Home-grown strategies for greater agency: reassessing the outcome of civil society strengthening in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan

This paper seeks to reassess the outcome of mainstream civil society promotion policies in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. While it agrees with critics that the distorting effects of funding relations have meant that the promised ‘grassroots citizen empowerment’ has not been achieved directly through NGOs, it does not agree that NGOs are therefore merely vehicles of the Western ideological agenda and international aid to the Kyrgyzstani population. It argues that the facilitation of international actors has opened up opportunities for individual NGO activists to pursue their own social and political development agendas. In recent years, some activists have begun to use these opportunities to develop strategies through which grassroots interests are represented to decision-makers, and citizens' abilities to represent their own interests are enhanced. The strategies adopted differ from the mainstream civil society model and have allowed some NGOs to function in a manner more relevant to the specific Kyrgyzstani context. This suggests that local Kyrgyzstani NGOs and activists should not all be written off as ‘artificial’ civil society, irrelevant to the dynamics of state–society relations.     

The Limits of Civil Society in Democratic Indonesia: Media Freedom and Religious Intolerance

Abstract

Indonesian democracy has been challenged by rising religious intolerance and discriminatory attitudes in civil society since the mid-2000s, despite expanded freedom in many areas including the media. Why has Indonesian civil society been put on the defensive by radical and conservative Islamic elements in the context of democratic consolidation? What role has expanded freedoms and a flourishing of new media and information technologies played? This article argues that two factors have contributed to the rising influence of religious hardliners/radicals and increasing religious intolerance. The first is hardliner access not only to new media but, more importantly, to traditional means and institutions for religious and political mobilisation, including state apparatus, to cultivate antagonistic sentiments and attitudes against what they consider the enemies of Islam within the Muslim communities while disseminating narrow and dogmatic interpretations of Islam. The other is the rise of conservative Muslim politicians within the state who are ready and eager to embrace new media and communication technologies while using the state office and prerogatives to advance conservative religious visions and agendas. In order to assess how those conservative politicians exploit their ministerial prerogatives and state patronage to curtail civil society, particularly the freedom of expression and religion, this article examines two prominent and controversial Muslim politicians: Tifatul Sembiring from the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party and Suryadharma Ali from the United Development Party.     

Grassroots Bureaucracy: Intergovernmental Relations and Popular Mobilization in Brazil's AIDS Policy Sector

How does the state ensure the implementation of national policies in a context of decentralized political authority? This article identifies a new strategy utilized by national bureaucrats to regulate the behavior of subnational politicians: mobilizing civil society as government watchdog and political advocate. In the context of decentralized governance, in which local politicians administer most social sector programs, reform‐minded bureaucrats often find that they have little control over the implementation of their progressive policies. In Brazil's AIDS policy sector, however, bureaucrats have ensured the successful implementation of their policies by developing allies outside government. These state actors—here called activist bureaucrats—have been largely overlooked in the English‐language literature, yet they form a new layer of politics in Latin America.     

Civil society in Georgia: expectations versus reality

Academic analysts, political commentators and activists in Georgia are almost unanimous in their assessment that the public in Georgia is generally passive, civil society is weak, and that this may be one of the key reasons why Georgia – despite numerous democratic openings – keeps failing to consolidate its democratic institutions. In order to measure the strengths and weaknesses of Georgian civil society, the present article uses interviews with respondents from the Georgian non-governmental organization sector and academia on two areas: (a) citizen participation: to what extent is civic participation in the public sphere aimed at advancing shared interests and (b) influence on policy-making: to what extent is Georgian civil society able to foster popular influence on political and economic developments. This paper applies the concept of delegative democracy to contemporary developments in Georgia, and argues that one of the major factors which contribute to this trend in Georgia is a weak civil society and, therefore, a lack of intermediary institutions to safeguard democratic norms.     

