Paper long abstract:

What is the global social context for the insertion of authoritarian elites into the putatively liberal international order? Drawing on cases from our work on Eurasia and Africa, and published data from Knight Frank’s The Wealth Report, we sketch a concept of ‘transnational uncivil society’ which we contrast to ‘transnational activist networks’ (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). While the latter denotes the liberalising practices of global civil society, the former suggests a specific series of clientelistic relations across borders which are freighted with contending norms. Rather than proposing a distinct and explanatory theoretical framework, we posit this distinction as animating a growing line of conflict in global politics between activists who seek to cross borders and sovereign elites who are no less mobile. For these autocrats to not merely eject liberal activists from their own territories, but create new spaces to craft their own ‘moderate’ reputations and build their own global networks, they hire political consultants and reputation managers, engage in very public philanthropy, and form new relationships with major global institutions. In this paper we show how these strategies of reputation-laundering are neither illicit nor marginal, but very much a product of the actors, institutions and markets generated by the liberal international order. After comparing and contrasting the scope and purpose of civil and uncivil society networks, we explore the increasing globalization of Eurasian and African elites as a concerted strategy to distance themselves from associations with political and economic failings in their home countries, and recast themselves as productive and respected cosmopolitans. We focus on the concept of reputation-laundering and elite “whitewashing” as a central purpose of the activity of Transnational Uncivil Society Networks.