Political coordination among transnational civil society organizations

This paper deals with questions of political coordination among transnational civil society organizations. The focus is on how different NGOs try to strengthen citizenship rights through their membership of European Women Lobbying (EWL).  With a perspective inspired by Chantal Mouffe questions of coordination and temporally collective identity among NGOs will be highlighted. The point of departure is that Mouffe’s idea of agonism may contribute to the understanding of how NGOs are dealing with tensions of being dependent on collective resources on the one hand and on the other hand being in conflict with ideas of other NGOs when trying to influence political processes. The question is how NGOs manage to strengthen citizenship when the NGOs share some principal goals on equality but are distinguished by specific differing goals that strongly attract their individual members. This discussion includes a critical reflection on the concepts of bridging and bonding as well. In this paper different bases of power relations such as ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality are treated as related in an intersectional way. They are assumed to structure both discourses and strategies that are developed within and between the organizations when they work for strengthening citizenship rights. They also limit the possibilities to institutionalize agonistic and transversal relations between NGOs.