CIVIL SOCIETY

AND
INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT

Edited by
AMANDA BERNARD, HENNY HELMICH
and
PERCY B. LEHNING

North-South Centre

Council of Europe
 DEVELOPMENT CENTRE STUDIES

Civil Society
and International
Development

Edited by
Amanda Bernard, Henny Helmich
and
Percy B. Lehning

NORTH-SOUTH CENTRE OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE

DEVELOPMENT CENTRE
OF THE ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT
 ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION
AND DEVELOPMENT

Pursuant to Article 1 of the Convention signed in Paris on 14th December 1960, and which came into force
on 30th September 1961, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shall promote
policies designed:
– to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising standard of living in
Member countries, while maintaining financial stability, and thus to contribute to the development of the
world economy;
– to contribute to sound economic expansion in Member as well as non-member countries in the process of
economic development; and
– to contribute to the expansion of world trade on a multilateral, non-discriminatory basis in accordance
with international obligations.
The original Member countries of the OECD are Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany,
Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The following countries became Members subsequently
through accession at the dates indicated hereafter: Japan (28th April 1964), Finland (28th January 1969),
Australia (7th June 1971), New Zealand (29th May 1973), Mexico (18th May 1994), the Czech Republic
(21st December 1995), Hungary (7th May 1996), Poland (22nd November 1996) and Korea (12th Decem-
ber 1996). The Commission of the European Communities takes part in the work of the OECD (Article 13 of the
OECD Convention).
The Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was established
by decision of the OECD Council on 23rd October 1962 and comprises twenty-three Member countries of the
OECD: Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland,
Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden
and Switzerland, as well as Argentina and Brazil from March 1994. The Commission of the European Communi-
ties also takes part in the Centre’s Advisory Board.
The purpose of the Centre is to bring together the knowledge and experience available in Member countries
of both economic development and the formulation and execution of general economic policies; to adapt such
knowledge and experience to the actual needs of countries or regions in the process of development and to put
the results at the disposal of the countries by appropriate means.
The Centre has a special and autonomous position within the OECD which enables it to enjoy scientific
independence in the execution of its task. Nevertheless, the Centre can draw upon the experience and knowledge
available in the OECD in the development field.

Publié en français sous le titre :

LA SOCIÉTÉ CIVILE ET LE DÉVELOPPEMENT INTERNATIONAL

THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED AND ARGUMENTS EMPLOYED IN THIS PUBLICATION ARE THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE
AUTHORS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THOSE OF THE OECD OR OF THE GOVERNMENTS OF ITS MEMBER COUNTRIES.

*
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 OECD 1998
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The North-South Centre of the Council of Europe

The European Centre for Global Interdependence and Solidarity (the North-
South Centre) was set up in 1990 in Lisbon. The Centre has its roots in the European
Public Campaign on North-South Interdependence and Solidarity, launched by the
Council of Europe in 1988.
The aims of the Centre are to raise public awareness of issues of global
interdependence and solidarity and to advocate pluralist democracy and respect for
human rights as fundamental elements of sustainable development. In order to attain
its objectives, the Centre organises core projects and partnership projects, where it
plays the role of organiser and co-organiser respectively.
The Centre has recently expanded its activities in Central and Eastern Europe
in conformity with the all-European constituency of the Council of Europe.
The North-South Centre functions on the basis of a system of quadripartite co-
management by parliamentarians, governments, non-governmental organisations
and local and regional authorities.

3
 Foreword

This study was carried out under the Development Centre's External Co-
operation programme on "Government-NGO Relationships".

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the governments of Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands
for their generous support to the seminar. In particular, we wish to express our
gratitude to Giulio Fossi, Catherine Duport, Morag Soranna and Jody Kaylor of the
OECD Development Centre for their assistance in the planning and execution of the
meeting; Colm Foy and his colleagues in the Development Centre’s publication unit
for their invaluable guidance in the preparation of this volume; Neil Beshers for his
excellent copy editing; and all those who contributed chapters to the volume, many
of whom had to find time within their busy schedules to write up and expand upon
their presentations to the meeting.
This book is dedicated to Elena Borghese of the OECD Development Co-
operation Directorate. Elena has worked for many years in the OECD, most recently
in the areas of NGOs, good governance and participatory development. This seminar
was the last of many meetings which benefited from her presence before she started
to enjoy a well-deserved retirement.

