The Union of International Associations (UIA) was founded in 1910, aiming to coordinate the relations and interests of international organizations across the world. Its long history makes it a prism through which to study the field of international organizations and its dynamics. Bringing together experts from fields including history, political science and international relations, architecture, historical sociology, digital humanities and information studies, International Organizations and Global Civil Society is the first scholarly book to cover both the UIA's early years and its more recent past. Key issues explored include the UIA's importance for the field of scientific internationalism, the relations between the UIA and other international organizations, and the changing position of the UIA when facing geopolitical challenges such as totalitarianism, the World Wars and the Cold War. This important book addresses a number of current scholarly concerns: the concept of "global civil society"; the development of international relations as a field of study; the investigation of transnational factors in modern and contemporary history; and the tracing of forerunners to the "information society".

The annual Global Civil Society Yearbooks provide an indispensable guide to global civil society or civic participation and action around the world. The 2007/8 Yearbook focuses on the potentially powerful relationship between communication and democracy promotion. The Global Civil Society Yearbook remains the standard work on all aspects of contemporary global civil society for activists, practitioners, students and academics alike.

Contestations in Global Civil Society examines the ways in which the global community is dealing with heightened destabilization and takes a close look at shifts accompanying the resurrection of civil society discourses such as political mobilization, polarization, responsibility, and participation.

There has been clear recognition of tendencies towards uncritically celebrating resistance and the need for critical appraisal within the literature on globalization and contestation. This book provides a conceptual history of global civil society and a critical examination of the politics of resistance in the global political economy. It uses a dialectical method of analysis to illustrate the conceptual stasis of mainstream approaches to questions of globalization and contestation, while demonstrating the potential of a Gramscian approach to reconstitute hegemony as a key analytical and explanatory tool. Buckley offers insight to the movements of transversal hegemony and existent and anticipated modes of social relation through the case studies of the World Social Forum and the World People's Conference on Climate Change. Offering a more comprehensive understanding of change in the global political economy, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of international political economy, globalization, global civil society, sociology, and the politics resistance.

′This fifth Global Civil Society Yearbook continues the intellectual shaping of an emerging global civil society. As the Global Call for Action on Poverty, G-Cap, makes its voice heard under the whiteband symbol, this analysis of current issues of migration, climate change and UN reform, with a focus on gender and social movements, provides a timely intellectual resource to strengthen shared commitments′ - Mary Robinson ′These annual volumes have themselves become an occasion for enacting global civil society: each Yearbook is a project that involves hundreds of people around the world in various ways... and they often fight it out around divergent understandings of critical issues. This volume enters the extreme zones we face today - the growing injustices which increasingly are only addressed by global civil society actors, but also the powerful innovations brought about by new technologies that can construct whole new global spaces for global civil society′ - Saskia Sassen ′It is increasingly difficult to recall memorable analyses of international social movements before GCS. But after half a decade each annual issue is not only a magnum opus but is also definitive, distinctive & comparative. The study of global civil society can never be the same!′ - Timothy M Shaw, Professor of Commonwealth Governance & Development & Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London The annual Global Civil Society Yearbooks provide an indispensable guide to global civil society or civic participation and action around the world. Each yearbook includes commissioned contributions from leading commentators across the social sciences on the latest issues and developments. Each yearbook also explores and presents the latest approaches to measuring and analyzing global civil society and provides a chronology of key global civil society events in the year. The 2005/6 Yearbook explores the role of gender in global civil society and investigates the core issues of labour migration, climate change and UN reform. In part three, contributions consider the impact of social forums and wireless technology, as well as reviewing the discussion of networks from the 2004/5 Yearbook. Illustrated throughout with summaries, maps, figures, tables and photographs and encompassing regular features such as updates on previous editions and the annual data reports, the Global Civil Society Yearbook remains the standard work on all aspects of contemporary global civil society for activists, practitioners, students and academics alike. It is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the key actors, forms and manifestations of global civil society around the world today.

International law scholarship has not adequately recognised the magnitude of the role of ‘global civil society’ in ‘global governance’ and ‘international lawmaking.’ Building upon theoretical, historical and legal scholarship and presenting studies of GCS actor practice in a wide range of lawmaking processes, including treaty-making, conferences, international organisations and adjudicatory mechanisms, this book convincingly demonstrates that GCS actors have created and influenced the creation of norms of binding public international law and influential non-binding ‘soft’ or non-law. It presents a compelling case that calls for augmenting GCS access to information, participation in legal decision-making processes for those likely to be affected, and access justice thereby enhancing the legitimacy of public international law.

For many commentators, global civil society is revolutionising our approach to global politics, as new non-state-based and border-free expressions of political community challenge territorial sovereignty as the exclusive basis for political community and identity. This challenge 'from below' to the nation-state system is increasingly seen as promising nothing less than a reconstruction, or a re-imagination, of world politics itself. 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 worldwide public sphere, global civil society is understood by many to provide the agency necessary for these hoped-for transformations. Global Civil Society asks whether this idea is such a qualitatively new phenomenon after all; whether the transformation of the nation-state system is actually within its reach; and what some of the drawbacks might be.

Activists and academics look back over ten years of 'politics from below', and ask whether it is merely the critical gaze upon the concept that has changed – or whether there is something genuinely new about the way in which civil society is now operating.

This book evaluates the claim that in order to explore the changing social foundations of global power relations today, we need to include in our analysis an understanding of global civil society, particularly if we also wish to raise ethical questions about the changing political and institutional practices of transnational governance. Bridging the normative concerns of political theorists with the historical and institutional focus of scholars of international relations and international political economy, this book is of broad interest to students and researchers concerned with international relations, civil society, global governance and ethics.

′Even though current public interest and engagement in issues of global violence are the results of terribly tragic and disturbing events, it is good that these matters are receiving widespread attention. I argue for a wider use of our voice in the working of global civil society - to be distinguished from military initiatives and strategic activities of governments. The Global Civil Society Yearbook can make a substantial contribution to the expression of public voice without border′ - Amartya Sen Suicide bombings, collateral damage, kidnappings and air strikes pepper the lexicon of twenty-first century politics. Global Civil Society 2006/7 explores the complex relationship between violence, civil society and legitimacy in a unique dialogue that crosses political, cultural and religious boundaries. Is the use of violence by non-state actors ever justified? How is violence transmitted from the private to the public sphere? Why is terror and ′the war on terror′ catalysing rather than suppressing violence? Do Western and Islamic traditions of thought offer any solutions? This edition of the Yearbook also includes new research on economic and social rights, the politics of water, and football. Chapters include: - Not Even a Tree: Can Violence be Justified in a Global Era? Mary Kaldor and Heba Raouf Ezzat - Bringing Violence ′Back Home′ Jenny Pearce - Pipe dream or Panacea? Global Civil Society and Economic and Social Rights Marlies Glasius - War and Peace: the Role of Global Civil Society Mary Kaldor, Denisa Kostovicova, and Yahia Said - Water: a Global Contestation Willemijn Dicke, Patrick Bond, Fadia Daibes-Murad, Sanjeev Khagram, Alessandro Palmieri, Carlos Vainer, Zoë Wilson and Patricia Wouters - The Church, the Mosque and Global Civil Society Mark Juergensmeyer - The Odd Couple: Football and Global Civil Society David Goldblatt