The Civil Society,the Uncivil Society,and the Difficulty Israel Has Making Peace with the Palestinians

Abstract

The difficulty Israel has making peace with the Palestinians, which became evident with the failure of the 1993 Oslo Agreements, can be explained through the internal relationships and historical dynamics within the Israeli public sphere, and the relations between the public sphere and the state. Using the terms ‘civil society’ and ‘uncivil society’ as a theoretical framework, the article examines both the relations between these two binary representations within the public sphere and the ability of each of them to influence state policy through two analytical tools: cultural politics and instrumental politics. The contention is that the Oslo Agreements failed in part because while both the civil and uncivil societies arose as a cultural innovation and alternative collective identities in neo-liberal Israel, the uncivil society succeeded in translating its collective representations into effective instrumental politics that influenced the Israeli state, while the civil society failed to do so.     

Open Data for Science,Policy, and the Public Good

Supporters of open data believe that free and complete access to research data is beneficial for science, public policy, and society. In environmental science and policy, open data systems can enable relevant research and inform evidence‐based governmental decisions. This article examines the unlikely case of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research's transition toward an open data model. Considering Brazil's young democracy, incipient practice of government transparency and accountability, and lacking a tradition of science‐policy dialogue, this case is a striking example of how open data can support public debate by making information about forest cover widely available. The case shows the benefits and challenges of developing such open data systems, and highlights the various forms of accessibility involved in making data available to the public.     

Promoting an Environmental Civil Society: Politics,Policy, and Russia's Post‐1991 Experience

In recent years the United Nations Environment Program, UN Conference on Environment and Development, and other international organizations have acknowledged the importance of civil society for engaging stakeholders in environmental change—especially at the local community level—and in promoting democracy. ¹ In Russia, efforts by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to promote reform since 1991 have aimed at achieving both objectives and face numerous political, legal, and attitudinal hurdles. This article examines these hurdles and the factors that facilitate development of an environmentally conscious civil society in Russia through analysis of the views of 100 representatives of environmental NGOs, news media, scientific community, corporations, and public agencies. We also investigate three abbreviated but illustrative vignettes that illuminate civil society impediments. Our thesis is that successful efforts to ensure adequate protection of Russia's environment require a strengthening of civil society.     

Civil Society Mappings by Government: A Comparison of Ecuadorian and Colombian Cases

Scholars argue that we cannot see civil society organizations (CSOs) as legitimate players in policy if we have no clear ways to define them and if we lack information explaining their functions. Thus, scholars and practitioners alike have encouraged the ‘mapping’ of civil society. Mapping civil society consists of gathering and collating information on CSOs and often making it publicly available. There is little scholarship about such mapping efforts implemented by government. This article compares new mapping efforts in two countries—i.e., registries of CSOs created by governments in Ecuador and Colombia. The article examines the intentions of civil society mapping by government, identifying three key goals: to collect data, to regulate, and to foster collaboration. It discusses the differences across civil society mappings by government and in comparison with other mapping projects. The article argues that registries are increasingly positioned as a link between government and civil society not only to collect data for transparency but also to implement regulatory measures and to foster various degrees of collaboration. Thus, greater research attention to civil society mappings by government and their possible implications on civil society development and civil society/state relations is needed.     

Civil Society and the Authoritarian State: Cooperation,Contestation and Discourse

Contemporary authoritarian regimes frequently coexist with a range of non-governmental associations, while resisting any trajectory towards democratization. This article reviews three major explanations for such political interactions, before proposing an alternative explanatory framework, using Young's dualistic approach to civil society. This approach stresses that the discursive role of civil society needs to be understood in order to explain the dynamics of coercion and cooperation faced by civil society organizations under authoritarian rule.     