4
 Table of Contents

Preface
Jean Bonvin and Miguel Angel Martínez ....................................................................... 7

PART ONE
INTRODUCTORY OVERVIEW

Introduction
Henny Helmich and Jos Lemmers ................................................................................... 11

Report and Executive Summary

Ed van Thijn and Amanda Bernard ................................................................................ 17

Conviviability: The Role of Civil Society in Development

Lourdes Arizpe ................................................................................................................ 21

PART TWO
CONCEPTUAL QUESTIONS

Towards a Multi-cultural Civil Society: The Role of Social Capital

and Democratic Citizenship
Percy B. Lehning ............................................................................................................. 27

Shaping Civil Society

Axel Hadenius and Fredrik Uggla .................................................................................. 43

Civil Society and Global Governance:

Globalisation and the Transformation of Politics
Kees Breed ........................................................................................................................ 57

PART THREE
THE ROLE OF EXTERNAL ACTORS

Civil Society and Building Democracy:

Lessons from International Donor Experience
Harry Blair ....................................................................................................................... 65

The NGO Sector and its Role in Strengthening Civil Society

and Securing Good Governance
Diana Mitlin ..................................................................................................................... 81

5
 PART FOUR
PERSPECTIVES FROM DEVELOPING REGIONS

The Growing Civil Society in Asia: An Overview and Proposals for Future Action
Aye Aye Win ................................................................................................................... 99

Civil Society in Sub-Saharan Africa: How Can Western Countries

Help Civil Society in Africa?
Paténéma François Sedogo .............................................................................................. 111

Networking Civil Society in Latin America

Mónica Allmand ............................................................................................................... 121

Civil Society in the Euro-Mediterranean Arena

Fifi Benaboud ................................................................................................................... 127

Considerations for Donors ................................................................................................... 133

Annex 1 Civil Society and Development Co-operation .................................................. 135

Annex 2 Programme and List of Participants .................................................................... 143

6
 Preface

Public and private development co-operation agencies considerably increased

their attention to participatory systems of government in the 1990s, and good
governance and participatory development are cornerstones of the DAC 21st Century
Strategy. Though the debate about the merits of the concept of civil society continues,
it has not delayed the start of practical initiatives to support an active civil society in
development co-operation programmes.
Active civil societies are central to the evolution of participatory and transparent
systems of government, which are essential for economic development. Civil society,
however, is not only another instrument for economic development. The participation
of citizens in the definition of their role in society and in the choices affecting the future
of their society is an important objective in itself.
The OECD Development Centre and the DAC Ad Hoc Working Group on
Participatory Development and Good Governance have analysed development co-
operation policies aimed at increasing popular participation and improving
governance. An important conclusion of their work was that external actors can
strengthen the strategic role of civil society.
The Council of Europe promotes respect for human rights, social justice and
democracy in an interdependent world. The Council created the North-South Centre
to raise public awareness of global interdependence and to support policy debates to
strengthen North-South solidarity. The Centre organises activities in support of civil
society partners in the South.
Both the Development Centre and the North-South Centre maintain contacts
with experts in research and operational organisations working on the issues of
governance and development. The two institutions therefore joined forces for an
informal expert seminar which included people who have reflected on the issue of
civil society, either from the perspective of political theory or from that of personal
experience, to discuss the progress made in defining civil society and the practical
policy implications of this concept. The OECD Development Co-operation Directorate
also participated in the meeting.
The expert seminar was the basis for this volume which extends our joint quest
to analyse the policy implications of economic globalisation and to find means of
strengthening a global interdependent civil society.

Miguel Angel Martínez Jean Bonvin

President President
North-South Centre OECD Development Centre

May 1998

7
8
 PART O NE

INTRODUCTORY OVERVIEW

9
10
 Introduction
Henny Helmich and Jos Lemmers

Renaissance of Policy Interest in Civil Society

Interest in the concept of civil society is undergoing a remarkable renaissance.

