Creating Credibility: Legitimacy and Accountability for Transnational Civil Society

by L. David Brown

In many countries, civil society organizations (CSOs) are more trusted by the general public than businesses and government. Business leaders might maximize their profits at the expense of the business or its customers, and government officials might use their power for their own gain, but CSOs depend on their good reputations and performance in order to mobilize resources. They have fewer opportunities to convert resources into self-interested uses. Recent experience suggests, however, that civil society leaders can also be guilty of self-interested behavior, even though the rewards may be less dramatic than they are in other sectors. This is especially a concern as CSOs become more influential in national and international affairs.

Without legitimacy in the eyes of the public and other key actors, CSOs cannot effectively function in the transnational arena. Civil society expert L. David Brown provides approaches to assessing and enhancing the legitimacy and accountability of CSOs, allowing them to reach their full potential in contributions to governance and problem-solving. Creating Credibility is an essential text for anyone concerned with understanding the challenges to civil society legitimacy and finding ways CSOs can respond to these challenges.

200 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 2008

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brown writes about the concepts of legitimacy and accountability and how they play out in transnational civil society. Both concepts are essential for developing public trust, and in many cases civil society organizations (CSOs) have more public trust than businesses or governments. He argues that CSOs can construct their own legitimacy arguments and systems of accountability. Moreover, CSOs can make strategic choices that ultimately enhance their legitimacy and accountability. He outlines six bases for legitimacy in civil society: regulatory, associational, performance, political, normative, and cognitive. Brown discusses three accountability systems, representative, principle-agent, and mutual. However, when placed in a transnational context, creating credibility is difficult because: “(1) the nature of the transnational context as a loosely organized and rapidly changing arena; (2) the emergence of new transnational problems that are poorly understood and controversial’; (3) the short-comings of existing transnational institutions for dealing with emerging problems, and (4) the nature of CSOs and networks that carry out transnational work” (19-20).