While both state-centric and society-centric approaches to maintaining international peace and security contain inherent deficiencies, sufficient room exists to balance the essential constituents of these two approaches to promote contemporary peace and security. This can, while acknowledging the new international opportunities for non-state participants, including civil society, be achieved by enhancing intergovernmental organizations’ role, promoting the globalized but bottom-up approach to multilateralism, and substantially strengthening international law and accountability for its violations.
The societal focus is timely as civil society has emerged as the third leg of the global political structure, the other two being nation-states and inter-governmental organizations. Recent United Nations (UN) resolutions and debates testify to this. In the last half of the 20th century, there has been a worldwide upsurge of widespread political behavior that reflects the demand, in individual countries, for open and pluralistic political systems featuring free media, freedom of association, and practical, representative electoral systems.
With the decrease in the role and effectiveness of inter-governmental organizations and national governments, a need to engage other non-state actors in promoting peace and security has emerged. The role of civil society, more specifically, is increasingly being recognized. This would seem natural since civil society has always promoted peace and development.
For long, civil society complemented and broadened the domain of governmental activities in achieving collective objectives. Today, as the influence and reach of civil society transcend physical, political, and ideological boundaries, they relatively check the growing tyrannies of states and increasingly influential forces. It should not, however, be assumed that civil society is evolving into one single, positive force. It is amorphous, plural, and, importantly, a product and facilitator of political pluralism.