I focus on the politics, strategies and mechanisms of civil society representation and participation in decision-making processes and other processes organized by international cooperation agencies on development policies. My analysis is based on field research and aims at understanding the relationships between two sets of actors: a) networks, social movements and other forms of collective action of Brazilian civil society; b) several agencies of multilateral cooperation. I want to contribute to discussions on new social forces and power structuration; new public spaces of governance, participation and citizenship that are international, transnational and global. I also want to contribute to discussions on the capacity and limits of adaptation and change of large modern bureaucratic institutions that operate as centers of global governance in view of the strengthening of civil society actors and of their strategies in global-international political fields. I point out some characteristics of the actions and networks of the civil society organizations, acting by means of civil diplomacy, which imply new problematiques related to democracy and to the role of nation-states on the international global-level.
participation; representation; civil diplomacy; civil society and multilateral cooperation agencies