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CRS0010.1177/0896920518790651Critical SociologyErman

Article

Critical Sociology

The Democratization of Global

1­–14
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0896920518790651
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Political Equality

Eva Erman
Stockholm University, Sweden

Abstract
In the theoretical literature on global democracy, the influential transmission belt model depicts
transnational civil society as a transmission belt between the public space and the empowered
space (decision-making loci), assuming that civil society actors contribute to the democratization
of global governance by transmitting peoples’ preferences from the public space to the empowered
space through involvement in the political decision-making. In this article, two claims are made.
First, I argue that the transmission belt model fails because insofar as civil society has formalized
influence in the decision-making, it is illegitimate, and insofar as it has informal influence, it
is legitimate, but civil society’s special status as transmitter is dissolved. Second, I argue that
civil society is better understood as a transmission belt, not between the public space and the
empowered space, but between the private space (lifeworld) and the public space. It is here that
civil society is essential for democracy, with its unique capacity to stay attuned to concerns in the
lifeworld and to communicate those in a publically accessible form.

Keywords
political theory, democratic theory, civil society, global governance, democratization,
transmission belt, political equality

Introduction
Understood in the abstract, the ideal of democracy, ‘the rule by the people’, contains a form of
political rule or organization where the members have an equal say in the decision-making.
Although there are numerous different models of democracy, most of them assume that civil soci-
ety plays a vital role for democracy by displaying the interests, preferences and will of the people
and by promoting a political culture of ‘democratic’ norms in the society. There is of course also a
myriad of theories about what civil society consists of, but on a broad outlook, the term ‘civil

Corresponding author:
Eva Erman, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
Email: eva.erman@statsvet.su.se
2 Critical Sociology 00(0)

society’ is typically used to describe those actors and institutions that are distinct from the business
sector and from government and governance arrangements, such as non-governmental organiza-
tions and social movements. Apart from these general characteristics, however, there is disagree-
ment over what role, more specifically, civil society should play to strengthen democracy.
In a global context, in the literature on the role of civil society in global democracy, one of the
most influential approaches is the transmission belt model, which has gained increased popularity
not only among political theorists (Dryzek, 2006, 2009, 2011; Kuyper, 2016; Stevenson and
Dryzek, 2012, 2014) but also among empirical social scientists (Bäckstrand, 2006, 2011; Nanz and
Steffek, 2004, 2008; Stevenson, 2014, 2016) in the last years. Emerging within a deliberative
framework, largely inspired by Jürgen Habermas’ theory of deliberative democracy, this model
depicts transnational civil society as a transmission belt between the public sphere and decision-
making loci – or in the terminology used by its proponents, between the public space and the
empowered space – where it is assumed that civil society actors contribute to the democratization
of global governance by transmitting people’s preferences, beliefs and opinions from the public
space to the empowered space through involvement in the political decision-making.
The overall aim in this article is to show that this model is misconstrued and generates erroneous
prescriptions of how transnational civil society actors should act to democratize global govern-
ance. More specifically, two claims are made. First, I argue that the transmission belt model fails
because insofar as civil society has formalized influence in the decision-making, it is illegitimate,
and insofar as it has informal influence in the decision-making, it is legitimate, but civil society’s
special status as transmitter is dissolved, since all actors in the public space have an equal status as
transmitters in the intended sense. Second, I argue that civil society is better understood as a trans-
mission belt, not between the public space and the empowered space (decision-making loci), but
between the private space (lifeworld) and the public space. If this view is plausible, it is here that
civil society has a distinct role to play for democracy with its unique capacity to stay attuned to
concerns in the lifeworld and to communicate those in a publically accessible form. Without a
vigorous civil society knitting the private space to the public space, the public space could not
perform its democratic function as a sounding board for societal problems in need of political solu-
tions. On this view, rather than seeking proximity to the empowered space by having a say in the
decision-making, civil society must be (sufficiently) autonomous of the empowered space to fully
develop its democratizing potential in this transmitting role. The article ends by meeting the argu-
ment from feasibility, namely, that the motivating force of the transmission belt model is that under
current non-ideal conditions, civil society is the best means we have for democratizing global
governance through its involvement in the decision-making. Here it is argued that apart from being
more justified, the suggested alternative view of the role of civil society is also more feasible, since
it does not require that civil society actors fulfil any criteria of transparency, inclusion, authenticity,
consequentiality or responsiveness, and the like, in order to contribute to the democratization of
global governance, as demanded by the transmission belt model.
The key motivation for conducting this study is twofold. With regard to the critical analysis of
erroneous ways of theorizing the proper role of civil society actors in the democratization of global
governance, this is not primarily a philosophical exercise but is meant to offer theoretical tools for
social scientists in general. Within social sciences, there is widespread hope that civil society has a
crucial role to play for the democratization of global governance in times of globalization. Yet, the
tools used to theorize this role have been both conceptually and normatively imprecise. With regard
to the constructive part of the argument, the analysis is driven by a suspicion that there are many ways
in which civil society actors may contribute to democratization that are underappreciated and there-
fore undertheorized because democratic theory generally tends to (over)focus on decision-making.
However, this is only one of several key functions for a political system to function democratically.
Erman 3

