Global Civil Society Is Not Utopian, But Feasible: The World After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 Pandemic has swept the world, which raises the awareness of global governance and global civil society. This paper attempts to prove global civil society is feasible and analyses its main functions during the period of resistance of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The paper unfolds in four parts. The First part is a brief introduction to the question this paper tends to address after the COVID-19 Pandemic. After that, it is the definition of civil society. Civil society can be defined as a complementary arena for state and market to ensure common welfare and public good through non-violent, voluntary and bottom-up process. However, this definition encompasses different connotations with the passage of time. In the third part, it states that civil society is inevitably globalized in the challenge of globalization. Quite a number of problems go beyond borders and the reaches of states, which leaves a vacuum for a corresponding force to regulate them. Also, global social movement-the main actor of global civil society, as an important agent, ensures the economy liberalism-embedded transnational economic organizations, as the main structure of global governance, accountable. In addition, the development of convenient communication and value convergence provide the objective conditions for the emergence of global civil society. Global civil society makes transnational organizations accountable, solves problems beyond state borders and ensures the public good and welfare. In a nutshell, global civil society is an indispensable part of today’s global governance.