Civil societal organizations (CSOs) have come to play quite a significant role in processes of global governance in the last couple of decades. This thesis explores the implications of this participation for the transformation of the global status quo, defined as a particular historical structure combining economic, political and ideological elements, by looking at the evolving relationship between international organizations and CSOs. It takes civil society’s interaction with the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization as case studies. It concludes from these case studies that international organizations try to absorb the transformatory potential of CSOs, and incorporate them into the project of the consolidation of a neo-liberal hegemony at the global level by pursuing a strategy of “transformism”. The dynamics of this relationship seem to refute the idea that CSOs currently act as agents of progressive social change on the world stage as a force autonomous from both the global economy and the states system.