The Structure and Culture of Post-Communist Civil Society in Latvia

This article provides an account of post-communist civil society in Latvia. Based on original survey data, the structure of civil society is analysed on both individual and organisational levels and cultural aspects are examined. The weakness of post-communist civil society found in much previous research is confirmed when measured on the individual level and in relation to some organisational aspects. The political culture of civil society in Latvia is relatively trusting, tolerant and pro-democratic, but elitist. The specific weaknesses of post-communist civil society can be attributed to the historical heritage of the communist regime as well as the context in which new foreign-funded civil society organisations emerged.     

Civil society in Mozambique: NGOs,religion, politics and witchcraft

Our aim is to problematise the dominant discourses and practices around civil society from a Southern perspective. We first examine critically, from a broadly Gramscian perspective, the way in which the concept of civil society has been deployed in development discourse. This highlights its highly normative and North-centric epistemology and perspectives. We also find it to be highly restrictive in a post-colonial Southern context insofar as it reads out much of the grassroots social interaction, deemed ‘uncivil’ and thus not part of duly recognised civil society. This is followed by a brief overview of some recent debates around civil society in Africa which emphasise the complexity of civil society and turn our attention to some of the broader issues surrounding state-society relations, democracy and representation in a Third World context, exemplified through our case study research in Mozambique, Inhassunge district (Zambézia Province). The privileging of Western-type Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as drivers of democracy and participatory development in Mozambique have considerable implications for current debates around good governance, civil society strengthening and social accountability programmes and strategies.     

Civil Society and Good Governance in Bangladesh

Many of the recent ideas and concepts of ‘good governance’ and ‘civil society’ in Bangladesh have been generated by the international aid agencies and their ‘good governance’ policy agenda in the 1990s, but there are also local meanings to the terms derived from the independence struggle and the construction of a Bangladeshi state. This article aims to obtain a clearer analytical understanding of the processes and institutions of civil society in Bangladesh that can develop workable strategy to improve governance for helping the poor and moving beyond the patron–client relationships on which they have depended historically. It also focuses attention and debate on those aspects of civil society which can enhance the quality of governance and democracy by overcoming the western top-down approach; and can strengthen the role of civil society organisations to further enhance their impact on better governance for fair distribution of public goods and ensuring social justice for the poor.     

Civil Service and Civil Society Collaboration: A Comparative Analysis of Disaster Management Results in China and the United States

This article explores the way natural disasters provide an opportunity to address relations between civil society and the state as mutually empowering. Such opportunity can be reinforced when civil servants help to mobilize the interests of marginalized communities into disaster management and collaborate with active civil associations in seeking to reduce disaster vulnerabilities. This requires that public administration be able to respond to disaster in an effective and equitable way. Civil servants should be capable of being socially reliable by building and maintaining trust in relationships with communities and civil organizations. Using the Gulf Coast Hurricanes (United States) in 2005 and the Wenchuan Earthquake (China) in 2008 as case studies, this article comparatively addresses the significance of public administration's role in developing mutual empowerment in state and civil society relations in the face of adversity. Given the fact that civil service capacity becomes a crucial factor in determining state-civil society relations, it also has important implications for the potential of democratization in China.     

Civil Society,Populism and Liberalism

This paper considers the threats that various kinds of populism might be said to pose to the ideal of a civil society that mediates between ‘private’ and family life and the state. Although it is difficult to generalise about populisms, just about all—whether on left or right—share a hostility to ‘intermediate’ powers. Of course civil society is exactly what could be called a forum for intermediate powers. In contrast, populists often tend to emphasise a vision of immediate power in the sense of the possibility of the direct expression of the people’s will in political institutions. Populists, of whatever pitch, often tend to invoke a partisan state that will be on the side of the people (however defined) rather than a putatively neutral ‘liberal’ state that stands over and against civil society. These factors make most populisms more or less generically hostile to liberalism, understood not in ideological terms but more as a doctrine which emphasises the necessity of mediating power through institutions. Very often, populism is a threat to the idea of civil society understood as a concept integral to liberal political theory, as a means of balancing the state and its wider interlocutors. In this paper, various means, largely inspired by the writings of Tocqueville on the one hand and Paul Hirst on the other, are suggested for addressing aspects of this predicament.