In the field of political theory, this concept is currently seen as a potential tool to
overcome some of the main theoretical and political stalemates.
The mandate of the Council of Europe — to act as the guardian of Europe’s
political culture, based on respect for human rights, pluralist parliamentary democracy
and good governance — includes explicit references to the reinforcement of civil
society. The Council’s North-South Centre extends this task to include the transfer of
knowledge to, and the sharing of experience with, Africa, Asia and Latin America; the
centre organises a number of activities concerning human rights and civil society to
enable research and policy debate in this field.
In this context, and in view of their common quest to analyse policy implications
of economic globalisation and to find means of strengthening a global interdependent
civil society, the OECD Development Centre and the North-South Centre decided to
join forces. They invited experts who have reflected on the issue of civil society, either
from the perspective of political theory or from that of personal experience, to an
informal seminar on 4-5 July 1997 to discuss the progress made in defining civil
society and the practical policy implications of this concept.
In practice, the concept has acquired strong support in the work of the Council
of Europe, the North-South Centre, the OECD and the OECD Development Centre, as
well as in the work programme of the World Bank. In particular, the OECD Development
Assistance Committee (DAC), the main policy co-ordination body of bilateral foreign
aid donors, contributed one of the strongest positive assessments of the importance
of civil society: “Civil society is central to discussions of democratisation, the rule of
law, human rights. While familiar in substance to aid operators for a long time, the
notion of ‘civil society’ has acquired a new dimension in the context of governance
and democratisation”1.
At its 1997 High Level Meeting, the DAC accepted eight major conclusions from
its previous work on participatory development and good governance. One of these
conclusions recalls the importance of the concept of civil society and identifies
possibilities for external actors to strengthen the strategic role of civil society: “The
development-participation-governance linkage can only be strengthened if civil
society (in which women should play a key role) and the private sector are able to
advocate for the needed reforms in the political and economic systems... Through
policy dialogue and capacity building, donors can effectively support the strategic
role of civil society”2. The 1997 OECD Study, The World in 2020, Towards a New Global
Age, states that NGOs and “pressure groups, many of which now operate on an
international basis, are important players in many global issues” 3.

11
 This importance of the civil society was also mentioned by Renato Ruggiero,
Director General of the WTO, in his inaugural address to Ministers of Trade from
132 Member countries at the second WTO Conference of Ministers, held in Geneva on
18th May 1998. Ruggiero indicated that he wished to spend more time with
representatives from civil society in order to broaden political support for trade
liberalisation and improve understanding among the public of the issues. This
approach coincided with the position of President Clinton of the United Sates, who
called for a modernisation of the WTO through which the organisation would care
more for the opinion of the common citizen. President Clinton proposed the
establishment of a Forum for enterprises, trade unions, and environmental and
consumer NGOs so that they might express their concerns and opinions in an early
phase of future trade negotiations.

The Concept in Theoretical Debate

The theoretical usefulness of a new concept of civil society has been accepted
only recently, and is still not accepted by all researchers. For example, the sociologist
Adam Seligman expresses strong reservations and finds that the concept adds little
more to the methodological toolbox than do the concepts of liberal citizenship or
democracy. He also points to the problem of definition: “In this contemporary ‘revival’
of the idea of civil society, the concept has come to mean different things to different
people... The resulting picture is one of great ambiguity and not a little confusion...”4.
Seligman concludes that the concept of civil society cannot provide an adequate
solution to contemporary impasses: “Whether the concept of civil society itself as
either an analytic idea or a normative ideal brings us any farther towards their
resolution is ... open to serious question”5.
Political scientists Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato are more convinced of the
theoretical and practical usefulness of this concept. They identify the debate as part
of a transformation of the way modern societies perceive themselves, and are convinced
that the re-emergence of the discourse of civil society is at the heart of a sea change in
contemporary political culture.
Three debates of the last 15-20 years seem to tower above all the rest. The first
continues an older controversy within the field of democratic theory between defenders
of elite vs. participatory models of democracy. The second ... is between what has come
to be called “rights-oriented liberalism” and “communtarianism”. The third debate,
pitting neoconservative advocates of the free market against defenders of the welfare
state, has animated discussion on both sides of the Atlantic. Its context is of course
the notorious crisis of the welfare state that intruded on political consciousness in the
mid-1970s... [T]he relatively unsystematic and heterogeneous discourse on the revival
of civil society can be brought to bear on these debates and can indeed provide a way
out6.