In developing these arguments, the article unfolds in four sections. First, I sketch the main
assumptions of the transmission belt model (I). Thereafter, the argument in support of the first
claim is developed (II), followed by a defence of the second claim (III). In the fourth section, I
respond to the argument from feasibility (IV), whereas the last section concludes (V).

The Transmission Belt Model

If democratic theory took a deliberative turn in the 1990s, it has taken a ‘civil society turn’ in the
last decades when theorizing democracy of global governance arrangements. In light of the present
circumstances of world politics, consisting of a growing asymmetry between rule-makers and rule-
takers and inequalities among states, many democratic theorists investigate the role of transna-
tional civil society actors – ranging from social movements to non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) – for achieving more transnational or global democracy. Transnational civil society actors
are increasingly seen as a vital component of international politics. They steadily increase both in
numbers and, some would argue, in political importance. Today, they interact with virtually all
international organizations with various degrees of institutionalization and formalization
(Charnovitz, 1997; Tallberg et al., 2013). The European Union, for example, consults a wide range
of civil society organizations, and in global economic governance, the World Bank has established
far-reaching interactions for at least two decades (Steffek et al., 2010: 100).
Instead of emphasizing juridical aspects, this what we may call ‘civil society view’ lays stress
on core democratic qualities such as participation, inclusion, deliberation and transparency. It is
argued that civil society offers a rich soil for reformulating democracy globally since it is inhabited
by a growing range of social actors that create new political spaces, which are not delimited by
territorial nation-state borders and therefore are more suitable for confronting the globalized politi-
cal problems that we face today (Erman, 2013: 848). It is commonly argued that the participation
of the transnational civil society in global governance will contribute to a democratization of world
politics (Greenwood, 2007; Kohler-Koch, 2007; Steffek and Ferretti, 2009).
In theorizing how to re-establish symmetry between rule-makers and rule-takers in global poli-
tics, proponents of the civil society view commonly turn against cosmopolitan models of democ-
racy, because even if cosmopolitan democrats reformulate sovereignty in functional rather than
territorial terms, they still regard electoral representation and the juridicalization of international
organizations through some idea of an overarching cosmopolitan law as essential for the democra-
tization of global governance (Archibugi, 2000, 2002; Held, 2002). Being sceptical of the import
of these traditional ‘statist’ features into global politics, advocates of the civil society view wish
instead to democratize global decision-making through the increased involvement of civil society
actors, which are supposed to represent (in a non-electoral way) marginalized groups and stake-
holder interests and concerns in the decision-making (Charnovitz, 2006; Dryzek, 2006, 2009,
2011; Keck, 2004; Macdonald, 2008; Macdonald and Macdonald, 2010; Peruzzotti, 2006; Scholte,
2002, 2005, 2014; Stevenson and Dryzek, 2012, 2014; Van Rooy, 2004).
The most popular version of the civil society view in the current theoretical literature is what is
sometimes referred to as the ‘transmission belt’ model. According to this model, deliberative
democracy is the most viable theoretical tool for theorizing regional and global democracy, since a
deliberative understanding of democratic collective decision-making is particularly well-suited for
the non-hierarchical, non-electoral and non-territorial features of world politics (Eriksen and
Fossum, 2000; Nanz and Steffek, 2004; Payne and Samhat, 2004; Schmalz-Bruns, 2001; Steffek,
2003). Instead of promoting democratization through law-making, the transmission belt model
focuses on democratization through the strengthening of the discursive quality of global political
processes via civil society. The model is depicted as consisting of three main properties: the public
4 Critical Sociology 00(0)

