Concepts and conceptions of civil society

Abstract

This article takes issue with three rival approaches to conceptualizing the idea of civil society in the contemporary discussion, arguing that none of these succeeds as a general account of the concept. It argues instead that there is no general concept picked out by the expression ‘civil society’: uses of ‘civil society’ are theory-laden such that they can only be understood from within the theoretical, practical, and historical contexts in which they originated. This article concludes by arguing that the idea of civil society still retains critical value, provided that the theorist locates it in a particular context.     

Weak civil society in a hard state: Lessons from Africa

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of civil society in Botswana within the broader context of the state–civil society dynamic in Africa. It is argued that, like other countries in Africa, civil society in Botswana is rather weak. Conversely, unlike other countries in Africa, a weak civil society is accompanied by a hard state. Thanks to wise leadership, Botswana has experienced remarkable economic growth rates and significant improvements in human development over a period of about four decades. Botswana is also considered a ‘shining liberal democracy’, with elections held every five years, an independent judiciary system, and low levels of corruption. Yet it has been a democratic system with a weak civil society. Four main reasons are provided: first, the political culture makes it difficult to question authority; second, it is arduous to mobilize citizens because of the culture of dependency created by the clientelistic state; third, the Government has for a long time denied—and still does—the role of civil society as a legitimate player in the development process; fourth, civil society is not a cohesive group and lacks funds, especially the advocacy groups.     

Civil society: Bringing the family back in

This article explores the complex and contradictory positioning of the family within civil society literature. In some accounts, the family is seen as the cornerstone of civil society. In others, the family is positioned firmly outside – even antithetical to – civil society. This paradox arises from the ways in which civil society is variously defined through a series of binary oppositions – in relation to each of which the family sits uneasily. And while feminist critiques have tried to bring women back into view, they too tend to marginalize the family. In addition, the normative nature of these oppositions has meant that while civil society tends to be seen as the property of the political ‘left’, the family is often associated with the political ‘right’. The article argues that we need to move beyond oppositional definitions of civil society and assumptions about the family if we are to understand the multiple ways in which the family is implicated as not only the ‘reproducer’ of particular resources and dispositions but as a principal source and focus of civil society engagement and activism.     

The EU's fledgling society: From deafening silence to critical voice in European constitution-making

Abstract

The European Union is presently at a major crossroads. The Laeken process which launched the EU onto an explicit constitution-making process, has ground to a halt after the negative referendum results in France and the Netherlands. The European Council at its June 16–17, 2005 meeting decided to postpone the ratification process (by then 10 states had ratified and 2 had rejected) and instead issue a period of reflection. These events represent a significant re-politicization of the European integration process. From a research perspective they underline the need to study the dynamic interrelation between the emerging European polity and its social constituency. In this article we present a research framework for analysing EU-constitutionalization in terms of polity building and social constituency building. In empirical terms, this implies looking at the structured processes of intermediation that link institutional performance back to popular concerns and expectations. Going beyond the contentious politics approach we propose that the character of the emerging EU social constituency and its pervading effects on the EU-constitution-making process should be understood not only in terms of public voice (i.e., as ‘organized civil society’) but also in terms of public silence.     

Governing diversity: Dutch political parties' preferences on the role of the state in civic integration policies

This article analyses political debates about civic integration policies in the Netherlands, so as to identify different conceptions of the role of the state in ensuring social cohesion by governing diversity. Drawing on the literature on party systems, it presents an analysis of political party positions on the role of the state in civic integration along two dimensions: economic distribution on the one hand, and sociocultural governance on the other hand. I find that while the large majority of Dutch political parties adopt authoritarian positions on the sociocultural axis in favour of state intervention to protect Dutch culture and identity, their positions diverge significantly on the classic economic Left–Right dimension. The most contentious issue in Dutch civic integration politics is whether the state, the market or individual migrants should be responsible for financing and organising courses. Thus, this article proposes an innovative model for analysing the politics of citizenship, which enables us to comprehend how citizenship policies are shaped not only by views on how identity and culture relate to social cohesion, but also by diverging perspectives on socio-economic justice.     

The in-between: Local civil society organizations and their community-based structures in South Kivu,the Democratic Republic of the Congo

This article examines the relationship between local civil society organizations and community-based structures in peacebuilding interventions in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It observes that elite led organizations in the provincial capital rely on information provided by the members of multiple community-based structures in order identify local needs which are addressed through their peacebuilding efforts. Further, it argues that the relationship between these two actors present both groups with the legitimacy to undertake peacebuilding activities at the community and provincial level. It argues that local civil society organizations rely on their relationship with community-based structures which they establish and support in order to develop locally grounded peacebuilding interventions and gain the legitimacy necessary to gain access to international funding and implement their programmes in targeted communities in South Kivu province.     