Towards a Working Definition

Political theory and social activities use different definitions of civil society. In
general, the lack of consensus about this term has serious consequences for the
operational activities of those who seek to support civil society.
At the First Euro-Mediterranean Conference, held in Barcelona in 1995, the
businessman Giovanni Agnelli presented an inaugural address entitled “Civil
Society, the Key Element”. Agnelli designates civil society as “the meeting of
autonomous subjects of the State and its institutions, united not only by values and
cultures, but also by the desire to act conjointly and to assume the specific responsibilities

12
in projects of general interest”7. For him, civil society is made up of all voluntary
associations, local community organisations, cultural and research institutions, as
well as representative bodies of the private enterprise and business sectors.
The Euro-Mediterranean process started in Barcelona offers a unique role to
civil society, and a second interministerial conference, held in Malta in April 1997,
was also accompanied by a Civil Forum on intercultural dialogue in the Mediterranean,
during which the role of civil society was much emphasised. Jacques Giraudon of the
European Commission opened his presentation: “It is undeniable that one of the
greatest achievements in Euro-Mediterranean relations is the acknowledgement of
the role to be played by civil society in the implementation of the Euro-Mediterranean
partnership(...)”8.
This statement represents a growing recognition of the role of civil society in the
context of the European integration process. This role is also emphasised in European
relations with the ACP countries. However, the definition of civil society remains
ambiguous. For example, the Libreville Declaration adopted by the first summit of
ACP Heads of State and Government, in Gabon on 7 November 1997 includes a
reference to partnerships that need to be extended to: “all actors of civil society,
including the non-governmental and private sectors”. This follows a resolution of the
ACP-EU joint Assembly on 13 September 1996 in which private enterprise and
entrepreneurs, receive attention as part of civil society. This ambiguity has serious
consequences for the implementation of support programmes. If support to private
sector entrepreneurs is counted as support to civil society some governments would
not have great difficulty accepting an emphasis on civil society, whereas they may be
less enthusiastic about accepting the role of a civil society consisting mainly of NGOs
and popular organisations, in planning, organising, establishing, implementing and
monitoring development programmes. It is the latter approach that the European
Parliament favours when it “calls on the Commission to make a distinction between
private development operators and non-profit making operators within civil society,
and to tailor its procedures accordingly”9. Some development NGOs go even further
and state “that the ultimate objective of development co-operation should be the
development of civil society to guarantee the sustainability [of the achievements]”10.
The ambiguity in the various declarations underlines that there still is a lack of
genuine consensus about the ownership of development programmes.
However, the idea of including the private sector in civil society also leads to
confusion about the development of a comprehensive strategy defining the role of civil
society in economic and trade co-operation issues. If the private sector is included,
civil society would already appear to play a role in these sectors 11.
This issue is addressed by various authors in the field of political science.
Axel Hadenius and Fredrik Uggla define civil society as “a public space
between the state and individual citizens where the latter can develop autonomous,
organised and collective activities of the most varied nature”12.
Cohen and Arato propose as a working definition of civil society the sphere of
social interaction which lies between the economy and the state, composed above all
of the intimate sphere (especially the family), the sphere of associations (especially
voluntary associations), social movements and forms of public communication.
Modern civil society is created through forms of self-constitution and self-
mobilisation... It would be misleading to identify civil society with all of social life
outside the administrative state and economic processes in the narrow sense. First,
it is necessary and meaningful to distinguish civil society from both a political society
of parties, political organisations, and political publics (in particular, parliaments)
and an economic society composed of organisations of production and distribution,
usually firms, co-operatives, partnerships and so on13.

13
 Cohen and Arato exclude economic and political society because these are
geared towards production, management or conquest of power, or generation of
influence, whereas the activities of civil society fall into a pattern of normative
integration and open-ended communication.
In his contribution to this volume, Percy B. Lehning reviews some definitions
of civil society in political science and proposes an analytical definition: “a space or
arena between households and the state which affords possibilities of concerted
action and social self-organisation... Civil society occupies the middle ground
between government and the private sector. It is the space we occupy when we are
engaged neither in government activities (voting, paying taxes) nor in commerce
(working, producing, shopping, consuming)”14.
With respect to democracy, the sphere of civil society has both a pluralist
function, through the variety of its components, and an educational function, as
groups learn to articulate their aspirations, design their projects, negotiate and form
alliances.

