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Transnational civil society organizations (CSOs) are often said to lack accountability. Taking issue with this claim, we report the results of a study on the accountability regimes of 60 transnational CSOs engaging in political advocacy. We scrutinize their transparency, opportunities for internal participation, evaluations and self-regulation, complaint procedures, and their independence from the state and intergovernmental organizations. We find that most transnational CSOs are reasonably transparent and offer participatory opportunities at least for members. They are organizationally independent from states and intergovernmental organizations, but dependencies on public funding are striking in some cases. Independent evaluations of their activities are scarce and codes of conduct, often suggested as an avenue towards better self-regulation of CSOs, do not seem to play a major role in practice. We conclude that the debate over transnational CSO accountability should focus on the most critical issues. In...

This chapter investigates the formal aspects of representativeness. As a reminder, this comprises the organisational locus, legal status, and membership structure of CSOs. It also includes the formal rules through which authorisation by and accountability to members is established. Finally, constituency size and geographic scope are further elements of the formal dimension of CSOs’ representativeness, in correspondence with the analytical framework set out in chapter 2.3. They are investigated here as well. The mentioned aspects will be examined through a descriptive analysis of CSO statutes and an evaluation of information published on CSO websites.

This chapter reports the results of accountability to members, member participation, as well as member and staff satisfaction. The first part is dedicated to the perspective of Brussels-based officers on the three aspects of CSO representativeness (5.1). The ensuing section evaluates the responses given by representatives from selected member organisations (5.2). In the final part, the findings from both groups of interviewees are summarised (5.3). They are discussed and interpreted in chapter 6.

This chapter outlines the methodological choices as well as the case selection which guide the subsequent analysis. The first part elucidates why a qualitative case study was conducted. It discusses its advantages and pitfalls and demonstrates why it is the appropriate method for the present work. Furthermore, it sheds light on the research methods, namely semi-structured interviews and document analysis (3.1). The second part is dedicated to the case selection, which comprises three different sets of choices: first, the selection of EU policy fields in which CSOs are active, second, the selection of CSOs, and third, the selection of the CSOs’ member organisations located at the national level. It also provides detailed information about the CSOs that are analysed (3.2). Subsequently, I briefly demonstrate the professionalisation of the CSOs under study by providing some illustrative data. The argument was made that professionalisation leads CSOs to diverge from their constituencies. It is therefore useful to show that the CSOs subject to this study are, in fact, professionalised. This is done by providing information on the duration of their existence, the organisational size in terms of staff numbers, the budgets of selected CSOs, and the dependence on EU funding (3.3). In the final part of this chapter, the CSO sample is related to the overall population of CSOs in the EU, as well as to the CSO population in the policy fields in which the selected organisations are active (3.4).

This chapter reviews the literature on the democratic contributions of CSOs, as well as their critics, and demonstrates how this study is situated within this debate. Against the backdrop of the existing literature, the relevance and importance of the present research will be clarified.

Civil society organisations (CSOs)1 are on the rise in international politics, certainly in numbers and, many would argue, also in political importance. Transnational civil society now interacts with virtually all international organisations. There are, however, various degrees of institutionalisation and formalisation of this interaction (Charnovitz, 1997; Steffek and Nanz, 2008). The United Nations (UN), for example, made formal arrangements for civil society participation from the very beginning of its existence in the 1940s (Alger, 2002; Willetts, 2000). The European Union (EU) also has a tradition of consultation with a variety of civil society actors, ranging from the social partners to advocacy groups and religious congregations (Greenwood, 2007a; Smismans, 2004). In global economic governance, the World Bank has established extensive contact with civil society for more than two decades, both in Washington DC and in the various countries where its projects are implemented (Brown and Fox, 2001; Acuna and Tuozzo, 2000). The world trade regime and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) traditionally have had much less interaction with civil society, but since the 1990s even these organisations are slowly opening up (Scholte, 2002; Woods and Narlikar, 2001; Esty, 1998). Overall, the frequency and extent of consultation between international organisations and organised civil society have increased greatly.