The Future of NGOs as Emerging Stakeholders

Abstract

Within the past two decades, NGOs have become major stakeholders and significant political actors at all levels of society: global, regional, national and local. Conceptually, this growing influence of NGOs is said to be symptomatic of a major restructuring of politics away from the prevailing and dominant Westphalian conception of politics and power. This panel seeks to explore the theoretical, conceptual and policy implications of this growth of NGOs for Political Science. The panel is built on two major assumptions, namely: a) Theoretical and analytical frameworks that ignore the emergence of NGOs on the political landscape have limited explanatory power and generally impoverish understanding, and b) Processes of governance that excludes roles for these new stakeholders have limited chances of success. Thus the panellists will particularly seek to explore i) the implications of the growing influence of NGOs for theoretical and conceptual discussions in political science, as well as ii) examine the challenges of NGO involvement in processes of (global) governance.

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