The Need for Better Understanding by Policy Makers

Both the theoretical definitions and the operational policies of national and
international organisations lead us to the conclusion that the negative view of the
usefulness of the concept of civil society is too narrow. The various contributions to
this volume clearly demonstrate that debate is still needed to flesh out some of the
theoretical issues, but also that experience has already been gathered in the practical
support of civil society by external actors.
This debate is also urgent for political reasons. The role of civil society is crucial
in many parts of the world. In the southern Mediterranean, which was a specific
object of debate in our seminar, civil society is a particularly complex phenomenon.
As one of the co-chairs of the seminar, Princess Maria-Teresa de Borbon Parma,
stated, the present civil society is the manifestation of the associative impulse which
has always characterised Muslim societies, but which in its ideological, political and
social expression has been deeply influenced by existing regimes and by political
resistance to these regimes. Civil society now faces the challenge of embracing
tradition while attempting to meet the demands of modernisation, but it incorporates
a very strong belief that the future can be created as an exact copy of a glorious past.
This belief almost inevitably triggers fundamentalist reflexes to escape from the
painful demands of modernisation, according to de Borbon Parma. She found hope
in the new dynamic in civil societies of the southern Mediterranean, and the political
and ideological changes that this dynamic implies, in spite of the violent state of
affairs today.
A better understanding of the role, history and traditions of civil society could
provide useful practical insights into how to restore peace and re-start the development
process in a region plagued by violent conflicts. It could also contribute to democratic
processes and development in other regions of the world.
Further research and reviews of experience in countries at various stages of
economic and social development will continue to improve our understanding of the
relevance of civil society for democracy and development, and of the best practices
for external assistance 15. The present volume aims to contribute to this important
field.

14
 Notes and
1. OECD Development Assistance Committee (1997), Final Report of the Ad Hoc Working References
Group on Participatory Development and Good Governance, Part II: Lessons from Experience
in Selected Areas of Support for Participatory Development and Good Governance, Paris, p. 7.

2. OECD Development Assistance Committee (1997), Final Report of the Ad Hoc Working
Group on Participatory Development and Good Governance, Part I, Paris, p. 3.

3. OECD (1997), The World in 2020, Towards a New Global Age, Paris, p. 24.

4. A.B. Seligman (1992), The Idea of Civil Society, Princeton University Press, Princeton,
NJ., p. ix.

5. Seligman, op. cit., pp. 199-200.

6. J.L. Cohen and A. Arato (1995), Civil Society and Political Theory, MIT Press, Cambridge,
Mass., pp. 3-4.

7. G. Agnelli (1996), “Civil Society, the Key Element”, in Towards a New Scenario of
Partnership in the Euro-Mediterranean Area, Report of the Euromed Conference in
Barcelona, 29 November-1 December 1995, Forum Civil Euromed, Institut Catala de
la Mediterrania d’Estudis I Cooperacio, Barcelona, pp. 37-43.

8. Jacques Giraudon (1997), “Inaugural Address”, in Leslie Agius, (ed.), Intercultural

Dialogue in the Mediterranean/Le dialogue interculturel en Méditerranée, Selected Papers
from the Euromed Civil Forum, Malta, April 1997, Foundation for International
Studies, University of Malta, p. 12.

9. These various declarations and statements are described and analysed in: PCRP/
ECSIEP, The Role of Civil Society in different position papers of the European Commission,
European Parliament, European NGOs, ACP NGOs, and ACP Heads of Government,
Conference paper for the Conference Solidarity 2000, Alliances against Poverty in the Era
of Globalisation, Working Group Civil Society as Effective Partners, Liaison Committee
of Development NGOs to the European Union, Brussels, 23-24 April 1998. The italics
in this paragraph are added by the authors.

10. Max van den Berg (Head of NOVIB, an important development NGO from the
Netherlands) “Alliances in the Struggle Against Poverty”, inaugural address in
Solidarity 2000, Alliances against Poverty in the Era of Globalisation, Conference organised
by the Liaison Committee of Development NGOs to the European Union, Brussels,
23-24 April 1998, p. 8.

11. PCRP/ECSIEP, op. cit., p. 5.

12. A. Hadenius and F. Uggla, “Making Civil Society Work, Promoting Democratic
Development: What Can States and Donors Do?”, World Development, Vol. 24, No. 10
(1996), p. 1621-1639. This article originated as a contribution to a seminar held on
12-13 June 1995 at the University of Uppsala, as part of the programme of the DAC
Working Group on Participatory Development and Good Governance.