     

‘The Foreign Within’: State–Civil Society Relations in Russia

Abstract

The development of Russian civil society is linked to authoritarian government, fear of ‘colour revolutions’ and the ‘sovereign democracy’ that legitimises state control of civil society. This article acknowledges the narrowing room for manoeuvre of contemporary Russian civil society and discusses NGOs’ practices in the context of government pressures, the politicisation of transnational connections and the increasing geopolitical tension surrounding Russia. It describes the localisation and depoliticisation of Russian NGOs as well as their disruptive practices, and explains how narrowing civil society identities inform the self-governing of NGOs. Finally, it argues that seeing Russian civil society in simple dichotomies further narrows these identities.     

Civil Society in the Shadow of the Neoliberal State

International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society - In this paper, I outline an approach to civil society that is in contradistinction to the dominant liberal conception of civil society as a...     

"Global Civil Society" and the Political Depoliticization of Global Governance

Activists, officials, and academics alike have often linked observations about an emerging global civil society to an incipient democratization of world politics. Global civil society is assumed to bring public scrutiny and "bottom-up" politics to international decision making "from outside" formal political institutions. Based on an analysis of uses of the concept of global civil society in 1990s global governance discourse (especially related to the major UN world conferences), this paper argues that the presumed democratization of world politics is better understood in terms of a double movement: on the one hand, "global civil society" depoliticizes global governance through the promotion of "human security" and "social development"; on the other hand, the emerging international public sphere (in the UN context) operates as a subsystem of world politics rather than opposing the system from outside. Practices of depoliticization are thus part of the political logic of (neo-)liberal global governance. The argument draws on Luhmann's systems theory and Foucault's analysis of governmentality.     

Civil society,hybridity and peacebuilding in Burundi: questioning authenticity

Critics argue that liberal peacebuilding has resulted in the creation of a civil society populated with organisations that are artificial and externalised. These associations are contrasted with more locally-based groups that are considered to be more authentic and better able to build a hybrid peace that is emancipatory. At first glance, this characterisation appears to describe civil society in post-war Burundi, but on closer inspection a much more complex and interesting picture is revealed which challenges existing conceptualisations of post-conflict civil society. The paper finds that even associations that are deeply rooted in local communities are composites forged through their encounters with the global. Furthermore, this hybridity is not new. Rather it is the product of decades of prior hybridisation, raising important questions about the authenticity and legitimacy of these organisations and, ultimately, their ability to promote a peace that is transformative.     

Post-Soviet Civil Society Development in the Russian Federation: The Impact of the NGO Law

The passing of the Russian NGO Law in mid-2006 set clear parameters for Russian NGO activity and civil society development. In this paper we assess the impact of the NGO Law on both NGOs and Russian civil society. Our findings illustrate that the NGO Law has led to a reduction in NGO activity and curtailment of civil society development. We conclude that Russian civil society appears to be dominated by groups funded and thus controlled by the state. This has implications for Russia's on-going democratic development.     

The Contingencies of Societal Accountability: Examining the Link Between Civil Society and Good Government

Corruption interferes with and distorts the processes of political decision making and implementation, often to the disadvantage of the already disadvantaged. Yet our understanding of the factors that might propel a political system from lower to higher levels of probity remains speculative. This article examines the role of one category of actors often touted as an important countervailing force to political power: civil society. Existing case study research provides evidence that civil society can play a decisive role in holding public officials accountable, but that the success of such societal accountability is contingent upon a number of favorable contextual and institutional conditions. The analyses presented here use panel country data to examine whether the strength of civil society affects corruption. The results corroborate the findings of existing case studies; a vibrant civil society mitigates corruption but only provided that conditions such as political competition, press freedom, and government transparency exist in the country.     