The role of civil society in European integration

This paper explores the concept of ‘civic society’ in Western political thought, charting the changing understanding of this concept through history and its manifestation in contemporary political and social life. The paper draws out the inferences for our understanding of the role of government, particularly with the European Union and its relationship with citizens and other representative community‐based and non‐governmental organisations. The paper argues that the fundamental values that are central to civic society underpin the proposed EU Charter on Fundamental Rights and maintains that effective European integration requires responsible participation by Europe's citizens. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Environmentally friendly food initiatives in Iran: between environmental citizenship and pluralizing the public sphere

In this article I analyze acts of citizenship within environmentally friendly food initiatives in Iran. I show that act of environmental citizenship intersects with politics of pluralizing the public sphere within these initiatives. I present original research that shows how these practices are determined by state-society relations. It is shown that the main objective of most of the initiators of these enterprises is to provide a source of information about healthy and environmentally friendly food as well as providing access to such food. In contrast, many consumers also use these initiatives as spaces where they can experience and make a more pluralistic public sphere. This article contributes to a better understanding of the concept of environmental citizenship and demonstrates the relevance of the concept to broader notions of citizenship.     

Bureaucratization and administrative development in Africa: A reading of Riggs' theory of prismatic society

Poor bureaucratization in prismatic (transitional) societies is attributed to malintegration of the ideal bureaucratic principles with subsisting traditional sociocultural features by Fred Riggs. Riggs has been severely criticized on many fronts, yet aspects of his theory remain relevant towards explaining persistent poor administrative behaviour in most African countries. This article applies Riggs' notion of poly‐communalism and poly‐normativism to explain the contribution of low state identity to persistent poor administrative behaviour in Africa. Historical institutionalism theory is also used to attempt at resolving the challenge of equilibrium for which Riggs' theory is commonly criticized. The author avers that communalism, a value that supports group interest in a traditional society, subsists in most poly‐communal transitional African countries, leading to distortions in administrative behaviour. A good number of African countries were mobilized through colonialism but poorly assimilated, thus lacking strong common state identity, which leads to ineffective public administration. The article suggests that resolving the trapping of the administrative system in Africa requires resolving the challenge of poly‐communalism and lack of common identity among a state population.     

The state and civil society in transition: the role of non-governmental organizations in South Korea

This paper presents a framework of the interdependence of various sectors of society and then investigates the development and current status of the civil society sector, specifically the growth of NGOs in South Korea. Recent years have witnessed an increase in public awareness where civil societies have begun challenging states in addressing public issues. The directive state intervention following the Korean War disallowed for a strong civil society, thus restraining the development of significant non-state actors. The 1987 Democratization Movement marked an increase in the activity of NGOs and also the provision of a pathway for citizens to begin engaging in social activity. The repressive apparatus of the state has weakened allowing Korean NGOs to mature in dealing with diverse social issues in the public domain. They have extended the scope of policy-related activities to ensure an environment conducive to the enlargement of public space and the expansion of citizens’ rights. The results of this study indicate that the growth of NGOs is both the result of the demise of authoritarian regimes and further stimulus to the transition solidifying democracy. The challenges for Korean NGOs will be to ply strategic roles as partners of the state in the transitional period.     

Studying civil society across the world: Exploring the Thorny issues of conceptualization and measurement

Abstract

The debate about the usefulness of the civil society concept for social analysis has reached a critical stage and calls for its abandonment are mounting. To prove its relevance for policy, practice and research, better operational concepts and more rigorous empirical research on civil society are required. This article examines the possibilities and pitfalls of cross-national civil society research as a crucial area of empirical civil society studies. It explores the definition, conceptualization, operationalization and measurement of civil society through a critical examination of existing international efforts at comparative civil society analysis. A functional approach to defining civil society and a two-dimensional operational concept of civil society, according to its (1) structural and (2) cultural features, are proposed as suitable tools to study the phenomenon cross-nationally. The article also reviews the Civicus Civil Society Index as an innovative tool to assess the state of civil society and discusses the insights and challenges emerging from its current application in more than 50 countries. The paper concludes that international comparative civil society studies are both possible and necessary, but cautions that more attention needs to be paid to the development of appropriate operational concepts and measurement models.     

From absent to present pasts: civil society,democracy and the shifting place of memory in Brazil

This article takes Alexis de Tocqueville’s concern with the emotional life of citizens as a cue for exploring the role of collective memory within ‘the self-organizing sphere’ and asking how the invocation of memory affects progress towards democracy. The article hones in on the Brazilian experience, re-assessing Brazil’s amnesiac past as well as its much-lauded ‘turn to memory’. Against common assertions that Brazil’s ‘turn to memory’ will enhance the country’s democratic credentials, this article argues that the move from an ‘absent’ to a ‘present’ past in Brazil in fact bodes rather mixed prospects for the country’s democratic deepening.     