space, in which informal processes of will- and opinion-formation among citizens take place, the
empowered space, in which authoritative collective decision-making takes place, and civil society
acting as a transmission belt between these two spaces (Bäckstrand, 2006, 2011; Dryzek, 2006,
2011; Kuyper, 2016; Steffek and Nanz, 2004, 2005, 2008; Stevenson and Dryzek, 2014).1
According to this model, transnational civil society organizations mitigate the democratic defi-
cit in global governance insofar as they function as an intermediary between the public space
(transnational citizenry) and the empowered space (global decision-makers, such as international
organizations), allowing the former to affect the deliberations and decision-making within the lat-
ter (Dryzek, 2011: 226; Nanz and Steffek, 2008: 8). It is argued that the transmission belt sidesteps
the bottleneck of interest aggregation and representation through hierarchical state structures and
instead channels political demands directly into international forums (Steffek et al., 2010: 101). In
global climate governance, for example, ‘civil society can exercise discursive influence on formal
negotiations and collective decision-making as well as promoting a transnational public sphere
independent from sovereign authority’ (Bäckstrand, 2011: 6; see also Bäckstrand et al., 2010).
The function of civil society actors to transmit citizens’ concerns and interests into the decision
process of the empowered space is served in two main ways. To begin with, it is stressed that civil
society actors should act as transmitters by lending a voice to the global citizenry and take into
consideration the input of stakeholder concerns through informal channels, aiming at opening up
relevant discourses to a wider public and informally influence global decision-making. In order to
successfully represent and speak for the global citizenry through such informal means, however,
and ‘push global governance towards democratization’, civil society actors must also have a for-
mal role in the decision procedures: their participation must be institutionalized so that they get
formal access to the decision-making arenas (Nanz and Steffek, 2008: 14). Any democratization
via civil society involvement therefore requires participation rights for non-state actors and clearly
defined rules of collaboration, to govern the interaction between civil society actors and interna-
tional organizations. Only in this way are civil society actors acknowledged as ‘legitimate inter-
locutors in political debate’ (Nanz and Steffek, 2008: 14).
In order for civil society actors to contribute to the democratization of global governance
arrangements by engaging in these informal and formal processes and hence realize the ‘transmis-
sion belt ideal’, proponents agree that they have to fulfil certain criteria (Steffek et al., 2010: 101).
Since these actors are supposed to constitute a transmission belt and give voice to citizens globally,
‘we cannot avoid the question of their internal functioning’, because the transmission belt model
presumes that such actors have the capacity ‘to represent elements of a global citizenry’ (Steffek
et al., 2010: 104). And it is here that deliberative democracy becomes most useful conceptually and
normatively, the argument goes, since it is not premised on a traditional numerical understanding
of political representation but on the representation of interests, values or discourses.
There is no shared set of criteria that civil society actors must fulfil in order to contribute to the
democratization of global governance through their involvement in the decision-making. Rather,
proponents of the transmission belt model emphasize different (albeit overlapping) criteria as cen-
tral. On Jens Steffek et al’s view, for example, civil society actors are voluntary associations mobi-
lizing around certain problems and concerns and may only claim to be representative of their
supporters, members and beneficiaries (Steffek et al., 2010: 104). They must consult their support-
ers, members and beneficiaries on policy-relevant decisions as well as be accountable to their
constituency in order to be legitimate. The capacity to fulfil the ‘transmission belt ideal’ is meas-
ured by the authors in terms of five normative criteria: participation, inclusion, transparency,
responsiveness, and independence (Steffek et al., 2010: 101).
The criterion of participation, for instance, requires participation in the civil society organiza-
tion by members, supporters, and beneficiaries. While members often acquire a formal status by
Erman 5