Organizing Civil Society in Russia and China: A Comparative Approach

Despite their authoritarian tendencies, the current regimes in Russia and China have both actively promoted stronger civil societies. This article explores this apparent paradox for insights both into the meaning of civil society and into the nature of governance in these two regimes. It argues that the social organizations that make up civil society both inhabit and construct a public sphere where individuals assist in their own governance. Recognizing that administered societies cannot compete in a globalizing economy, these regimes look to social organizations to perform functions previously left to the state, but at the same time use similar repertoires of regulation, revenue control, and repression to ensure such organizations do not transgress acceptable boundaries. Still, different notions of state–society relations in the two countries have led to different patterns of social organizations in the two countries. In Russia, a sharp distinction between state and society has contributed to a government strategy that seeks to dominate the public sphere leaving little room for autonomous civic action. In China, by contrast, deeply embedded institutionalized accounts see state and society as overlapping spheres of activity, creating pyramid-like structures encompassing both state-based and more autonomous organizations, and allowing more room for negotiation between the two.     

Why Civil Society Cannot Battle it All Alone: The Roles of Civil Society Environment,Transparent Laws and Quality of Public Administration in Political Corruption Mitigation

ABSTRACT

Utilizing a large-N data that covers about 20000 observations from about 200 countries from 1789 to 2018 from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, and anchored on institutionalism as an overarching theory, and the nascent literature on civil-society corruption nexus, the paper looks at the predictive capacity of civil society environment, transparency of laws and predictability of enforcement, and rigorousness and impartiality of public administration in political corruption. Using a four-step hierarchical multiple regression, results show that while civil society and its structure is a significant determinant of the level of political corruption, the introduction of transparency of laws and predictability of enforcement, rigorousness, and impartiality of public administration, and civil society environment in the regression model accounted for additional variance in political corruption. Practical and theoretical implications, particularly on civil society-corruption nexus and the broader corruption-democracy linkage, are discussed.     

Conflict Transformation and Civil Society: The Case of Nagorno-Karabakh

If Armenian and Azerbaijani negotiators ever agree on the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh, it will not necessarily resolve the long-running conflict, because any peace treaty would require the consent of the Karabakh Armenians, whose political representatives are currently excluded from peace negotiations. It is difficult to imagine the Karabakh Armenians consenting to such a treaty without a change in their perception of the Azerbaijanis. According to the theory of conflict transformation/peacebuilding, Nagorno-Karabakh’s civil society should be able to make a contribution to this change. Using the example of four Nagorno-Karabakh civil society organisations, this study shows how they positively or negatively influence conflict transformation.     

Embedded Activism 2.0: Re-shaping the Space for Civil Society in Russia and China

Abstract

NGOs have been seen as an integral part of civil society and a necessary feature of democratic transition. It has been argued that depoliticised NGOs in China ‘embedded’ in existing political structures would eventually bring about democratic changes through incremental actions, as they did in post-Soviet Russia. Both countries, however, recently witnessed the shrinking of political and legal space for public participation, especially for foreign-funded civil society organisations. This article analyses the impact of the NGO laws on civil society in Russia and China to update the embedded activism hypothesis. It draws on empirical data to describe the strategies that the NGOs use to adapt and how the future of the sector is perceived by young people in both countries.     

