Civil society and democratic progression in postcolonial Nigeria: The role of non-governmental organizations

Abstract

With the ever increasing demands of market forces via globalization on governments, the parallel requests from citizens to fill the gap often left open by states have become just as prevalent in the modern era. Governments have become ill-equipped to handle such citizen demands or simply unwilling, thus civil society agents in the form of Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) are attempting to fill those gaps. Ideally, civil society actors like NGOs collectively mobilize and advocate more political openness, in the form of civil liberties and civil rights. However, NGOs can stymie democracy-building as well. Demands for more democratization are increasing precipitously, and seem to be coinciding with the rising tide of globalization, even in nascent democracies such as Nigeria. However, the idealism of the 1990s, that NGOs would be the panacea for democratic limitations, are not revealing themselves as once anticipated for a plethora of reasons. This paper will investigate the impact of NGO efforts and democratization in the face of instability in postcolonial Nigeria.     

农村妇女草根组织的推动手法

建立一个形式上的妇女草根组织容易,要使其能够持续发展下去并保持良好的运作却相当困难,需要花大力气促进组织成员的意识提升与能力增长,才能使之最终走上自我管理、自我发展的道路,通过河南社区教育研究中心多年推动妇女草根组织的经验,总结了农村妇女草根组织发展的多样化推动手法。     

新时期农村基层党组织权威提升与功能实现

农村基层党组织是党在农村全部工作和战斗力的基础,拥有领导核心功能,利益综合、协调与表达功能以及政治录用与政治社会化功能。新时期,农村中出现的各种变化、变革给农村基层党组织带来了挑战。权威的提升有助于促进党组织功能的有效发挥。权威的树立并不意味着权威问题的永久解决,作为党在农村工作的领导核心,村党组织必须关注农村社会各层面的变动,提升其功能发挥的效果,重塑自身的权威。     

浅议民间组织对政府管理的影响

随着我国经济体制转轨、社会转型、民主化进程的加快,作为市民社会核心力量的民间组织也呈现出较快较大的发展趋势,对政府管理产生相应的影响,促使其向着良性的、有利于政治民主化的方向发展。     

Democratization from below: Civil society in Tajikistan

A decade ago an exploration of civil society in South Africa, Tajikistan and Argentina highlighted its role in supporting democratization. Despite continuing global autocratic trends since then, South Africa and Argentina have remained vibrant democracies with strong civil societies. Tajikistan, in contrast, remains autocratic, and civil society has apparently weakened in recent years. However, at the grassroots level a combination of traditional grassroots organizations and Internet organizing provides a more complex picture of the relationships between local participation, ties with other civil society organizations, democratization and development. The purpose of this paper is to highlight both these relationships and the contrast between local democratization and national autocracy.     

From disguised protectionism to rewarding regulation: The impact of trade‐related labor standards in the Dominican Republic

Policymakers in the Dominican Republic have responded to foreign pressure by rewriting their labor laws and revitalizing their labor ministry. What are the likely consequences? Is aggressive labor law enforcement more likely to protect vulnerable workers from abuse and exploitation or to undermine their ability to compete for labor‐intensive employment in an unforgiving world economy? And what are the broader implications of the answer? I address these questions by analyzing qualitative as well as quantitative data on workplace regulators empowered by the Dominican Republic in response to trade‐related labor standards imposed by the United States and find that they reconcile social protection with economic adjustment by simultaneously discouraging “low road” employment practices like informality, union‐busting, and the exploitation of child labor, and encouraging “high road” alternatives that link firms, farms, and families, on the one hand, to public educational, training, and financial institutions, on the other. The result is a potentially inclusive alternative to the repressive industrial relations regime that fueled export‐led development – and the East Asian “miracle” in particular – in the late twentieth century.     