Shaping Social Activism in Post-Soviet Russia: Leadership,Organizational Diversity,and Innovation

A political scientist investigates the weakness of civil society in post-Soviet Russia, asking how these limitations manifest themselves in practice and how they influence the ability of social activists to reach out to the public, form coalitions, and advocate for new government policies. In an examination of environmental organizations from the mid-1990s to the present based on interviews with activists, materials produced by the organizations, and social scientists' analyses, three distinct patterns of organizational development are identified. The mechanisms linking political, economic, and cultural characteristics to patterns of organizational development within civil society are analyzed in this case study.     

Understanding Arab civil society: functional validity as the missing link

The study of civil society in the Arab region has been riddled with normative expectations largely derived from the experiences of civil society in other countries. While the region continues to endure a democratic deficit, it is also home to myriad civil society organizations working on a range of issues. The missing link when theorizing about Arab civil society has been in considering its functional validity in the eyes of the activists themselves. This article utilizes insights from focus groups with activists in Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq and Syria to propose a typology of the functional validity that civil society offers to Arab activists. Despite the criticisms that the concept of civil society has faced in the region, activists continue to find validity in the work they are doing. The typology proposed here presents a fivefold validity of action through neutrality, mobilization, democratic claim, access to funds, and representation for civil society activists. By bringing in empirical evidence from the activists themselves we can move away from normative expectations about civil society towards a better understanding of the various functions that civil society organizations are fulfilling in different contexts across the region.     

The Public Sphere and the Rise of South Korean Civil Society

This article examines how civil society in South Korea emerged as a social force and developed a distinctive relationship with the state. It is argued that political, institutional and cultural factors are no less important than economic relations in accounting for the distinctive nature of South Korean civil society. The article explores the dialectical relationship between the state and Korean civil society and its political and social consequences. For example, the dynamic interplay between the formal and informal structures of political power and the role of various civic organisations in political and other processes of social transformation are discussed. It is argued that the complex relationship between the state and civil society should be theorised in terms of mutual empowerment and synergy in the sense that civic organisations and groups have contended for, or negotiated, power. Hence, observers should bear in mind an alternative hypothesis that different historical conditions may well determine structural changes that have diverse outcomes in the political and cultural arenas, especially in an era of globalisation.     

Au Retour a Gramsci: Reflections on Civil Society,Political Society and the State in South Asia

Abstract

This article critically analyses Partha Chatterjee’s recent concepts of civil society and political society, showing that their binary character is derived from a culturalist conflation of capitalism with modernity. In turn, modernity becomes equated with a naturalised liberal democratic state, precluding any appreciation of how resistance can and does shape the character of the state. Second, it compares Chatterjee’s categories of civil and political society to those of Gramsci, arguing that a return to classical Gramscian categories, along with an appreciation of the impact of colonialism on state forms, can provide studies of resistance with a richer and more elegant understanding of social change from below in contemporary India.     

Expanding Accountability Through Participatory Institutions: Mayors, Citizens, and Budgeting in Three Brazilian Municipalities

As new political institutions provide Brazilians with unprecedented access to policymaking and decisionmaking venues, politicians and activists have undertaken reform efforts to promote institutional arrangements partly designed to expand accountability. The expansion of participatory decisionmaking venues may grant citizens greater authority, but these institutions could also undermine municipal councils' ability to curb the prerogatives of mayors. This article analyzes participatory budgeting in São Paulo, Recife, and Porto Alegre to illustrate that mayors have differing capacities to implement their policy preferences, and this greatly affects how accountability may be extended.     

Civil Associations in Mandatory Haifa: A New Perspective on Palestinian-Arab Political Life

The article explores the potential of local civil associations for the study of power relations within Palestinian society during the Mandate. It argues that civil associations substituted political institutions and procedures serving functions that, in a sovereign state, would have been fulfilled by governmental authorities. Civil society organizations enabled democratic elections, mobilizing popular support and the establishment of hegemonic structures. The discussion begins with a survey of organizations that may have inspired Palestinian civil associations, and then considers the rise of mass politics in Ottoman provinces and its consequences for civil associations. By examining two Arab civil associations established in Haifa during the British Mandate, the article shows how this framework served the political aspirations of individuals and groups from various social strata.     

