into UN rules in 1946. What has shifted over time is the strength of emphasis put on representativeness and the notions of which groups need to be represented. Children and youth had been identified as worthy of concern and attention at both the national and international level before 1945, and the elderly soon after World War II. The women's movement, kept to one side by the League, acquired a secure place at the UN table starting with the UN Decade for Women in the 1970s (Chan 1996). The 1970s also saw development of and UN endorsement for a transnational movement among "indigenous peoples" -- populations descended from the native populations encountered and largely displaced by European colonial powers since 1492. The Agenda 21 list of major social groups women, children and youth, indigenous peoples, NGOs, local authorities, workers and trade unions, business and industry, scientific and technological communities, and farmers suggests the contours of early 1990s thinking about which groups deserve consideration. Some -- business, unions, farmers, and scientific groups -- are often well-represented in national political systems; others -- women, indigenous -- are often under-represented. Taken together, however, the ten hardly constitute a list of all the major social groupings that exist within countries unless NGOs is taken to include any social grouping not otherwise mentioned that forms an NGO to represent itself.

The stronger convergence of human rights, development, and environmental concerns pushed by critics of neoliberal economic policies has included greater emphasis on making decisions locally as much as possible and where that is not possible on establishing more participatory decision-making processes at the national, regional, and global levels. Some advocates have offered the World Commission on Dams as a model for inclusionary normative and rule-setting activity. The Commission developed out of a World Bank effort to evaluate large dam projects that had become the focus of considerable controversy in the early 1990s than began with the 1994 Wapenhans Report. The Commission had 13 members, selected to ensure geographical spread and inclusion of persons from governments, private engineering and construction firms, local populations affected by dams, indigenous peoples, and convened a wider "WCD Forum" of similar composition to comment on its drafts before issuing a final Report in 2000 (Bradlow 2001; Asmal 2001). Yet emphasizing the inclusion of "all stakeholders" still requires decisions about participation because the categories of individuals, groups, and other entities having a stake must be defined and then persons, groups, or entities selected to represent the category. Even when there is consensus about a stakeholder, there may be reasonable disagreement about which sort of nonstate actor can best represent it. Such controversies have long affected the labor movement, not only in contentions between rival labor movements and union federations since the 19th century but also in organizational maneuvering for roles in addressing new

problems. As multinational forms of enterprise spread in the 1960s and 1970s, a gap between the new cross-border management decision structures and the more nationally-focused decision structures of the labor movement emerged. The labor union groups forming part of member state delegations at ILO represented in ILO were overwhelmingly national in their orientation while the transnational federations of labor federations were too removed from the shop or factory floor to bargain effectively with TNEs. This opened opportunities for the international trade secretariats, such as the International Metalworkers' Federation, linking unions in the same industry with counterparts in different countries to acquire a role as coordinators of union action against TNEs (Cox 1974: 228-9; Josselin 2001: 177-178). The remaining international federations (WFTU suffered major membership losses after the end of the Cold War) have also sought to become active in this area as well. Any time NGOs dealing with the same issue have different ideas about how to handle it, there will be strong competition among them to gain governments' and IGOs' ears. The proliferation of nonstate actors with origins in different historical eras, concerns, and organizational cultures has affected efforts to develop a broad coalition supporting "globalization from below." These can be seen particularly clearly in current efforts at joint activity among labor unions, environmental groups, and human rights organizations. Labor unions arose in the 19th century, have long pursued most of their actual activity at the national level in seeking tripartite governance of economic issues, and base claims to be heard on their members' class position in the economy. Environmental groups and human rights organizations developed in the 20th century in a more transnational context and base claims to be heard on the need to pay attention to the concerns they raise rather than direct representation of affected individuals. Recently there has been a degree of convergence among them forcing each into a degree of "reinvention." Labor unions are paying renewed attention to broader social issues and seeing themselves as part of a broad coalition of the less well off with similar interests on a range of issues (this is more striking in the USA than in Europe, where elements of "social unionism" have were stronger). Environmental and human rights organizations are presenting themselves as concerned not only with the particular issue but also with those who suffer because of failure to respect human rights or protect the environment. The labor unions in particular are scrambling to adapt new networking strategies to their traditional modes of organizing (Josselin 2001: 171-72) Some of these tensions may reflect different amounts of resources. Greenpeace International enjoys about ten times the funds of Amnesty International and more than ten times those of the ICFTU (Josselin 2001: 178 who gives the figures as L110 million, L 12 milllion, and L7 million respectively). All three have staff and members who can be mobilized for networking, street demonstrations, media outreach, and letter-writing campaigns, but at least for now the environmental and human rights groups are more skilled in using the internet and attracting media attention. Other tensions may reflect fit between the image of the organization and public perceptions of which issues are important or how politics is conducted at both the national and transnational levels. General prespective It is not clear today whether NGOs should be regarded as a particular type of nonstate actor, or as an organizational form any nonstate actor other than an IGO and a rebel group seeking to take state power can adopt. Among the NGOs active in the UN system, there is a strong feeling that "NGO" denotes a type of nonstate actor, and a strong desire to maintain distinctions between NGOs and other types.

Both formal and informal contacts with IGOs provide other nonstate actors with additional sites for carrying on competition to be heard in the informational, normative, rule creating, implementation, and rule supervisory aspects of developing and maintaining systems of regional or global governance that span the territories of several states. International secretariats, particularly the section or office charged with maintaining the contacts with n