paying fees, supporters are individuals who share the aims of the organization (Nanz and Steffek,
2004; Steffek et al., 2010: 105). And the case for the inclusion of beneficiaries are made by plead-
ing to the fact that ‘they are directly affected by the advocacy work or service provision’ of the civil
society organization (Steffek et al., 2010: 106).
The criterion of inclusion, furthermore, is essential for assessing the democratic quality of the
decision-making. It requires that all possible arguments of those possibly affected by a decision are
included in the deliberative process (Nanz and Steffek, 2005: 377). However, since civil society
organizations, unlike international organizations, are engaged in advocacy for specific concerns
rather than issuing binding rules, they should not be required to speak for all potentially disadvan-
taged addressees of governance but only of those within their own current constituency, i.e. their
members, supporters and beneficiaries (Steffek et al., 2010: 109–110).
The criterion of transparency concerns the access to accurate and comprehensible informa-
tion about decisions and decision-making processes. Not only authoritative entities (empowered
space) need to fulfil the criterion of providing information to the general public and the partici-
pants involved, but civil society organizations themselves must do so in order to contribute to
democratization (Nanz and Steffek, 2005: 375). From a deliberative point of view, transparency
is a precondition for well-functioning deliberative processes within a civil society organization.
While this does not mean that information must be actively disseminated, it requires that the
means and procedures for acquiring information is provided (Nanz and Steffek, 2005: 375;
Steffek et al., 2010: 113).
If civil society actors have access to formal decision power, proponents of the transmission belt
model often stress the need to put higher demands of democratic legitimation than if they act solely
as non-electoral representatives via informal channels, since then they take part in the exercise of
(coercive) collective decision-making (Kuyper, 2016: 308).2 In Jonathan Kuyper’s view, for exam-
ple, legitimacy demands differ in the empowered and the public space. Whereas actors in both
spaces may not harm those they affect, they only owe democratic standing to those affected if they
become subjected to coercive decision-making in the empowered space. This is so because only
actors who can make coercive rules, laws, and decisions should become legitimate by being held
responsible to deliberative capacity in a demanding sense, which requires the fulfilment of three
criteria: inclusivity, authenticity, and consequentiality (Kuyper, 2016, drawing on Dryzek, 2009).3
In brief, inclusivity is considered essential since without equal inclusion we may have ‘delibera-
tion but not deliberative democracy’, according to Kuyper (2016: 313). In a similar vein as Steffek
et al., but with focus on interests rather than possible arguments, this criterion generates the duty
of non-electoral representatives such as civil society organizations to include the interests of their
constituency and not to exclude the interests of other subjected actors from the empowered space
(2016: 315). This duty implies that a wide array of interests are articulated and ventilated so that
individuals and groups can confront each other’s views and have an equal opportunity to influence
the outcomes of the deliberation. The criterion of authenticity, moreover, demands that interlocu-
tors deliberate in a non-coercive, reciprocal and generalizable manner. Their arguments must con-
sist of ‘generalizable claims that connect their position with the interests of subjected and affected
parties’ and thus move beyond self-interest (Kuyper, 2016: 315). Finally, the criterion of conse-
quentiality requires that the outcomes of deliberation ‘reflect the process of deliberative preference
formation’ (Kuyper, 2016: 313). In other words, generated laws, rules and regulations must reflect
authenticity and inclusion (Kuyper 2016: 315). In sum, insofar as civil society actors act as non-
electoral representatives in the empowered space, this threefold requirement must be fulfilled in
order for them to contribute to the democratization of the system.
It is not clear in any of these accounts whether the proposed criteria are necessary and/or jointly
sufficient for a civil society actor to be considered contributing to the democratization of global
6 Critical Sociology 00(0)

governance.4 However, the most plausible interpretation in view of what is claimed is that all of
them must be minimally fulfilled (and that they may be seen as ‘counting’ standards above this
threshold, i.e. the more they are fulfilled, the more democracy is strengthened).

Political Equality and the Transmission Belt Model

What is of interest in this article is not primarily the content and status of specific criteria per se but
the role ascribed to civil society actors that generates these normative prescriptions. To investigate
this, let us start with a premise shared by deliberative democrats generally, including advocates of
the transmission belt model. On this premise, democracy consists of a public space and an empow-
ered space and democratic legitimacy is generated if and only if and because (a) deliberation takes
place in both spaces through practices of opinion- and will-formation, and (b) the formalized deci-
sion procedures (empowered space) are sensitive to citizens’ concerns flowing from the public
space such that they are reflected in the law- and policy-making. The question is, on what grounds
do supporters of the transmission belt model assume that civil society actors have the special status
of acting as a transmission belt here, transmitting citizens’ concerns by making representative
claims on behalf of them through formal and informal involvement in the decision-making?
Consider first the claim about formal involvement in the decision-making of the empowered
space. As we saw above, the democratization of global governance requires participation rights for
non-state actors and formalized rules of collaboration to administer the interaction between civil
society and global governance arrangements. Only this way may civil society become legitimate
interlocutors (Nanz and Steffek, 2008: 14). Likewise, it is stressed that civil society actors may act
as non-electoral representatives in the empowered space if they are held responsible to deliberative
capacity through the fulfilment of the criteria of inclusivity, authenticity, and consequentiality
(Dryzek, 2009; Kuyper, 2016).
An important reason for demanding this formalized access to the empowered space for civil
society actors acting as transmitters globally is that in a global context, in contrast to the domestic
context, there are few or no electoral mechanisms to secure that the opinions, interests and beliefs
of the citizens will actually be reflected in the law- and policy-making. Moreover, through non-
electoral representation actors such as leaders of membership-based organizations, judges, or pub-
lic administrators may make representative claims of others beyond formal territorial boundaries
(Kuyper, 2016: 310). Therefore, advocates of the transmission belt model argue that the standard
(electoral) approach to political representation is not appropriate for assessing the democratic legit-
imacy of those actors. Instead, they commonly follow the ‘constructivist turn’ in research on politi-
cal representation, which understands representation as an on-going and creative process of
performative claim-making and separates this from the institutional form that representation may
take (Bohman, 2012; Kuyper, 2016; Saward, 2006, 2010). Hence, in contrast to the standard
approach, a constructivist account focuses on what is going on in representation rather than on
whether it takes an electoral form in accordance with the standard view (Saward, 2006: 298).
In a nutshell then, with regard to formal involvement in the decision-making, advocates of the
transmission belt model emphasize the role of non-electoral representatives in light of the lack of
electoral properties in global governance, which under certain normative conditions allegedly may
pursue equivalent functions (Dryzek, 2006, 2011; Kuyper, 2016; Macdonald, 2008; Scholte, 2014;
Stevenson and Dryzek, 2012). The problem with this reasoning, however, is that the electoral/non-
electoral framework misses the essence of what is at stake. It is not electoral mechanisms as such
that are crucial from the standpoint of democracy, but political equality, i.e. that citizens have equal
decision power (directly or indirectly) over public affairs. So, when theorizing normative criteria
or standards of democratic legitimacy, it is political equality that is required – electoral
Erman 7