Civil society and state-centred struggles

This article is about civil society and state-centred struggles in contemporary Zimbabwe. I first identify and outline three current understandings of civil society. Two understandings (one Liberal, one Radical) are state-centric and exist firmly within the logic of state discourses and state politics. A third understanding, also Radical, is society-centric and speaks about politics existing at a distance from the state and possibly beyond the boundaries of civil society. This civil society-state discussion frames the second section of the article, which looks specifically at Zimbabwe. It details civil society as contested terrain (from the late 1990s onwards) within the context of a scholarly debate about agrarian transformation and political change. This debate, which reproduces (in theoretical garb) the key political society (or party) fault-lines within Zimbabwean society, has taken place primarily within the restricted confines of state-centred discourses.     

Untangling Social and Political Capital in Latin American Democracies

Robert Putnam extolled the virtue of social capital by arguing that social networks, civil society, and trust contribute to democracy. Subsequent research, however, identified a weakness in the social capital “model” in its underspecification of the mechanisms by which social capital affects political systems. This article proposes the concept of political capital as a likely product of social capital that links civil society participants to the political system. The article tests this two‐stage model of social capital and political capital and their effects on democratization using survey data from eight Latin American nations. Results find that civil society engagement in 2004 affected political capital variables, which, in turn, had positive effects on system‐level democracy measures in 2010. The article thus shows that political capital serves as an intervening variable between social capital and democracy and democratization.     

MAKING NARRATIVES OF REVOLUTION

Singapore's ruling elite runs a finely calibrated system of social and political control based on a mixture of monitoring and repression by the state, and self-monitoring and self-restraint by all elements of civil society. This system matured under Goh Chok Tong's premiership in the 1990s but its template was created by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in the final years of his premiership with his handling of a fresh upsurge of social justice activism and dissent that was becoming increasingly brave. In response to these challenges he created a fanciful narrative about a “Marxist conspiracy” to overthrow the state and centered the main force of his allegations on a group of activists who were associated with the local Catholic Church. He accused them of being Marxists who had been subverted by the teachings of liberation theology and used the Internal Security Act to detain them and destroy their rather modest and innocent operations; their treatment provided both an exemplar to other groups and a model for the next generation of the ruling elite to follow. This article uses archival, oral, and secondary sources to build an account of these events with a particular focus on the motivations and activities of this group of Catholics and the motivations of the government—which essentially means the motivations of Lee Kuan Yew.     

Re-conceptualizing civil society in rentier states

ABSTRACT

Civil society is typically understood as weak or irrelevant in Gulf rentier states, the assumption being that rent-derived wealth allows the state to co-opt or repress associational life. However, for all these claims about the relationship between rents and civil society, rentier state theory relies on a number of assumptions regarding the nature of civil society itself, specifically that civil society is, by definition, independent of the state, formal and public in organization, and pro-democratic in orientation. This article examines where relaxation of these assumptions allows us to better understand the political activities of civil society groups in Gulf rentier states, even as co-optative and repressive governance tactics continue to limit space for political activity. Instead of focusing on traditional forms of civil society, we should instead search for those parts of Gulf society that fulfil the function of civil society in terms of societal entities that act collectively to pursue a political purpose (including both engagement with the state over policy matters and debates on moral and social societal norms).     

Production Politics and Migrant Labour Advocacy in Singapore

Since 2005, NGO activism, calling for greater legal protection for contract migrant workers has been the most concerted challenge to Singapore’s migrant labour regime. Despite a severely restricted civil society space, migrant labour advocacy has delivered small but significant reforms to laws covering migrant labour. The existing literature on migrant labour advocacy focuses on the importance of civil society space in determining the outcomes of organised contention. In the Singapore context, the limitations of advocacy are emphasised and explained in terms of the illiberal nature of the People’s Action Party-state and the strategies deployed by non-governmental organisations. Such an approach is limited in its explanatory potential as it only states what political spaces are not available without examining how spaces for contention are created. In contrast, this article identifies the production politics between migrant workers and their employers as crucial in influencing the extent to which spaces for non-governmental organisation contention can be carved out. Accordingly, this article argues that forms of production politics leading to worker desertion from the workplace, rather than tactical accommodation, have provided non-governmental organisations with the impetus to push forward reform agendas within an authoritarian political environment.     

