With its concern to shape the rules of social life, civil society activity unfolds in relation to a governance apparatus. In former circumstances of statism, when governance came down to government, civil society functioned in relation to the state. However, when the framework of governance changes – as it has done with contemporary globalization – the character of civil society may be expected to alter in tandem (Scholte, 2002a). In today’s more polycentric condition, civil society associations have redirected some of their attention from states to other sites and networks of governance, including global regulatory arrangements