13. Cohen and Arato, op. cit., p.ix.

14. P.B. Lehning, “Towards a Multi-cultural Civil Society: The Role of Social Capital and
Democratic Citizenship”, in this volume.

15. Examples are the major research project carried out by Alison van Rooy in the
Canadian North-South Institute, with case studies on Kenya, Sri Lanka, Hungary and
Peru, and a study undertaken for the World Bank by Leslie Fox and Mark Woodward,
Partnership for Capacity Building in Africa, Building the Capacity of Civil Society in Africa,
A Strategy and Framework, World Bank Capacity Building Technical Group Africa
Region, 6 January 1998 (draft). This study draws on earlier work by Leslie Fox:
Legitimate and Effective Partners in Sustainable Development: A Strategy for Strengthening
African Civil Society (September 1997) and Kate Lifanda, Civil Society in Africa: An
African Perspective (October 1997). These papers can be obtained from the World Bank
Capacity Building Technical Group.

15
16
 Report and Executive Summary
Ed van Thijn and Amanda Bernard

Since the early 1990s, civil society has become a major concern for organisations
working in the area of international co-operation with many development programmes
targeted at “strengthening civil society”. This focus on civil society has emerged from
the new policy agenda on good governance that was increasingly promoted by official
donors since the late 1980s. Initially, this new agenda was primarily concerned with
finding additional methods to promote good governance, respect for human rights,
the organisation of multi-party elections and reform of the state.
Donors have come to recognise that the transition towards democratically
elected governments does not, in itself, guarantee a society with more political
participation, and that they must therefore consider additional aspects of political
culture. As a result, civil society has been rediscovered as a necessary precondition
of democratic society. The task for donors is two-fold: first, they need to identify which
types of organisations are likely to play a key role in civil society; second, they must
determine which forms of support can be directed towards those organisations in
order to strengthen their capacity to participate in a vigorous civil society.
To provide an opportunity for development professionals, political scientists
and policy makers to reflect on this new policy agenda, the OECD Development Centre
and the Council of Europe’s North-South Centre organised an informal meeting
entitled “International Co-operation and Civil Society”, which was held in Paris on
4th-5th July 1997. The present volume is the result of this meeting. Most of the
27 participants in the meeting are active in the field of international co-operation in
both the North and the South.
Particular attention was given to developing regions in Asia, sub-Saharan
Africa, Latin America and the Southern Mediterranean. The meeting generated an
interesting debate. No attempt was made to reach a consensus on an exact definition
of civil society, although the participants agreed on a loose working definition: a
“third cell” between the market and the state, constituting a “civil space” occupied
by “public beings”, that is, non-governmental and non-commercial citizens and
organisations devoted to the public good. The aim of the meeting was to formulate a
list of practical approaches for external actors wishing to support the development
of civil society in developing countries (see “Practical Suggestions for Donors”).
A more fine-tuned conceptualisation requires a careful analysis of the following
functions of civil society:
– as mediator;
– as countervailing power, increasing the accountability of the state;
– as a vehicle for participation by citizens;
– as a promoter of social cohesion and social equality;

17
 – as contributing to a sense of community;
– as a promoter of learning and socialisation;
– as a stimulator of plurality;
– as a creator of social capacity.
This conceptualisation also requires analysis of what civil society (as a conceptual
innovation) is not supposed to be:
– not the old corporate system in disguise;
– not a romantic, moralistic concept of communitarianism as a new collective
ideology;
– not an instrument in the hands of nationalists or fundamentalists striving for
new cleavages and demarcation lines in our societies;
– not a system that fails to articulate the basic needs of neglected groups;
– not more of the same but a new concept.
This volume is organised into four parts. The first contains the Introduction, by
Henny Helmich and Jos Lemmers, the co-sponsors of the meeting; the Report and
Executive Summary by Ed van Thijn and Amanda Bernard, and an analysis of the role
which civil society plays in redefining the relationships between different groups in
nation-states transformed by globalisation, by Lourdes Arizpe.
In Part II, under the general heading “Conceptual Questions”, Percy B. Lehning,
Axel Hadenius and Fredrik Uggla, and Kees Breed discuss the theoretical debates on
civil society in both the domestic and the international arenas. Lehning’s chapter
examines the role played by social capital and democratic citizenship in the creation
of a multi-cultural civil society in support of a liberal democratic state. His primary
focus is on how the internal domestic structure of the state can support a vigorous civil
society. Lehning considers civil society to be a double-sided phenomenon, in which
the state and society work in close symbiosis and reciprocity. Hadenius and Uggla
examine the internal structure of a well-funded civil society and a general model for
its relations with the state. They concur with Lehning on many points, mainly
concerning the role that official institutions can play in support of civil society, but
they allow more leeway for non-democratic models of civil society.
Breed uses a different approach, moving towards a global, systemic perspective.
Instead of starting the analysis with the state, the market and civil society, he argues
that our starting point must be globalisation, transnational corporations and global
civil society. He believes that we must strive for a more global social cohesion, with
universal values, to serve as a counterweight to economic globalisation.
The concept of “global values and global ethics” is a contentious point, in view
of the obvious diversities among nations, particularly between the North and the
South. Not surprisingly, this topic gave rise to spirited debate during the meeting. In
order to move the debate forwards, however, the participants agreed on four key
elements of what might comprise “global values and global ethics”:
– respect for the diversity of cultures;
– reciprocity and tolerance;
– inclusion and social equality;
– trust and cohesion.

