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.     

Stalemate and Stagnation in Turkish Democratization: The Role of Civil Society and Political Parties

Both civil society organizations (CSOs) and political parties are expected to be vital actors in democratic societies, yet the ideal relationship between the two types of groups has not been fully explored. This article analyses how the interaction between CSOs and political parties has affected democratic consolidation in contemporary Turkey. Through personal interviews with leaders of both types of groups, the study finds that traditional power relations have shifted to include a greater number of political actors. Islamists, who were previously peripheral in politics, have joined the traditionally dominant secular nationalists at the ‘centre’ of political power. However, instead of increased pluralism, the study finds Turkish society now polarized along secularist/Islamist lines, both in political parties and among CSOs. While restrictions against non-governmental organizations have been lifted in recent years and the number of groups has grown, most are still viewed as ‘arms’ of political parties, lacking an independent voice and political power. These findings suggest that the civil society sector in Turkey is underdeveloped and unable to contribute positively to the democratization process.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Policy Deliberation as a Goal: The Case of Chinese ENGO Activism

Since it was first introduced in the late 1990s, the concept of deliberative democracy has had policy appeal for both Chinese policymakers and scholars. The Chinese government has recently introduced various deliberative institutions in a top-down manner to address diverse governance challenges. Deliberation at the level of civil society, however, has remained largely limited under the Chinese authoritarian regime setting. This paper illustrates how Chinese civil society actors have increasingly exerted bottom-up pressure to attain a greater degree of deliberation, transparency, and accountability in policymaking, by using the case of a series of anti-dam campaigns conducted by environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) over the past decade. Throughout their campaigns, ENGOs have urged both the central and local governments to adopt more participatory and transparent policymaking and examine the potential social and environmental impacts of large dams. They have done so particularly by invoking the very laws and policies that the government has recently introduced. This study suggests that future research on deliberative democracy in China should pay greater attention to non-state actors and their roles in practicing and promoting bottom-up deliberation.     

Doing Without State and Civil Society as Universals: ‘Dispositifs’ of Care Beyond the Classic Sector Divide

This article poses questions of power to social services provided by voluntary organizations. In particular, it examines the assumption that voluntary and local organizations represent ‘containers’ for a radically different social work rationality, where the marginalized are met in a more equal and attentive fashion, ‘on their own terms’. Thus, the world of volunteering and ‘friendly amateurism’ has been seen as a source of instructive ethics from which government policies should take their lead. While recognizing that this discourse on voluntary rationality has had a number of positive effects, it has almost completely blocked discussions of the forms of power exercised in voluntary services. It is suggested that questions of power, rationality and organized welfare can be fruitfully re-formulated within a Foucauldian register. Applying Foucault's concept of ‘dispositif’ to services for the homeless, the article demonstrates that social work rationality is not linked to the public/private divide but rather to a specific service domain. The article questions the widespread belief that public social services are always permeated by power, whereas those of civil society provide a more power-free domain where ‘genuine human’ meetings may take place.     

Civil society organizations and deliberative policy making: interpreting environmental controversies in the deliberative system

This paper argues that while research on deliberative democracy is burgeoning, there is relatively little attention paid to the contributions of civil society. Based on an interpretive conceptualization of deliberative democracy, this paper draws attention to the ways in which civil society organizations employ “storylines” about environmental issues and deliberative processes to shape deliberative policy making. It asks, how do civil society organizations promote storylines in the deliberative system to change policy? How do storylines constitute policy and policy-making processes in the deliberative system? I answer these questions through an empirical analysis of two environmental controversies in the USA: environmental justice in New Mexico and coalbed methane development in Wyoming. Findings indicate that civil society organizations used storylines in both cases to shift the dynamics of the deliberative system and to advance their own interpretations of environmental problems and policy-making processes. Specifically, they used storylines (1) to set the agenda on environmental hazards, (2) to construct the form of public deliberation, changing the rules of the game, (3) to construct the content of public deliberation, shaping meanings related to environmental policy, and (4) to couple/align forums, arenas and courts across the system. These findings suggest that promoting storylines through accommodation and selection processes can be an important mechanism for shaping policy meanings and for improving deliberative quality, although these effects are tempered by discursive and material forms of power, and the competition among alternative storylines.     

The Earthquake, Civil Society, and Political Change in Turkey: Assessment and Comparison with Eastern Europe

Civil society has been widely celebrated as instrumental in democratization, but in some countries it remains poorly developed. Such was the case in Turkey, but many hoped that the 1999 earthquakes would lead to an invigoration of civil society and subsequent political liberalization. Examining this claim shows that Turkish civil society has not been able to sustain the energy it enjoyed immediately after the earthquake because of factors within civil society itself and the attitude of the state. This relative failure is then contrasted with the more positive experience of civil society in East-Central Europe. The comparisons reveal some limits to the utility of a civil society approach to democratization. I conclude by assessing the ability of other actors and factors to fashion political reform in Turkey today.     

