Social capital,voluntary associations and collective action: Which aspects of social capital have the greatest ‘civic’ payoff?

Abstract

Despite a great variety of theoretical approaches, empirical analyses of social capital are surprisingly similar. Virtually all of them treat membership in voluntary associations as the chief indicator of community involvement while neglecting another form of community involvement: participation in elite-challenging actions. Likewise, authors readily attribute manifold civic benefits to associational life, while hesitating to attribute such benefits to elite-challenging activity. We question these views on two grounds. Firstly, we argue that elite-challenging action reflects social capital, even though this is a specific form of it: an emancipative form typical of self-assertive publics. Secondly, we use data from the Value Surveys to demonstrate that elite-challenging action is linked with greater civic benefits, at both the individual and societal level, than is membership in voluntary associations. This finding confirms the concept of human development, which suggests that emancipative forms of social capital are more civic in their consequences than others. Following this concept, we show that mass self-expression values nurture emancipative social capital, in motivating elite-challenging action. Finally, we locate self-expression values and elite-challenging actions in a theory of emancipative social capital.     

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.     

Using the Law as a ‘Harmonious Weapon’: The Ambiguities of Legal Activism in Favour of Migrant Workers in China

Abstract

Legal mobilization has spread in China over the past 20 years and is generally considered by both activists and scholars as a way to advance democracy and rule of law. Focusing on the mobilization in favour of migrant workers and on politically moderate practices, which are both more frequent and widely held as more successful, I argue to the contrary that resistance and reproduction of political domination are mutually constitutive. Public interest litigation and administrative litigation appear as new forms of political participation that constitute an internal regulation to the authoritarian regime, thus contributing to explain the regime's capacity to adapt and its durability. This article also accounts for new strategies developed by some lawyers that shun the courts and use law to ‘empower civil society’ and that thus do not contribute to structural reproduction. Though activists are struggling to turn their strategies into more institutionalized practices, they remain an ad hoc mechanism of internal control.     

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.     

Business as usual? Civil society organizations in a marketized Swedish welfare state

ABSTRACT

This article aims to examine the participation of pensioners’ organizations in a context of marketization within local elderly care. The literature on New Public Management (NPM) points out different views on the effects of marketization on the participation of civil society organizations within the decision-making process. One view states marketization implies less of participation by civil society organizations since this stands in conflict with inherent values of NPM, such as efficiency and the citizen as customer on a market. An opposite view states that marketization does not cause this effect, i.e., civil society organizations participate in the same manner as before. The empirical investigation consists of results from a questionnaire sent out to pensioners’ organizations in Swedish municipalities with a marketized elderly care. The main result is that marketization does not cause any major crowding out effect on civil society organizations from the decision-making process. However, according to the survey, there exists a variation in this respect – participation varies between municipalities.     

From the Balconies to the Barricades,and Back? Trajectories of Participation in Contentious Politics

Scholars have long been interested in explaining why some individuals engage in civil society through acts of protest while others do not. However, what happens after individuals are involved? Using a nationally representative panel data set that follows Americans from 1965 until 1997, I show that almost half of participants either engage in ‘individual abeyance’, moving in and out of engagement over time, or disengage. I examine the role of socio-political orientations, resources, biography or life-course factors, and group affiliation in predicting patterns of civil society participation over time. Past work suggests that persistent activists differ from those who disengage due to the formers’ particular socio-political orientations. However, I show that there are no significant differences in these orientations between those who persist and those who do not. Instead, biographical changes and engagement in political groups are the most important factors predicting persistent participation over time.     

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.     

Problematising UN-local Civil Society Engagement in Peacebuilding: Towards Non-modern Epistemes Through Relationality

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to argue that the problematic engagement between United Nations peacebuilding and local civil society reveals an ontological tension between different forms of conceiving of actors and processes in peacebuilding contexts. Relationality is introduced as a potential analytical breakthrough. The article problematises UN static categorisations as failing to capture the complexity of local civil society and imposing a highly technical form of engagement. Unaware of these limitations, the UN seeks to instrumentalise local civil society to engage it in peacebuilding settings. This pattern is critically presented here as a totalising process through which the UN attempts to secure modernity.     

以生态文明理念引领全面建成小康社会

生态文明建设是全面建成小康社会宏伟目标的重要组成部分,全面建成小康社会宏伟目标的提出对生态文明建设提出了更高的要求,但我国的生态文明建设面临的形势不容乐观,生态环境恶化、资源严重短缺、矛盾交织叠加已成为我国建设生态文明的严重障碍,严重影响到全面建成小康社会目标的实现。因此,必须要从牢固树立生态文明理念、加快转变经济增长方式、加强污染防治和生态修复、建立健全生态法律制度体系、健全建设生态文明的体制机制人手,以加快建设生态文明来引领全面建成小康社会。