mechanisms have only historically been the best means to achieve this (Erman, 2016). And to say
that we do not need it because we do not have it is question-begging unless we are offered norma-
tive reasons either for why political equality can be secured by other means or for why political
equality is not an essential property of democracy (for the latter, see Saunders, 2010).
A constructivist view of political representation is helpful only if it could be shown that represen-
tation as an on-going process of performative claim-making somehow managed to secure political
equality by non-electoral means. But the normative soil for such an argument is thin and the prospects
therefore bleak. In a democracy, all members are equally entitled to a ‘say’ in the formal decision-
making, usually indirectly through the selecting of representatives. From a democratic viewpoint,
there is no justification for lending civil society organizations a special normative status here, as self-
proclaimed non-electoral ‘representatives’ of people’s concerns. Just because they have proven to
have the capacity to sometimes do so successfully, it does not follow that they ought to. While it is
fairly uncontroversial to assume that ought implies can, can definitely does not imply ought.
So far the claim about formalized influence in the decision-making. Does the transmission belt
model fare better with regard to informal influence? Indeed, in one respect it does. In a democracy,
political equality is not only a cornerstone in formal decision-making but also with regard to infor-
mal channels, since all citizens have the (equal) right to express their concerns in the public space,
to be picked up by decision-making entities. In this sense, the public space is a fully open sounding
board for problems in society that must be dealt with by the political decision-makers. To move
away from elitist accounts of democracy, such as Schumpeter’s, deliberative democrats have
always stressed the important role of informal contexts of communication found in the public
space as complementary to the institutionalized political system. Without continuous pressure and
input from the public space, the democratic process runs the risk of being reduced to a competition
between leadership teams. Indeed, from a deliberative perspective, even if the formal decision
procedure would fully satisfy the requirement of political equality, the exercise of political power
is still not legitimate as long as it is insensitive to the input from these informal communicative
channels (more on this in Section III).
The problem for the explanatory force of the transmission belt model is that since all citizens
are equally entitled to engage in these informal processes, whether they do that through member-
ship in a civil society organization, a union, a club or as individuals does not matter from the
standpoint of democratic theory. Every social meeting in which actors take a second-person atti-
tude and lend each other communicative freedom may unfold in the public space, which is open in
principle. These encounters may then be expanded and even generalized as they become abstracted
away from their local context of origin, for example, through the mass media. Opinion-formation
comes from all quarters and takes many different forms, so apart from civil society actors, academ-
ics, think tanks, writers’ associations, individual citizen initiatives, churches, informal groups, and
so on, may all contribute to the initiation of informal public influence by giving voice to societal
problems and express public needs and interests. All these actors thus constitute a transmission belt
in the sense that they rightfully may use informal channels to influence the empowered space.
Hence, insofar as advocates of the transmission belt model argue that civil society has a special
normative status as transmitter, the model is flawed. And if a weaker claim is made to the effect
that civil society actors are just an example of rightful transmitters, the explanatory force of the
model is weakened to such a degree that its attractiveness evaporates. In fact, in one important
respect the model is flawed also in this weaker form, because since civil society actors have no
privileged status vis-à-vis any other citizen or group to further attempt to influence the empowered
space by making representative claims on behalf of stakeholders, there are no grounds for demand-
ing that they should fulfil criteria of transparency, inclusion, authenticity, consequentiality, respon-
siveness, and the like, which the model demands.
8 Critical Sociology 00(0)

