In addition, Fabrice Dess notes that the establishment of partnership relations
between CSOs and international entities depends on two basic factors - "push" and
"pull" factors [4, p. 37].
According to Fabrice Dess push factors are quite obvious. They include
particularly financial needs (project funding), recognition and advertising of specific
social, economic and environmental issues. Pull factors are both political and
operational [10, p. 37].
First, as international institutions face more and more critics regarding their
technocratic nature and their lack of democracy, the inclusion of CSOs in their policy
process is a way of legitimizing themselves [10, p. 37].
Second, because of their bureaucratic nature, international institutions lack the
human resources and competences to conduct field studies, implement and evaluate
concrete projects. That is why they need CSOs’ expertise in several fields of
intervention and cooperate with them in order to understand people’s concerns, be
aware of local and practical issues, gain the confidence of local population who most
of the time trust CSOs much more than international institutions, delegate project
implementation, use CSOs’ expertise to evaluate their policy at different levels
(economical, social and environmental impact) etc. These push and pull factors of
course depend greatly on the field of intervention which is concerned [10, p. 37].
The rise of CSOs acting at a global level and acting as agents influencing global
governance matches with the development of new communication technologies,
especially (but not only) the Internet. Indeed, at a global level visibility, media
coverage and legitimacy building are they key factors of CSOs’ power [10, p. 38].
According to Fabrice Dess [10, p. 38] there are three main criteria to evaluate
CSO’s power: сapacity (paid and volunteer workforce, charitable contribution);
sustainability (auto-funding, government subsidies, popular support); impact.
Visibility and media coverage are key factors in order to build capacity for a
global CSO. Indeed, the charitable contribution it collects is directly correlated with
the willingness of the people to give it their money. It thus means that people know the
CSO, have the opportunity to get easily basic information about the CSO etc. But new
communication technologies also allow CSOs to launch media campaign or keep in
touch with its major donators much more easily and cheaply. Analogically, the number
of volunteers it attracts is directly correlated with the willingness of the people to give
it their time. It is nevertheless less the case regarding paid staff, whose size rather
depends on the CSO’s financial resources, even if one could argue that a CSO will have
facilities to attract talented and motivated people at a lower cost if it is famous and has
a positive image [10 p. 39].
The sustainability of a global CSO also depends a lot on its visibility and media
coverage. Indeed, the same mechanisms as described above are at work regarding
- 711 -