Civil society and democracy in the third world: Ambiguities and historical possibilities

The terminology of “civil society” has gained currency in recent discussions of democratic movements around the globe. Although less grandiose in its implications than claims about the “end of history,” this terminology does suggest a certain universality in human experience. We argue that this claim of universality is warranted, but also problematic. We establish the relevance of our argument in reference to the literatures in African and Indian studies. We note first that the common employments of the concept ignore the theoretical and historical specificity of civil society: civil society is used to label any group or movement opposed to the state, regardless of its intent or character, or used so generically that it is indistinguishable from the term “society.” Instead, we argue that civil society is a sphere of social life, involving a stabilization of a system of rights, constituting human beings as individuals, both as citizens in relation to the state and as legal persons in the economy and the sphere of private association. Thus, we link the wide resonance of the concept to its embeddedness in the logic of liberal capitalist society and the capitalist global division of labor. This conception allows us to see that, although the emergence of a sphere of civil society involves at least minimal democranization and is supportive of struggles for further democratization, the status of democracy is also made quite problematic by the tensions endemic to liberal capitalism and the processes of uneven development within international capitalism. Our usage also allows us to distinguish more clearly movements dedicated to the construction of civil society from those that may count actually as counter-civil society movements. David L. Blaney received his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is on leave from Hanover College, Hanover, Indiana as a visiting scholar for the 1993–94 academic year at The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20052. His main research interests include international political economy, culture and international relations theory, and democratic theory. Mustapha Kamal Pasha received his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the School of International Service, American University, Washington, D.C. 20016. His main research interests include international political economy, with particular regard to the Third World, and South Asian politics.     

Civil Society,the Economy,and Educational Assistance in Former Soviet Republics

Abstract

Liberal democracies throughout the world are committed to civil society in support of market economics and democratic politics. Through educational assistance programs, the U.S. government demonstrates this commitment by attempting to reinvigorate civil society in former Soviet republics and Eastern European countries in support of their economic and political reform efforts. Of particular interest are the Community Connections and Partners in Education programs conducted by the U.S. Department of State for interns from the former Soviet republics or now Eurasia, who participate in business and other professional internships in various locations in the U.S., including Northern Alabama.     

Civil society and spaces for natural resource governance in Kenya

Abstract

In the Kenyan context of new resource discoveries and an ambitious devolution programme, and what is argued to be a shrinking of civic space globally, the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) working on natural resource governance is critical. The resilience, space and capacity of civil society to engage in the policy process, from community-based organisations to national non-governmental organisations, all shape outcomes in terms of legislation, policy and management of scarce resources. Drawing on interviews with CSOs from across Kenya, following the new 2010 constitution and devolution programme, this article explores how new negotiated spaces of participation around resource governance have emerged in Kenya. Using multidimensional frameworks to analyse power relations, it explores how Kenyan CSOs are cautiously redefining roles, offering expertise when devolved governments struggle, and standing up to powerful interests of corporate lobbies with varying degrees of success.     

Civil society knowledge networks: how international development institutions reshape the geography of knowledge

What role have the processes and institutions of international development played in creating and propagating ideas around the world? This paper demonstrates that networks of development-focused civil society institutions can form global epistemic bridges even where communication technology, global markets, infrastructure, or state services do not reach. Given the penetration of these ‘civil society knowledge networks’ throughout the world, it is crucial to understand how these networks form, and how they create and spread ideas, mediating between global discourses and local needs. This paper builds on a multi-sited case study of one such civil society knowledge network, which includes an international foundation, its partner non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Kenya, and one village where these NGOs run a forest conservation project. The case study provides a closely textured analysis of the mechanisms of knowledge production and consumption in the network, including personality politics, language, technology, political connections and the power dynamics of knowledge flows. It demonstrates the ways remoteness and disconnection are overcome through the epistemic reach of institutional networks involved in development interventions.     

The Serbian Opposition and Civil Society: Roots of the Delayed Transition in Serbia

The article discusses the reasons for the ten-year delay in the democratic transition in Serbia, focusing in particular on opposition parties and civil society. It argues that the policy of opposition parties was partly responsible for the failure of an earlier fall of the Miloevic regime. While civil society has been similarly weak and divided, the article details how a number of NGOs proved to be crucial in the coordinated campaign which lead to the overthrow of the Miloevic regime in October 2000.