The Public Space and the Autonomy of Civil Society

Let us move from the first claim to the second claim of the article. One explanation of the errone-
ous prescriptions generated by the transmission belt model could be traced to a ‘location’ problem.
Obviously, the inference from the critical analysis so far is not that civil society has no role to play
for democracy, it only suggests that it is not best depicted as a transmission belt between the public
space (transnational citizenry) and the empowered space (decision-making loci). Rather, as will be
argued in this section, if we are to use the transmission belt image for describing the primary role
of civil society, this belt is better described as located between the private space (the lifeworld) and
the public space. It is here that the distinct role of civil society is both crucial for the functioning
of democracy and justifiable from the standpoint of democratic theory. As I argue below, without
a robust civil society located here, the public space could not perform its democratic function as a
sounding board for societal problems in need of solutions. On this alternative view, rather than
seeking proximity to the political decision-making by seeking influence over the decision-making,
civil society must act (sufficiently) autonomously from the empowered space to fully develop its
democratizing potential in deliberative democracy.
The public space is a communication structure rooted in the lifeworld through the associational
networks of civil society, consisting of NGOs, non-economic actors and voluntary associations that
knit the public space to the private space. These more or less spontaneously arising movements,
associations, and organizations stay attuned to the ways in which societal problems resonate in the
private space, extract and transmit these reactions in amplified form to the public space (Habermas,
1996: 367). When the public space works well for strengthening democracy, it not only detects and
identifies problems in the lifeworld with assistance from civil society, but also attempts to thema-
tize these problems and suggest possible solutions in such a way that they might be taken up by
formal decision processes of the empowered space (Habermas, 1996: 359).
To elucidate this view of the location of civil society, let me utilize Habermas’ distinction
between what he calls ‘center’ and ‘periphery’. Even if the distinction was developed as part of
a democratic theory for a nation-state context, it explicates aspects that are not only highly rel-
evant also (perhaps even more so) for a global governance context, but also too often neglected
in the literature on deliberative democracy. On this view, the center is constituted by the institu-
tional complexities of the administrative, judicial, and formal decision-making entities, while
the periphery is constituted by the informal and highly differentiated channels of communica-
tion, which makes up the public space. Above all, the center is distinguished from the periphery
in virtue of its formal decision powers and prerogatives. What is important from the point of
view of democratic theory is that democratic legitimacy depends on processes of opinion- and
will-formation at the periphery, on the one hand, and that decisions can only be legitimate (i.e.
binding) insofar as they pass through the formal decision channels of the center, on the other
(Habermas, 1996: 354–356).
This dual character is often overlooked in the literature on global democracy, where proponents
of deliberative democracy instead argue either that more deliberation in the periphery (public
space) can compensate for the absence of formal decision procedures (empowered space), or that
these informal channels must be channelled into formal decision-making through institutionaliza-
tion. However, both arguments miss the key role of the public space in democracy, and therefore
also of the distinct role of civil society. Two aspects are of particular importance to elucidate the
role of the public space and civil society in deliberative democracy. First, for the public space to
work well from a democratic point of view, it is dependent on assistance from civil society. Second,
for civil society to achieve this it must remain sufficiently autonomous from the empowered space.
Let me treat each aspect in turn.
Erman 9

