dealt with the international NGO Campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), which has been
Negotiated in the OECD for three years. The campaign against the MAI demonstrates the initial stages of a new devel-
‘opment in the way NGOs operate, possibly turning out to be an alternative to the transnationalization of large NGOs
which is quite problematic from a democratic point of view. Even if the failure of the negotiations on the MAI in the
GECD is not only, not even primarily, due to NGO protests, the MAI represents a classical case of the potential of NGOs
to create transparency and publicity around international negotiation processes.

The victory of the NGOs in the battle for public opine regarding the MAI - even if only preliminary, shows an interest-
ing trend in the NGO community: The MAI does not - unlike international agreements on environmental or development
issues - belong to the so-called soft issues on the international agenda, which were often pushed aside after Rio, but
it belongs to the “hard" economic issues. The same is true for the institutional dimension. The OECD as an association
of the industrialised countries is an exclusive “Club of the Wealthy", that follows a hard-line neo-liberal course. With
the MAI the NGOs did not get caught in the trap of insignificance, like in the numerous politically marginal commit-
tees of the UN they have participated in since Rio.

The anti-MAl-campaign has been very interesting also for another reason. The success of the NGOs was not achieved
by large, transnational NGOs, but by a lose network of both, small NGOs together with some large, transnational NGOs.
The latter, however, did not play a leading role in the campaign. Against this background, the term “network guerril-
la" is well chosen and more than adequate, as it reflects the efficiency of decentralised and flexible structures with a
high rate of non-formalized communication and decision making. The success of the MAl campaign does not confirm
those NGOs that regard centralization and a massive input of resources as important political tools to reach their
goals...

Nevertheless, the success of the MAI Campaign cannot be reduced to the organizational structure of the Participating
NGOs. Far more important was that the campaign did not aim at improving-a project promoted by the government, but
Classified the agreement as part of the globalisation process and rejected it completely. Obviously it met a vague but
Srowing uneasiness of the public with the globalisation process. This is the secret of its success. In France, Canada
and the U.S. the mobilisation of the NGOs lead to mass protests against the MAI.

The reaction of the other side shows that the anti-MAl-campaign exceeded the usual single-issue character of NGO
Campaigns and met the core of the present historic situation. After suspending the negotiations on the MAl, the OECD
Presented a study in which it expressed concerns about the decreasing acceptance of the globalisation process
among citizens. It came to the conclusion that the “benefits of globalisation” needed to be communicated more ef-
fectively.

Regarding the future strategy of NGOs the lessons to be learned from the anti-MAI campaign are:

- With the issues of neo-liberalism and globalisation, NGOs have picked out a fundamental social problem as a
Central campaign issue and have overcome their traditional single-issue projects.
Refusing the MAI instead of “improving” it, did not harm the image of the campaign in the media and the public,
at the contrary, the TUAC (Trade Union Advisory Committee at the OECD) and others which had taken a “moderate
and constructive" position have to acknowledge that their strategy remained below the possibilities, acknow!l-
edge that their strategy remained below the possibilities,
NGOs are politically successful when their issues move and mobilise the public.
Lose networks turned out to be efficient; centralised and hierarchical structures were not necessary, and maybe
even would have been counterproductive.
Small and flexible NGOs played an important role

ELEMENTS OF AN EMANCIPATORY STRATEGY IN THE INTERNATIONAL NGO COMMUNITY
The trend towards a centralised and hierarchical organised transnationalization of NGOs on the one hand and the suc-
cess of the MAI campaign under a complete different setting on the other hand, made evident that there are processes

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