Advocacy Coalitions in Ontario Land Use Policy Development

In 2005, the Ontario government passed the Places to Grow Act and the Greenbelt Act, both major changes in land use policy designed to preserve greenspaces and combat urban sprawl in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Canada's largest conurbation. This article examines the actors, actor beliefs, and inter‐actor alliances in the southern Ontario land use policy subsystem from the perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Specifically, this paper undertakes an empirical examination of the ACF's Belief Homophily Hypothesis, which holds that inter‐actor alliances form on the basis of shared policy‐relevant beliefs, creating advocacy coalitions. The analysis finds strong evidence of three advocacy coalitions in the policy subsystem—an agricultural coalition, an environmentalist coalition, and a developers' coalition—as predicted by the hypothesis. However, it also finds equally strong evidence of a cross‐coalition coordination network of peak organizations, something not predicted by the Belief Homophily Hypothesis, and in need of explanation within the ACF.     

How Vigilant is the Vibrant Civil Society in Bangladesh? A Survey-based Analysis

Although international development organizations and donor countries regard civil society organizations (CSOs) as the best instrument for institutionalizing democracy in third world countries, few of these organizations have successfully influenced government policies or played a role in consolidating democracy. Based on survey data and empirical observations, this article will argue that civil society in Bangladesh may be noteworthy for its contributions to development and social welfare but that it can hardly contribute to democracy. CSOs participate in vibrant grassroots social services. However, they lack the necessary participatory attributes for proper interest articulation and monitoring of the state, resulting in a less vigilant civil society. The article links civil society's non-vigilant nature to co-optation and politicization by political forces.     

Gendered political space: civil society,contingency theory,and the substantive representation of women

Whilst existing civil society studies generally fail to systematically examine the way that contextual factors shape women’s representation in the civil sphere, political science has predominantly focused on legislative settings. This article responds to the resultant knowledge-gap by examining the hitherto underexplored role of civil society as a political space integral to the substantive representation of women (SRW)—or, the process by which women’s concerns are advanced in policy and politics. The article uses grounded theory in order propose a systematic analytical model showing how the SRW is a contingent process whereby the motives of civil society organizations are translated into action repertoires shaped by three (non-discrete) spheres: political, socioeconomic, and organizational. Its wider contribution to civil society scholarship is in highlighting how civil society is a complex, heterogeneous political space wherein SRW claims-making requires cognizance of the co-presence of contingent factors that offer immanent explanatory power.     

State Capacity,Bureaucratic Politicization,and Corruption in the Brazilian State

Responding to recent articles in Governance highlighting the need for improved measurement of bureaucratic characteristics, this article describes efforts to map Brazil's federal agencies on three dimensions—capacity, autonomy, and partisan dominance—derived from data on more than 326,000 civil servants. The article provides a “proof of concept” about the utility of agency‐level measures of these variables, demonstrating how they relate to an output common to all agencies: corruption. The article provides a first step in the direction of building a comparative research program that offers objective evaluation of bureaucracies within nation‐states, with the intent of better disentangling their impact on governance outcomes.     

Government stewardship and primary health care in Guatemala since 1996

This article analyzes the role of government stewardship in the expansion of primary health care in post‐conflict Guatemala. By the time the Peace Accords were signed in 1996, the country's primary health care system was scarcely functioning with virtually no services available in rural indigenous areas. To address this gaping void/deficiency, the Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance (MSPAS) embarked on a progressive expansion of primary services aimed at covering the majority of rural poor. Through a series of legal, policy, and program reforms up to 2014, the MSPAS dramatically expanded primary coverage and greatly improved basic health indicators for the entire population. To succeed in this effort, the MSPAS and its partners needed to simultaneously grow their stewardship capacity to oversee and develop the primary health system. On the basis of recent health systems strengthening literature, we propose a stewardship framework of 6 critical functions and use it to analyze the gains in government capacity that enabled the achievement of many of the country's primary health goals. Of the 6 stewardship functions, “building relationships, coalitions, and partnerships” especially with civil society organizations stands out as one of the keys to MSPAS success.     