Governance through civil society? An Anglo-Italian comparison of democratic renewal and local regeneration

Abstract

The UK has become a prime case for the implementation of the ‘new governance’ of partnership between central government and civil society. This perspective has become central to New Labour policies for both local socio-economic regeneration and democratic renewal in the United Kingdom. However, limitations in its redistribution of power, its transparency in the policy-making process, including the representativeness of civil society participants, and, in the effectiveness of its outcomes have all been alleged by academic critics. These issues are explored by contrasting a robust, British case of local, participatory governance in Bristol with a quite different, and more conventional approach to democratic renewal in the Italian city of Naples. Despite similar problems of socio-economic dereliction and similar schemes of regeneration in the two cases, the Italian approach emphasized the exclusive role of a renewed constitutional democracy, while in Bristol central government agencies promoted an accentuation of local trends to participation by local civil society organizations. Applying an analytical framework composed of national policies and regulations, institutional rules and norms, and the collective ‘identity’ factors identified by social capital theory, governance changes are here treated as ‘exogenous shocks’ and/or as opportunities for choice. However, over and above differences in these institutional frameworks the key factors are shown to be the longer-standing political cultures influencing local actors and their own repertoires of action; with repertoires influenced by objective validations of previous policy choices, or economic or electoral successes. The study finds that the achievements of the ‘inclusive’, participative governance approach do not significantly exceed those of an exclusivist, ‘neo-constitutionalism’, as practised by a more autonomous local government in Naples. Thus, on this evidence, enhanced civil society engagement still requires greater freedom from central government direction.     

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.     

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.     

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 and the contemporary threat to religious freedom in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

Against the international backdrop of rising religious tensions, this article explores contemporary civil society views on religious freedom in Bangladesh. It uses critical frame analysis of the corpus of civil society organizations’ (CSOs) submissions to the United Nations’ third cycle Universal Periodic Review (UPR), 2013–18. It provides a timely assessment of Bangladesh’s fulfilment of international obligations on religious freedom, and shows how the politicization of religion and the resultant conflict between ‘secularism’ and ‘extremism’ have been fuelling inter-communal tensions and religious intolerance. In particular, CSOs’ UPR submissions present powerful accounts of the principal human rights pathology affecting the country today, religious-based violence. This is accompanied by a narrative of police malpractice, judicial failings, discrimination, oppression and incitement. A further key finding is ‘situated knowledge’ or first-hand accounts of legal restrictions and government repression of civil society organizations. Consonant with the classical work of liberal theorists, we argue that unprecedented importance now attaches to safeguarding civil society criticality in order to defend religious freedom and uphold human rights in the Republic.     

Civil Society Intervention in the War-Torn Gulu District in Northern Uganda: Policy Implications for Social Service Delivery

Civil society in the African Gulu district of Uganda operates in an area of acute humanitarian crisis. The fragile nature of the environment due to prolonged civil war has rendered ineffective the implementation of public policies that should enable the population access to services. Thus, civil society intervention in this area is on urgent requirement as government and market have failed to deliver services to the people. The Gulu case is representative of other developing countries undergoing similar conflicts. Development partners need to recognize the role of civil society and advocate policies that enhance their effective participation in the development process. In order to more effectively tackle global development challenges, and in this era of globalization, this article argues that serious discussions should be held by all development partners to form a global governance system led by civil society organizations.     

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.     

Denationalization of Citizenship? The Turkish Experience1

Turkism as a political project aiming at the construction of a Turkish national identity was spelled out in 1904. The realization of this project included processes of assimilation and exclusion of non-Turkish and non-Muslim “others”. There was also an attempt on the part of the Republican elite to construct oblivion in the society about the multicultural Ottoman past in order to constitute a Turkish national identity. Hence, Turkish citizenship emerged as membership to a national state defined on the basis of a single religion (Sunni sect of Islam) and single language (Turkish). The increasing visibility of the non-Turkish and non-Muslim identities in the 1990s unleashed a process of denationalization of citizenship. Denationalization of citizenship gained momentum after Turkey's official candidacy in the European Union in 1999. Many reforms were undertaken in the parliament towards the utilization of languages other than Turkish as well as the practice of multiple religions. These reforms were upheld by the activities of civil societal organizations in order to portray the presence of multicultural identities in Turkey. Unless reversed by a nationalist backlash, these processes point to the denationalization of citizenship in Turkey.     

The power of policy networks in authoritarian regimes: Changing environmental policy in China

In this article, I examine how civil society organizations (CSOs) in China created policy networks among government officials to change environmental policies. I contend that these networks work in similar ways to those in democracies, despite the focus in the literature on how policymaking in authoritarian regimes lacks societal participation. China adopted strict regulations to control CSOs by requiring registration with a supervisory agency. However, CSOs exploit the regulations to use the supervisory agency as an access point to policymakers whom they otherwise could not reach. I use case studies to demonstrate how the strategies used to construct policy networks determined their success in changing policy. This finding represents an initial step in theorizing bottom‐up sources of policymaking in authoritarian regimes given that these regimes all create mechanisms for government control over CSOs, have difficulty accessing good information for policymaking from society, and a policy process formally closed to citizen participation.     

Perception of societal influence among civil society leaders – an elite perspective

ABSTRACT

This article explores the perception of societal influence of civil society leaders based on a survey study conducted in 2017 among leaders of Swedish civil society organizations. Civil society leaders represent organizations that are often based on and guided by religious, political, or cultural values and that often strive to achieve some sort of social change. To exercise influence on society is thus a crucial feature of civil society leaders. Drawing on elite theories, the article seeks to explain differences in the perception of influence by looking at the following factors: (1) personal qualities and resources such as age, gender, country of birth, education, and working experiences, (2) social networks and contacts with representatives of different institutions (media, government, etc.), and (3) organizational position and resources, including relations with public authorities. The analysis shows that two out of three surveyed leaders perceive they have great influence in society concerning the issues they work with. Among the factors explaining the perception of influence, we find being a leader of an organization at the regional level, being of older age, having leading representatives of the media in one’s personal network, and stating that one has great influence over the organization one leads.     

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.