Global civil society is often uncritically seen as a democratic force in global governance. Civil society organizations claim to hold states and intergovernmental institutions accountable and channel the voices of the world’s poorest people in policy making. Yet to what extent do they succeed in performing that role? This article assesses the representation of the poor in global civil society, with a focus on the negotiations of the Sustainable Development Goals, a process widely hailed as one of the most democratic ever organized by the United Nations. We first analyse how the poor and their local representatives are procedurally included in global civil society (procedural representation). We then quantitatively assess the actual representation of civil society organizations from the world’s poorest countries in the civil society hearings of the SDG negotiations, where civil society was invited to speak on behalf of their constituencies (geographical representation). Finally, we evaluate the extent to which global civil society representatives who claim to speak on behalf of the poor legitimately represented the interests of these people (discursive representation). We found that global civil society fails to fully represent the poor on procedural, geographical and discursive terms, and eventually perpetuates postcolonial injustices in global sustainability governance.

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你以谁的名义说话？全球公民社会中穷人的边缘化

全球公民社会通常不加批判地被视为全球治理中的民主力量。民间社会组织声称要对国家和政府间机构负责，并在决策过程中引导世界上最贫困人口的声音。然而，他们在多大程度上成功地扮演了这个角色？本文评估了穷人在全球公民社会中的代表性，重点关注可持续发展目标的谈判，这一进程被广泛誉为联合国组织的最民主的进程之一。我们首先分析穷人和他们的地方代表如何被程序性地纳入全球公民社会（程序性代表）。然后，我们定量评估来自世界上最贫穷国家的民间社会组织在可持续发展目标谈判的民间社会听证会上的实际代表性，其中邀请民间社会代表其选区发言（地域代表性）。最后，我们评估声称代表穷人发言的全球公民社会代表在多大程度上合法地代表了这些人的利益（话语代表）。我们发现，全球公民社会未能在程序、地理和话语方面充分代表穷人，并最终使全球可持续性治理中的后殖民不公正现象长期存在。