Revalorizing the Political: Towards a New Intellectual Agenda for African Civil Society Discourse

Who needs civil society? What is civil society useful for? While the foregoing and similar dilemmas dominated the early civil society literature on sub-Saharan Africa, this was soon followed by a steady shift to the analysis of non-governmental organizations. The shift foreshadowed the recent methodological approach to civil society research which emphasizes ‘measuring’ and ‘surveying’ civil society. In this essay, I contend that this approach, to the extent that it seems to totalize civil society as component voluntary associations that can be measured, deepens the crisis of understanding which it aspires to transcend. Yet, although I critique—and reject—this approach, I argue nonetheless that it ought to be seen as an opportunity to reinstate a more theoretically robust and politically driven imagination of civil society, one that problematizes, not just civil society organizations that are, ultimately, only an aspect of civil society, but the civil domain as a whole. While conceding that ‘measuring’ civil society has its own merits, I insist that it comes with a real danger of, first, reducing civil society to organizations, especially organizations that can be measured; and second, distracting students of African societies from the politicality that underpins much of the continent's socio-economic woes.     

Civil Society after Democracy: The Evolution of Civic Activism in South Africa and Korea

The phase of democratic consolidation can significantly impact the motives, dynamics and objectives of civil society. Its internal roles, dynamics and power balances are significantly altered by the advent of democracy, due to shifting resources, political opportunities and a general reframing of goals and objectives. By adopting a definition of civil society as an ‘arena’ (which highlights the continuously evolving composition and leadership of civil society) and borrowing a number of theoretical dimensions from social movement theory (which underline the importance of resource mobilization, political opportunities and conceptual framing processes), the article shows that the advent of democracy has posed a number of challenges to civil society organizations in Korea and South Africa. Moreover, the consolidation of democracy has inevitably changed the nature of government–civil society relations. While in South Africa institutional politics reasserted itself in the first years of democracy, thereby sidelining organizations and movements concerned with public accountability and good governance (which have only recently resurfaced through the action of new social movements), in Korea corruption and lack of transparency immediately marred the dawn of democracy, providing civic movements with a fertile terrain to galvanize civic mobilizations vis-à-vis the lack of responsiveness of the political class.     

Democracy and Troubled Autonomy: Sectarian Politics and Civil Society in Japan

Civil society organizations (CSOs) exist in overlapping fields of influence, often within contentious relationships. Although the autonomy of a CSO is generally considered critical, currently available conceptualizations of civil society tend to focus on its relation to the state and minimize the role of political parties and social movement organizations. Drawing on the case study of the Women's Democratic Club (WDC), a women's organization in Japan established in the period immediately after World War II, this article examines the ways in which CSOs' embeddedness in their socio-political contexts problematizes organizational autonomy. As a non-partisan organization with democratic values, the WDC promoted egalitarianism and embraced heterogeneous membership within the organization. However, its embeddedness in the political left and its members’ divided and conflicting loyalties challenged its autonomy as an organization. This article seeks to contribute to the inclusion of non-governmental organizations in theoretical and empirical considerations of autonomy of civil society.     

Collective Action,Civil Society,and Public Policy in Turkey

Abstract

Understanding policy change mechanisms has been a key question for scholars of public policy and collective action. However, policy scholarship mostly ignores civil society-based explanations of policy processes. In order to address this gap, this study combines the Advocacy Coalition Framework with networked collective action perspectives and analyzes a successful case of mobilization of women’s rights organizations in Turkey to reverse a bill on child marriage. Study findings suggest that advocacy coalitions are not static entities. When different issues in a policy subsystem are invoked, the structure of inter-coalition networks can change substantially and these variations in inter-coalition interactions may have consequences for influencing policy change. Moreover, this paper argues that extensive street protests and online campaigns by civil society organizations have the capacity to boost the bargaining power of minority coalitions, especially in contexts that lack multiple formal venues for making policy claims.     