In normative terms, the private space (lifeworld) is characterized by protection from publicity.
But it is still essential for the public space because it is from the lifeworld that the public space
nourishes, since it is from the lifeworld that the ‘bearers’ of the public space are ‘recruited’ and
private concerns are translated to public concerns. The expectations on the networks of opinion-
and will-formation in the periphery connected with deliberative politics are directed at the capacity
to perceive, interpret, and present societal problems in ways that are both conspicuous and novel,
to attract a wide range of actors (Habermas, 1996: 358). Civil society has a vital role to play here,
with its unique capacity to transmit concerns from the private to the public space, since it is
equipped not only to be attentive to problems emerging in the private space – in fact, it is in
response to such problems that many civil society organizations emerge in the first place – but also
to distil and communicate them in an extended and publically accessible form (Habermas, 1996:
367). Hence, on the view proposed here, civil society actors such as NGOs, social movements,
interest groups, and voluntary associations, are primarily designed to generate public influence,
not influence in the name of the public as non-electoral representatives, as presumed by the trans-
mission belt model.
However, in order for civil society to successfully work as a transmitter between the private and
the public space and fulfil these deliberative expectations, it must be sufficiently autonomous of
the empowered space, by which I mean that the networks of public communication in the periphery
are not institutionally tied to the main political institutions of the empowered space. With assis-
tance from civil society acting autonomously in this sense, the public space has the advantage over
the empowered space in a greater sensitivity of detecting and identifying new problems of a global-
sized nature. Indeed, if we take a look at, for example, poverty in underdeveloped countries, the
ecological threats in an overstrained natural environment, problems with the world economic
order, increasing immigration, and global gender inequalities, barely any of these problems were
initially brought up by the center. Rather, they were detected and problematized at the periphery,
that is, in the global public space with help from transnational civil society (Habermas, 1996: 381).
Hence, it is the spontaneity of the flow from the private space to the public space, with backing
from civil society, which makes the public space capable of being a warning system that is sensi-
tive to all kinds of societal problems that may arise (rather than having a pre-set agenda, set by the
center). This all-embracing sensitivity to societal problems would be damaged if the empowered
space regulated the deliberations in the public space such that the involvement of civil society in
the empowered space was formalized and institutionalized. If the latter were the case, the demo-
cratic function of being a warning system would be dissolved. There is thus another side to this too.
Not only would a formalized role for civil society actors in the empowered space be undemocratic,
as I argued in the previous section, it would also rob civil society and the public space of their
unique democratic potential.
On the alternative view of the role of civil society sketched here, the normative demands sug-
gested by the transmission belt model, such as criteria of transparency, inclusion, authenticity, con-
sequentiality and responsiveness, do not make sense from the standpoint of democratic theory.
Consider, for example, the criterion of generalizability, stressed by among others Dryzek and
Kuyper. To function well as a transmission belt between the private and public spaces, civil society
actors do not need to make their claims generalizable in order to contribute to democratic legitimacy
in the overall political process or system. What they need to do, though, is to transform individual
problems into questions of public interest inside the communicative structures of the public space so
that they could be thematized and dramatized in a sufficiently persuasive manner to be taken up by
the formal decision bodies. This is not a normative criterion for democratic legitimacy but simply a
way to indirectly affect the empowered space by highlighting questions of public concern. When
civil society works well, it is precisely in this way it assists the public space to perform
10 Critical Sociology 00(0)

its democratic function. Once such informally shaped public opinions do get picked up by the
empowered space, however, they must be filtered through the formal procedures of opinion- and
will-formation (which secures political equality) to transform into legitimate political decisions
(Habermas, 1996: 371). It is then that they must be tested from the standpoint of the generalizability
of interests or as forms of generalizable claims (i.e. not reducible to private interests).
Let me summarize the two arguments. First, assigning a special normative status to civil society
as a transmission belt between the public space and the empowered space – through the involve-
ment in formal decision procedures and in informal processes as non-electoral representatives – is
unjustified from the perspective of democratic theory, since it would violate political equality, i.e.,
the equal decision power over public affairs. Second, rather being depicted as a transmission belt
between the public space and the empowered space, civil society’s distinct role is better portrayed
as a transmission belt between the private space and the public space.
From this, however, we should refrain from drawing two conclusions. With regard to the first
argument, it is not the case that citizens involved in civil society organizations may not try to influ-
ence the decision-making in the empowered space. It is only the case that neither such organiza-
tions nor the members of such organizations have a privileged position in doing so. Rather,
individuals as citizens do so on an equal footing. With regard to the second argument, it is not the
case that the proposed view of civil society as a transmission belt between the private space and the
public space presumes that civil society functions as a glue that somehow holds society together.
Indeed, civil society actors often polarize the public by representing particular interests rather than
provide social cohesion.5 However, this is not problematic on the view proposed here. What is
important, though, is that civil society transmits people’s – particular or general – concerns from
the private to the public space by detecting problems and making them publicly visible, thereby
generating different forms of more or less general public influence.

The Argument from Feasibility

Let me conclude this article by bringing up a possible defence of the transmission belt model,
which nourishes from an argument about feasibility (Erman, 2018a). In the last decades, the theo-
retical literature on global democracy has grown drastically, engendering a range of different pro-
posals and models bringing democratic principles to bear on global governance (Archibugi, 2000,
2002; Held, 2002). Commonly, however, critics deride these proposals as being unfeasible (Dahl,
1999; Grant and Keohane, 2005; Keohane, 2006; Miller, 2010; Song, 2012). As an alternative,
deliberative democracy is often stressed as being a more suitable approach for theorizing democ-
racy in global governance in more realistic terms, since it focuses on democratization through the
improvement of the discursive quality and is therefore fitting for the non-territorial, non-electoral,
and non-hierarchical characteristics of global politics. For example, it has been argued that the
representation of discourses globally is a more viable option for global democracy than the repre-
sentation of persons, since we lack a well-defined demos globally (Dryzek and Niemeyer, 2008).
It has also been argued that we may reject electoral and constitutional modes of democratic repre-
sentation because a model of stakeholder representation, which attaches great importance to civil
society, works well as long as public power is traceable, even if it is diffuse (Macdonald, 2008;
Macdonald and Macdonald, 2010).
I suspect that an important motivating force behind the transmission belt model is a similar
concern for feasibility, even if the feasibility conditions of the model are never made explicit. If
this intuition is correct, one explanation for the insistence on the informal and formal involvement
of civil society in the empowered space may have to do with an unarticulated background assump-
tion that decision power for civil society in current global governance is better than preserving the
Erman 11