The aesthetic public sphere and the transformation of criticism

This article argues that criticism is fundamental for understanding how culture and politics shape the ambiguous self-interpretation of society. An initial exploration of Habermas's theory of the public sphere reveals that it is inadequately cultural. An alternative is thus offered by discussing the work of Jacobs, and especially his concept of an “aesthetic public sphere”. His insight that nothing is too trivial when it comes to broadening the limits of the public sphere prompts scholars to take into consideration the positive as well as negative aspects of criticism. As a cultural mediation, criticism is shaped by a struggle for recognition that gives rise to the interpretation of its own crisis. The purpose of the article, however, is to propose a more balance account of such predicament. By discussing online criticism, the rise of the “prosumer” and user-generated content, it is argued that there is now a new battle for authority and legitimacy undergoing. This creates the potential for the democratization of criticism, even though this potential has great chance to remain within an inescapable democratic tension.     

Civil society and the regulatory state of the South: A commentary

The basic rationale of the regulatory state is to insulate certain kinds of decisionmaking from political actors. The main purpose of this commentary is to assess the ways that members of civil society, in fact, often shadow and contest the central actors of the regulatory state, even though they are ostensibly well outside it. I offer three distinctions to help broaden and sharpen analysis of the roles and impact of civil society actors: whether civil society actors have special expertise or not; whether the regulatory state is being put in place or already exists; and whether civil society actions are broadly complementary to, or substitutive of, state action. In discussing each of these, I also explore the consequences of the transfer of the regulatory state to the global South, and the way that change in location shapes both the role and impact of civil society and the regulatory state itself.     

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.     

Developmental states,civil society,and public health: Patent regulation for HIV/AIDS pharmaceuticals in India and Brazil

While both India and Brazil are seriously affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, each country has chosen a different approach to providing affordable pharmaceutical treatment. Whereas the Indian government has paved the way for market-driven solutions, Brazilian public authorities are strongly involved in the research and production of HIV/AIDS medication. Brazilian regulations permit comprehensive and free provision of HIV/AIDS drugs, whereas the majority of the affected population in India does not receive adequate pharmaceutical treatment. To explain the different policy outputs, we draw on the developmental state literature. Efficient decisionmaking structures, a devoted bureaucracy, and effective policy instruments enable public authorities to provide public goods even in the context of relative scarcity. We show that the assumptions of developmental state theory have to be complemented by the assessment of civil society actors' potential to trigger governmental interventions in the market.     

Civil society and its outside: Analysing the boundary between civil and uncivil society in the Danish anti-radicalization discourse

The literature on the boundary between civil and uncivil society has reached an impasse between approaches that oppose these societies to each other and those that dismiss the boundary altogether. This article suggests an analytical shift to a governmental approach that asks how the relation between civil and uncivil society figures in social practices. The approach is applied to the case of the Danish anti-radicalization discourse which revolves around subjects that cross the boundary. Through a discourse analysis of governmental papers, the author argues that the boundary appears twice. First, as a categorical difference that is simultaneously erected and annulled. This is not a paradox that must be superseded but one which structures a rationality of the governed in Civil Society that a governmental rationality pegs itself to inside an indefinite time. Second, this rationality is only possible through the rejection of violence. This creates a void which serves as an object of the discourse while existing outside the indefinite time of governmentality.     

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.     

Regulating public procurement in Brazil,India, and China: Toward the regulatory-developmental state

Since the 1990s, emerging economies such as Brazil, India, and China have adopted transparency-enhancing public procurement regulations in line with international norms. Yet they have hesitated to join the World Trade Organization's legally binding Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). Based on the Special Issue framework, this article scrutinizes the underlying domestic and international determinants, and how they influence emerging countries’ positions in two overlapping international procurement regimes. In particular, reform-oriented state actors, societal pressure, and lesson-drawing from international templates have induced a strengthening of domestic procurement institutions and turned emerging countries into “promoters” of the international transparency regime. Conversely, the rising powers have remained, to varying degrees, reluctant “spoilers” of the GPA-based market access regime in order to keep policy space and use procurement for domestic development objectives. The article suggests that this regulatory-developmental layering of rule-based governance and interventionist ambitions characterizes the variegated regulatory state in emerging countries.     

The Internet,alternative public sphere and political dynamism: Korea's non-gaek * (polemist ) websites

Abstract

This paper explores the development of Korea's online alternative public sphere and illuminates the characteristics of this space, ‘activated’ by non-gaek websites. These websites host highly partisan discourses which are produced and disseminated by a focused political agenda that aims at political reform. Such a method of conducting discourse has led to the dissimilitude of the alternative public sphere, resulting in the birth of a multiplicity of spheres that represent divergent political views. This paper argues that although the overall extent of the alternative public sphere is expanded by non-gaek websites, it is becoming at the same time an exclusive and intolerant space. Furthermore, it is argued that to facilitate functional operation of the alternative public sphere, an institutionalization of rules and norms that can solve such problems is necessary.