Structurally Excluded? Structural Embeddedness and Civil Society Competition for Funding

ABSTRACT

The debate about the funding and support of civil society by government bodies has become a central and politicized issue in many countries. European states in particular have sought to make use of civil society to deliver key supra-national policy aims of addressing economic and social disadvantage, as well as delivering national and territorial outcomes. To this end European structural funding has been used at a regional level to develop and engage organizations and their beneficiaries. One of the key considerations in such activity is the ability of civil society organizations to engage with the funding available, and whether structural barriers exist that potentially prevent organizations with relevant expertise participating. In order to illustrate this, this article investigates how civil society organizations fared in gaining funds from the 2007–2013 European Social Fund (ESF) programmes in Wales, what, if any, barriers were found to exist in acquiring those funds and what this means for the sector in Wales in the context of future funding. The wider significance of this work is in revealing how the structural embeddedness of organizations plays a significant role in determining organizational success in gaining ESF funds, and how this contributes to a cleavage in the sector as a whole. Thus, this article concludes that it is organizations that are structurally embedded that will be most successful in gaining ESF funds, due to their organizational characteristics and their institutionalized relationships with, and receipts from, the state. Other organizations, conversely, are shown to become structurally excluded.     

Community Building,Civil Society and Societal Service Production in China

This article examines the Chinese scholarly discourse about promoting civil society, constructing urban and rural communities, and transferring social service provision to society. It finds that this discourse treats two separate models as if they were one. The civil society model stresses freedom to organize for advancing the aims that participants share. The community building model emphasizes community governance and empowerment. Together, these two models expect both the state and society to strengthen their presence in the same communal space. These two models have theoretical inconsistencies, but these inconsistencies disappear if civil society is understood in the very narrow terms of the ‘small government, big society' model in which the state wants to reduce its own economic burdens in social service production. It is thus likely that in China civil society either remains secondary to the state-initiated channels of social and political participation in communities, or takes place mainly on the regional or national scope in which civil society organizations no longer compete with communal ones.     

Breakpoint or Binder: Religious Engagement in Dutch Civil Society

Civil society as a social sphere is constantly subjected to change. Using the Dutch context, this article addresses the question whether religiously inspired engagement is a binder or a breakpoint in modern societies. The author examines how religiously inspired people in the Netherlands involve themselves in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and voluntary activities. Religious involvement and social engagement in different European countries are compared and discussed. In addition, the author explores the models of civil society and applies these to both the Christian and Islamic civil society in the Netherlands. Using four religious ‘identity organizations’ as case studies, this article discusses the interaction of Christian and Islamic civil society related to secularized Dutch society. The character and intentions of religiously inspired organizations and the relationship between religious and secular involvement are examined. This study also focuses on the attitude of policymakers towards religiously inspired engagement and government policy on ‘identity organizations’ in the Netherlands.     

Rejecting refugees in illiberal Poland: The response from civil society

ABSTRACT

Since 2015, the European Union and its members have been responding to the increased arrivals of migrants and refugees at Europe’s southern shores. The states and societies of East and Central Europe are rarely discussed in this context. Even though their governments support the overall EU policy objectives in the area of freedom, security and justice, they vocally refused to participate in EU ‘burden sharing’. In this way these countries earned the label of uniquely xenophobic. This article seeks to complicate this perception by highlighting how civil society in Poland responded to the right-wing Polish government’s anti-refugee stance. Through the lens of Aronoff and Kubik’s concept of Legal Transparent Civil Society (LTCS) the author examine the evolving relationship between the ruling Law and Justice party and civil society organizations, proposing that activities for the benefit of refugees offer an insight into the transformation of civil society in the emerging illiberal political system.     

Reining in the Bureaucrats: Democratic Transition and Administrative Procedural Reform in Korea

How do civilian presidents control their bureaucracies after taking over from an authoritarian regime? To answer this question, I develop a “reining in” theory of delegation. I argue that presidents who faces intrabranch conflict over policy issues and cannot appoint—and dismiss—freely will solve their delegation problems through administrative procedure acts (APAs) and related laws. While some scholars argue that APAs are tools for preserving the status quo, I find that APAs help presidents change policy. Building on the delegation literature from economics, my theory represents a more general argument than prior theories for why presidents support APAs. I test the theory through a case study of South Korea's first civilian government (post‐1961), under President Kim Young Sam. Kim initiated an APA to rein in a professionalized civil service that opposed his policy preferences. Strict procedural requirements designed to keep tabs on bureaucratic activities enhanced Kim's control over his bureaucracy.