依法保障我国社会组织参与社会管理的权力

目前,我国社会组织在社会管理中发挥的作用越来越突出,但是行政化色彩严重、公众信任度不高、监督管理不到位等因素仍然制约着其健康发展。党的十八届四中全会提出"依法治国"的重大决定,而社会组织作为多元社会管理力量中的一股重要力量,也应该依法保障其参与社会管理的权力,探索其发展的法制化路径,比如:进一步简政放权、依法监管、适度问责及法律体系的完善等等,只有依法构建良好的制度环境,才能推动社会组织健康发展,从真正意义上实现依法治国。     

Civil Society Influence on International Organizations: Theorizing the State Channel

Abstract

The literature on transnational civil society tends to treat civil society organizations (CSOs) as independent actors, accomplishing policy change largely through moral force or popular pressure. However, a significant portion of CSO successes in policy advocacy actually utilizes alliances with state actors. To understand the implications of this ‘state channel’ of CSO influence, we develop a new model of CSO use of state influence. We identify four factors that determine whether the state channel is accessible for CSOs to use and is likely to produce more effective CSO influence than direct CSO engagement with the international organization (IO): the porousness of the targeted states and IOs, the availability of contacts, the possibility for alignment of interests, and the relative power of aligned state and IO contacts. We illustrate this theory using four case studies of civil society engagement: two case studies involving the World Bank and two involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Our analysis suggests that the factors determining CSOs' successful use of the state channel currently tend to favour a small number of well-resourced, reformist CSOs from porous and powerful states.     

制度创新与运行机制:非营利组织再造

非营利组织是市场组织、政府组织之外能独立发挥作用的第三种组织,它通过一定形式的制度安排,扮演着不可或缺的社会角色。江山市养蜂产业化协会从蜂农和蜂产品企业需求出发,创造性地设计了互助合作社与产加联合体。通过制度创新,使组织得以再造和机制有效运行,提高蜂产业的竞争力,充分发挥出非营利性组织的积极作用。     

Constraining Political Transformation: The Two Faces of Activist Religious Organizations in the Search for a New Constitution in Kenya

Abstract

Religious organizations are key structural components of Kenyan civil society that have played or continue to play a critical role in socio-political developments. In the last two and half decades especially, religious institutions have been among the principal actors shaping the mechanics and trajectories of Kenya's political order. But religious organizations’ political behaviour, especially in the country's search for a new constitution, was contentious and remarkably inconsistent. There were moments of progressive actions but also behaviour that imperilled progress. This article probes this ambivalence of Kenyan faith groups in the struggles for a new constitution. It is argued that their political behavioural inconsistencies largely reflect an ethnic, class and, to a lesser extent, instrumentalized doctrinal or denominational schism that is ever present in the wider Kenyan society. By analysing how religious leaders and their organizations challenged political elite domination while remaining amenable to its influence, this article illustrates the contradictions of elite pacts in these struggles and how they constrained progressive transformation.     

江苏省非公企业纪检监察组织建设调查与思考

非公企业作为社会主义市场经济发展的重要主体,面临着反腐败的严峻问题。江苏省非公企业的纪检监察组织坚持以引导非公企业健康发展,促进非公企业守法经营、诚信经营、廉洁经营为目标,把纪检监察工作与企业生产经营有机结合起来,从而保证党在非公企业组织领域中的政治核心地位。依据企业规模,纪检监察组织建设在形态上主要有单独建制、联合组建和选派纪律监督员三种。正确界定职能是非公企业纪检监察工作健康开展的关键;配备结构合理、精干高效的纪检监察机构和纪检监察工作人员,是开展非公有制经济组织党风廉政建设的基础和依托。要从精准定位、分类指导、制度安排三个方面入手,逐步解决当前非公企业对纪检监察组织建设存在的认知不足、自觉性欠缺、资源供应不足等问题,规范非公企业纪律监督的组织运行,建立健全非公企业纪检监察组织网络,进一步完善非公企业纪检监察工作建设责任制,切实加快江苏省非公企业纪检监察组织建设。     

Within,Above, and Beyond: Churches and Religious Civil Society Activism in South Kivu

In South Kivu in the Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), various church actors have chosen to involve in advocacy and mobilization through a formalized civil society structure known as La Société Civile (LSC). In this article, we explore the relationship between the churches and civil society in Eastern DRC, paying particular attention to why this cooperation has taken such a formalized expression, the motivations of church actors to become involved in LSC and, finally, how this relationship between different civil society actors has underpinned various peacebuilding efforts at the local, provincial, and national scale.     

Civil society and democratization: The role of service-providing organizations amid closing civic spaces

This article argues that current democracy promotion strategies relying on rights-claiming advocacy NGOs are falling short of their democratization goals, as authoritarian regimes are closing the space through restrictions on the NGOs that attempt to carry them out. In response, we suggest a reexamination of earlier approaches to involving civil society in democratization efforts by shifting the focus back on service-providing civil society organizations that have largely become side-lined in democracy-building agendas. Specifically, service providers tend to be more capable of functioning “under the radar” thus contributing to democracy in both direct and indirect ways, and thus escaping closing space restrictions. The key concerns about their independence from the state, as well as under what conditions the state may be less successful in coopting the independent service-providers, however, remain unresolved and warrant future research.     

