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.     

Second thoughts on civil society: The state,civic associations and the antinomies of the public sphere in Africa

ABSTRACT

This article offers a conceptual framework to identify and analyse the contemporary behaviour of the paradoxical government-organized, non-governmental organization (GONGO). We discuss how GONGOs’ activities fit within mainstream civil society theories and traditions. Furthermore, we compare and analyse GONGOs and NGOs in terms of their sources of power, main activities and functions, and dilemmas. Finally, we theorize the effects, and implications, the growth of GONGOs has on state and society relations globally.     

Civil society support for military coups: Bangladesh and the Philippines

As of yet, civil society support for military coups has hardly been investigated in depth. This article compares the attempted military coup in 2006 against Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, which received support from prominent civil society leaders, to the collaboration between civil society actors and the military-backed Caretaker Government that ruled Bangladesh from 2007 to 2008. It argues that in both cases, civil society support for military intervention can be traced to the weakness of the state.     

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.     

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 actors in peace negotiations in Central America

Civil society actors are assumed to play an important part in post-conflict peacebuilding; therefore, the international community pushes for civil society participation already during peace negotiations. However, the actual connection between civil society’s participation in those negotiations and its role in implementation processes remains unclear. Taking the Central American peace processes of the late 1980s and early 90s as a case study, this article compares civil society participation in peace negotiations and provisions for civil society involvement for the implementation phase, with the actual role that the civil society played in the implementation processes in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. The article questions the importance of including civil society actors in the negotiation process since the level of civil society inclusion in, activism during and influence on the negotiation process in the three cases did not result in a stronger role for civil society organizations in the implementation process. The article concludes with an analysis of how these findings modify the current understanding of the role of civil society in peace processes and proposes a different focus for future research.     

Opposition and Dissent in Soviet Type Regimes: Civil Society and its Limitations

Abstract

Following the collapse of Communist regimes in 1989, academics and dissidents alike were quick to claim that agents of ‘civil society’ had played an integral role in the 1989 ‘Velvet Revolutions’. However, the appropriation of civil society to explain events in Eastern Europe is highly problematic. In arguing that civil society offers an inappropriate framework in which to study opposition and dissent in Soviet type regimes, this article recommends dismissing the typology for this particular scenario. Instead, a new typology, the totalitarian public sphere, is introduced. This article concludes by elaborating on why the totalitarian public sphere serves as a more comprehensive typology by which to explain dissent and opposition in Soviet type regimes.     

Participation,Dialogue, and Civic Engagement: Understanding the Role of Organized Civil Society in Promoting Active Citizenship in the European Union

Abstract

This article looks at current policies concerning the civic and political participation of youths, women, migrants, and minorities in the European Union. It highlights the ways in which active citizenship and civic engagement have become a political priority for European institutions. Representation of local policy actors at the supranational level and strategies for the inclusion of civil society provide a platform for evaluating the impact of Europeanization at the national and subnational level. The article focuses on key discourses and narratives associated with specific policy frames (e.g. European citizenship, European social policies, and the European public sphere (EPS)). Some of the key questions addressed by the article are: What are the strategies that are employed, both by the European institutions in Brussels and organized civil society (OCS), to enhance participation and reciprocal communication? What vision of governance do practices such as active engagement and civil dialogue represent? Drawing on current theories of governance, our article contributes to the debate about the EPS by evaluating the role of OCS in bridging the gap between European institutions and national polities. Equally, our focus on traditionally marginal groups provides a platform for assessing the institutionalization of the ‘European social dimension’.     

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.     

Democratization from below: Civil society in Tajikistan

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

Unveiling Nepal's Civil Society

The main purpose of this paper is to provide information about Nepal's civil society as far as possible, as the same has become much contested in recent years. The article looks into the different traditions (from traditional to post-modern) of civil society in Nepal as an endeavour to take stock of where it stands vis-à-vis with various factors in the context of economy, polity, and society. The paper argues that, although Nepal has a very long tradition of civil society, the extant one is highly politicized. Part of the problem with politicization lies with perpetual political instability and part with the way civil society has come to be understood. In the context of Nepal, there are yet no clear tools developed to map the civil society. It concludes that one cannot have water-tight compartmentalization of civil society and other societies as they are interdependent, but when civil society groups lose the civility factor, they are bound to face legitimacy questions—which perhaps is the case in Nepal.     

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.     

Civil Society and the Legitimation of Global Governance

Abstract

This article assesses in what ways and to what degrees civil society activities have advanced the legitimacy of global governance institutions. It is argued that these citizen initiatives have often enhanced the democratic, legal, moral and technical standing of regulatory agencies with planetary constituencies and jurisdictions. However, these benefits do not flow automatically from civil society mobilizations and on the whole are much less extensive than they could be. With a view to greater realization of the potential contributions to legitimacy, the article elaborates recommendations for more, more inclusive, more competent, more coordinated, and more accountable engagement of global governance by civil society organizations.     

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.     

Civil Society and the Economy: Greek Civil Society During the Economic Crisis

Academic literature has extensively analysed the impact of political and cultural factors on civil society. However, the influence of economic change on the infrastructure and features of civil society has remained relatively understudied. This article analyses the impact of the economic crisis on Greek civil society and links the findings to the broader academic debate on civil society. On the basis of the Greek case, the article argues that: (1) the density of civil society may be a misleading indicator of its strength if abstracted from the broader economic context and (2) the economy is not merely an external force, enabling or hindering the development of associational activity. It also shapes the nature and patterns of civic engagement and participation.     

Reconsidering the Effects of Bonding Social Capital: A Closer Look at Black Civil Society Institutions in America

Few studies consider how Putnam’s bridging and bonding social capital arguments apply to voluntary associations within American minority group communities. Consequently, I examine African-American civic groups to explore Putnam’s claims about the potential negative political effects of bonding social capital. In contrast to the bonding social capital thesis, I argue that black communal associations encourage African-Americans to be involved in a variety of mainstream civic and political activities that reach beyond their own group interests. Using the 1993–1994 National Black Politics Study I demonstrate that although black organizations are predominantly composed of African-Americans and work to advance their interests, these goals are not pursued at the expense of connecting blacks to others in the general polity.

Civil society in an age of globalization: A neo-Gramscian perspective

Abstract

Since the 1970s, the world has seen an intensification of the globalization processes of social relations, an intensification that has direct implications for the study of contemporary world politics. One important aspect of such implications concerns the emergence of new actors in world politics, not just in national terms, but also at the local, regional and global levels—in other words, approaching the global political economy as a whole. In some sense, it is possible to say that dominant and dominated social groups are being influenced and are influencing such globalization processes, so at present it would be possible to note the rising of a transnational fraction of the capitalist class and the rise of a globalized resistance within the ambit of a civil society influenced by globalization processes. Therefore, the objective of the current article is to analyze the transformation process of social forces in an age of the intensification of globalization of social relations. Put another way, the article assesses the transformations of civil society in an age of globalization that present new dilemmas and possibilities to the collective political agency in the twenty-first century.     

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.