status quo by neglecting the voices and interests of marginalized groups worldwide. In today’s
globalized world, with unclear authority structures and a very unequal distribution of political
power, it might be argued that civil society actors are the best we can hope for to represent those
groups that are most vulnerable in society but are excluded from the decision-making.
However, on closer inspection, the alternative view of the role of civil society defended in this
article is not only more justified than the transmission belt model, but also more feasible. As trans-
mitters between the private space and the public space, civil society actors are not required to fulfil
any criteria of participation, transparency, inclusion, authenticity, consequentiality or responsive-
ness, since they do not have any special status as non-electoral representatives. Insofar as basic
rights are not violated and basic liberties are secured, civil society actors are free to act in ways they
find appropriate to stay attuned to how societal problems resonate in the private space and to trans-
mit them in an amplified form to the public space.

Conclusion
In this article, I have pursued to arguments. The first critical argument has tried to demonstrate the
flaws of the transmission belt model, which is one of the most influential approaches to the role of
civil society in the democratization of global governance. Against this model, I have argued that
civil society actors should neither have formalized influence in the decision-making nor any special
status with regard to informal influence. The second constructive argument has made the case that
instead of seeing civil society as a transmission belt between the public space and the empowered
space, it should in the first instance be seen as a transmission belt between the private space and the
public space. I have argued that it is here that civil society plays its primary role for democracy due
to its capacity to act as a sounding board for societal problems in need of political solutions.
These normative-theoretical findings do not only advance the debate in political theory, but also
have important implications for empirical research. There is a broad interest in the role of civil
society for the democratization of global governance within a wide range of disciplines in the
social sciences. Under the influence of the transmission belt model, much theoretically-driven
empirical research has focused on civil society’s access to and involvement in the decision-making
in global governance. This has been problematic for at least two reasons. First, it has led to errone-
ous conclusions about global democracy, where every instance of civil society involvement in the
decision-making has wrongfully been interpreted as an instance of democratization. Second, it has
neglected the many functions that civil society actors may rightfully perform to strengthen global
democracy, not only with regard to pre-decision functions such as problem identification and
agenda-setting, discussed in this article, but also post-decision functions such as evaluation and
monitoring (Erman, 2018a, 2018b). My hope is that the theoretical contribution made here can be
useful for formulating new empirical questions about transnational civil society in global democ-
racy, which utilizes a more robust conceptual and normative framework.

Acknowledgements
I owe special thanks to Marek Hrubec and Zuzana Uhde for feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Moreover,
I wish to thank editor David Fasenfest and the anonymous referees of Critical Sociology for valuable com-
ments and guidance. In addition, I am grateful for the generous funding of this research from the Swedish
Research Council and Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit
sectors.
12 Critical Sociology 00(0)

Notes
1. John Dryzek stresses two additional properties as essential: accountability of the empowered space vis-
à-vis the public space and ‘meta-deliberation as a reflexive process of deliberating about the structures of
the deliberative system itself’ (Dryzek, 2011: 226). For a criticism of meta-deliberation as a requirement
of democratic legitimacy, see Erman (2016).
2. Non-electoral representation usually refers to all actors who are not elected but still make representative
claims (Kuyper, 2016; Saward, 2010).
3. Advocates of the transmission belt model defend different criteria of inclusion to address the ‘bound-
ary question’ of democratic theory, i.e. the question who is rightfully included in the decision-making
(common criteria are the so-called ‘all-affected principle’ and the ‘all subjected principle’, see, e.g. Nanz
and Steffek (2008); Kuyper (2016); and Dryzek (2011)). My criticism of the transmission belt model in
Section II, however, does not hinge on which of these criteria are incorporated.
4. Nor is it clear how the criteria relate to each other. While some criteria are concerned with ‘internal’
aspects of civil society engagement, such as an organization’s internal functioning, others have to do with
‘external’ aspects, such as how civil society actors should act towards decision-makers in the empowered
space.
5. I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this question.

ORCID iD
Eva Erman https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7096-9157

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