I’ve said this before, but the evidence is mounting. It warrants saying again. The legitimacy of civil society is eroding.
At the UK national level, civil society agents like McMillan, MIND and Shelter are increasingly being leant on to act as the expert delivery arm of the state. At the international level Oxfam has effectively becoming the paramilitary arm of the UN, while simultaneously stretching itself to become a global retail empire. The traditional ‘advocacy and additionality’ of NGOs is under threat.
One consequence of this politicisation of civil society is a backflow of credibility and trust to Multi National Corporations (MNCs). As the supposed bad boys of corporate life (Oil, Chemicals, Cars, Cement…) get strategic about social responsibility, and as their critics’ voices become more muted or less credible, so corporates are increasingly empowered to shape the global agenda – and with increasingly positive outcomes. Just watch Gates and Monsanto in Africa.
The operational prowess of MNCs, working in conjunction with the developmental expertise and vestigial trustworthiness of NGOs, can arguably deliver more effective global social solutions than national governments. The consolidation of power is seemingly inevitable, but potentially troubling.
As business, civil society and government increasing abandon their representational role in favour of an instrumental one, pursuing very broad, but often unquantified and unaccountable policy goals, so they face a very real challenge to protect their own legitimacy.
At least in the North-West of the planet, the previous tri-partite governance model (Business v Civil Society v Government) is effectively collapsing into a singularity (Business = Civil Society = Government). In the face of this homogeneity, traditional media (both corporately-funded and corporately-owned) are arguably very poorly equipped to act as a bona fide ‘fourth estate’.
Into this global accountability void we need to inject new multi-party collaboratively-governance models to ‘lift and separate’ the internal dynamics of these partnerships. But we also new tools and processes which successfully empower and focus the voice of exetrnal stakeholders’ – towards ALL these power-brokers.
In short, we need wiser crowds as the basis for a new chaordic governance. Social Media lies at the heart of the New Social Capital.