Idealist Activism and Meaning Management in Social Movement Organizations

ABSTRACT

Transnational social movement organizations manage meaning and transmit meaning across borders. Organizations in the peace and human rights sector also often deal overtly in the construction, framing, translation, and distribution of meanings. This article describes a hybrid form of idealism that is defined herein as ‘idealist activism’. In describing idealist activism, this article identifies a form of meaning management that emphasizes engagement with humanity both in the service of and in the quest for universal truths and tenets, as opposed to the more widely acknowledged cosmopolitanism emphasis on engagement with universal truths and tenets in the service of humanity. The significance of idealist activism is explained not just in terms of the depth and breadth of its influence, but also with regard to its pertinence as an alternative to both political cosmopolitanism and religious idealism.     

International Organizations ICTs Policies: E‐Democracy and E‐Government for Political Development

New technologies provide new channels of access to political information and participation in decision‐making processes. This assumption is clearly important in the action plans and policies of International Organizations (World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, United Nations), which have assumed a leadership role in the reform of political institutions. Starting from an analysis of the reasons that have brought the state and processes of institution building back into focus, this paper will reconstruct the International Organizations' vision of the transformative potential of new information technologies and their activity in this field. Particular attention will be devoted to e‐democracy and e‐government as policies to build democracy in developing countries.     

公安院校学生非正式组织及其管理研究

在公安院校学生管理中存在的非正式组织的影响和作用是不可小视的。因此，对学生非正式组织进行研究是十分必要的。对学校中存在的非正式组织的成因和特征进行分析，并根据影响程度的不同将其进行分类，将有助于学校管理者采取有效的措施对其进行管理。     

District magnitude and voter turnout a multi-level analysis of self-reported voting in the 32 Dominican Republic districts

Although studies of electoral participation in established democracies are abundant, little attention has been devoted to Latin American democracies and few studies combine individual-level and contextual-level variables. We focus on electoral participation in 32 districts of a Latin American democracy, the Dominican Republic. Our research question is: how to explain the different impact of district magnitude in Latin America? Most importantly, we find that it has a negative effect on electoral participation whereas theories based on established democracies would predict the opposite. We argue that the negative effect is caused by the stronger influence of clientelism in smaller districts, which surfaces at less salient elections. This argument accounts for previously unexplained findings in studies of Latin America.     

高校基层党组织深化运用监督执纪第一种形态问题研究——基于60所高校专职纪检监察干部的调研

监督执纪“四种形态”是全面从严治党的重要手段,是新形势下党建理论新成果的实践运用,是标本兼治的科学方法。高校基层党组织日常工作中面临的主要是第一种形态的运用问题。通过对60所高校91名纪检监察干部进行调查,发现高校基层党组织在运用第一种形态方面一定程度上存在不想用、不敢用、不会用、不认真用的问题。解决这些问题,重点要以思想自觉和责任自觉提升行动自觉,确保第一种形态运用落地;要以制度建设推进运用常态化,确保第一种形态用得规范得当;要以能力建设推进运用用好用准,确保第一种形态运用质量;要硬化闭环工作机制,确保第一种形态用出实效。     

Civil Society Organizations in a Post‐Aid World: New Trends and Observations from the Andean Region

The objective of this article is to outline approaches taken by civil society organizations (CSOs) in order to advance their work in social development given the changes in the aid architecture. It focuses on the Latin American region, particularly Andean countries, but many of the challenges and opportunities in a “post‐aid world” are insights that might prove helpful to other regions as well. The article provides a comprehensive outline of approaches that CSOs are taking given the changes in aid grouped into three categories: aid models, organizational considerations and revenue sources and modes of fundraising. Many of these have been in practice for sometime but might need to be more strategically used as CSOs manage the changing contexts. CSOs in Latin America and the Andes are considering a multitude of options, and while the approaches considered in the article are not an exhaustive list, they provide an overview of viable directions, which might positively influence CSOs' sustainability and continued provision and promotion of a myriad of public goods and services. The article ends with observations about aid shifts and its implications for CSOs and social development more broadly. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.