HIV/AIDS and sexual minorities in Mexico: a globalized struggle for the protection of human rights

The fight against HIV/AIDS is an example of a global struggle for the promotion of sexual health and the protection of human rights for all, including sexual minorities. It represents a challenge for the understanding of its impact on political, social, and economic processes. My central goal in this piece is twofold. First, I underline the importance of a political and human rights perspective to the analysis of the global response to the pandemic, and I introduce the concept of policy networks for a better understanding of these dynamics. Second, I argue that, in the case of Mexico, the constitution of HIV/AIDS policy networks, which incorporate civil society and state actors, such as sexual minority activists and public officials, and their actions—both domestic and international—have resulted in a more inclusive HIV/AIDS policy-making process. However, serious human rights violations of HIV/AIDS patients and sexual minorities still remain.     

The impact of organisational attributes on political participation: results of a multi‐level survey from Switzerland

Abstract: The notion of civil society associations as schools of democracy has resulted in models of political participation that place an emphasis on membership in civic associations as a means of developing personal skills that are conducive to political participation. These suppositions seem well established. It is still contested, however, to what extent the particular characteristics of the associations that offer such membership have an impact on civic engagement. Expanding recent research that mainly builds on group characteristics aggregated from the characteristics of the associations’ members, we apply the Swiss part of a unique multi‐level data set, the CID‐data, which provides information about approx. 1000 activists from about 400 associations. This data allows us to measure group characteristics, such as the function of an association and its connection to the local elite, directly and thus provides us with a special opportunity for a multi‐level analysis of activists nested in organisations.     

The Growth of Civil Society in Timor-Leste: Three Moments of Activism

During the dramatic upheavals and conflicts that have accompanied political independence in Timor-Leste, Timorese activists have made an important, sometimes overlooked, contribution. This paper highlights the significant roles they played at three major turning points over the past 15 years – the Santa Cruz massacre in 1991, the UN-sponsored independence ballot in 1999 and the political-military crisis in 2006. Each one of these events was a starting point for a new phase in Timorese development history and a new phase in the growth of Timorese civil society. The personal reflections of Timorese activists provide poignant insight into their changing focus of activism as Timor-Leste became independent. Their “active citizenship” provided a mechanism to both contribute to and contest the mainstream nation-building processes which were, in some cases, perceived to be overly influenced by Western standards and often failed to acknowledge or respect Timorese culture and traditions.     

The Use of Twitter during the 2009 German National Election

During the 2009 election campaign, Twitter not only served as a source of news for the media but also became a public stage for active political users. In particular, hopes were raised about a pluralistic grass-roots sphere of public communication in which political information can be shared in a non-ideological, decentralised and egalitarian manner. To test whether Twitter led to new patterns of political interaction and to determine the beneficiaries, we present findings from a large-scale network analysis investigating about four million tweets by more than 33,000 users including citizens, journalists and politicians in the 2009 National Election. Our analysis identifies the most popular users, contents and topics in this political sphere, revealing the Pirate Party movement as the most influential group during the campaign. A network analysis of the participating actors confirms the strong position of established online activists and bloggers in contrast to traditional mass media, politicians and parties.     

“Because we all love our country”: Refugee and Asylum‐Seeking Children,Australian Policy‐Makers,and the Building of National Sentiment

In this article I look at Australian political discourse from 2013 to 2016 to examine two twinned schemas: the ways in which the category of the child refugee or asylum‐seeker is produced, and the ways in which ideas of the Australian nation are produced, through emotional discourses, or economies of emotion. I am interested here in asking what emotional work these narratives about child refugees do in the national imagination, and to create an idea of “Australia”. Both the category of the child refugee/asylum‐seeker, and that of the nation, are not natural: they are historical productions, built through multivalent, multilingual discourses and practices. They are forms of creating difference amongst populations in society. Through a focus on these discourses, languages, and grammars — as enunciated by politicians, NGO workers, lawyers, activists, and policy‐makers — I will explore the specific ways in which the emotional economies function, and work to understand and historicise the systems of ideas and relations that they produce.