3 Mediating corporate power through civil society institutions

Civil society is a collection of diverse organisations ranging from informal to formal that are connected to some degree to the community, public institutions, and businesses. In liberal democracies like the United Kingdom, civil society plays a vital role in ensuring that the diverse voices in society, including those on the margins, are heard and not suppressed.

Voluntary associations, faith communities and other local networks that form civil society help ensure that decisions that affect the community are made where they are likely to have a positive impact, as opposed to having everything controlled by those with political and professional power (Bell, 1989).

Some historic gains in equality, including the advancement of gender equality, the abolition of slavery, health and safety in the workplace, the electoral rights of minorities, and change in equality legislation, happened because people organised under the banner of human rights and called for change (Sikkink, 2011, 2017; Smith, 2021). Those processes have ‘nurtured networks of activists, professionals, and public officials working across local and global scales which are well-versed in international human rights laws and their articulation in a variety of global treaties and institutions’ (Smith, 2021). Social movements in those campaigns have connected the local, regional, national, and international dimensions of the causes they have been championing.