This morning I went to the Centre Borschette (a big conference centre owned and run by the European Commission) to speak at a seminar jointly organised by the European Union Institute of Security Studies, the United Nations Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies and the European Commission’s Research Directorate General on the theme of ‘civil society in global governance’. The conference participants (about sixty of them) were an eclectic mix of academics and practitioners from all over the world. Whilst I was on the panel with my practitioner’s hat on (my two fellow panellists were distinguished academics: Professor Jan Aart Scholte; of Warwick University, and Distinguished Professor Deng Zhenglai, of Fudan University), I enjoyed being able to adopt a more ‘academic’ approach. Indeed, I am currently writing up my speaking notes as an academic article (which I will post below in due course). My basic thesis was that over the past two decades we have seen five distinct and converging trends. Within the European Union, there has been a growing conceptualisation of the role of civil society. In parallel, there has been a greater institutionalisation (most new member states have opted to create an economic and social council or something similar). Precisely the same two trends can be observed worldwide; for example, in 2003 Brazil created an Economic and Social Development Council modelled closely on the European Economic and Social Committee. The fifth trend, facilitated by the internet, is the growth of networks of such bodies. At EU level, there is the network of Economic and Social Councils and Similar Institutions and, at world level, there is the burgeoning International Association of Economic and Social Councils and Similar Institutions (known by its French acronym, AICESIS). The membership of the latter has grown from 24 in 1999 to 56 today, and many of its new members are also new institutions. This new aspect of governance, though ‘messy’ (there are, for example, no commonly agreed definitions of ‘civil society’ and ‘civil society organisations’ as there are for ‘electorate’ and ‘political parties’), is of growing importance. It was good fun to swim in such waters for a few hours…