18
 Part III, “The Role of External Actors”, comprises two chapters focused on how
outside actors can direct aid in support of civil society and which types of assistance
are the most effective. Harry Blair discusses the programmes of the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID) in assisting democratisation in
developing countries. Using data collected from five developing nations, Blair
analyses the role of development aid in the success and failure of civil society
institutions on both the national and local levels. He argues that most effective
assistance to civil society is closely related to the degree in which a country has come
“along the democratic path”.
Diana Mitlin examines the role of development NGOs in civil society. Often, she
points out, the two are treated as synonymous, and the funding of development NGOs
has simply been re-labelled as support for civil society. Furthermore, she argues that
support for development NGOs in the global South does not necessarily strengthen
civil society; in fact, it can undermine civil society if local organisations and decision-
making structures are bypassed.
Although Blair and Mitlin consider the question of external funding from two
different vantage points (top-down and bottom-up), they complement each other in
pointing out the myriad problems that external actors face in attempting to support
or even create a vigorous civil society in another state. Consequently, they reach
similar conclusions despite their different vantage points: a lack of local legitimacy and
accountability both in NGOs (Mitlin) and in government (Blair) will undermine the
attempts of external actors to support civil society and secure good governance.
Part IV contains descriptions of civil society in four developing regions. Aye Aye
Win describes the development of civil society in Asia and the problems faced by
NGOs in obtaining legitimacy and recognition from local government agencies. Win
sees the emergence of civil society in Asia as a reflection of a growing regional
consciousness and identity based on Asia’s cultural heritage and values, and on its
growing economic and political might.
François Sedogo asks the question: does civil society exist in Africa? The answer
is a resounding yes, but on African terms, not those of actors from the Global North.
Sedogo believes that conditional aid is bound to backfire, because it puts the donor
in the role of parent and the recipient in the role of child. Instead, Sedogo offers the
development community a clear area in which it can assist Africa: education. This,
he believes, is the most effective way that outside donors can assist the development
of civil society in Africa.
Monica Allmand writes about the participation of civil society in the
democratisation of Latin America. She examines how the power of networking, using
the new information and communication technologies, can assist researchers,
development specialists, non-governmental organisations and grassroots
organisations in creating a healthy civil society.
Fifi Benaboud describes civil society in the Euro-Mediterranean region. She
begins by concentrating on four common elements which characterise civil society
development in both the Global North and the Global South:
– the emergence of the individual as subject of the law;
– the organisation of activities on the basis of solidarity and existing affinities
within a complex and heterogeneous social fabric;
– the autonomy of this activity with respect to the state;
– the role of the state remains the legal framework for the organised actions of
various groups in civil society.

19
 In order to demonstrate the commonality of these features, she examines the role
that associations play in civil society. In the Northern conception of civil society, the
role of associations is well documented and researched, but their role in the Southern
conception of civil society is less understood. Benaboud works to dispel certain myths
by pointing out that community-based, non-political organisations and associations
are indigenous to the traditional societies in the Southern Mediterranean. Furthermore,
when faced with regimes in crisis, civil societies on the south shore of the Mediterranean
distinguish themselves from political society, especially since the latter has a propensity
to invade and to permanently occupy state institutions.
The examples provided by the four developing regions demonstrate that it is
impossible to use only one model of civil society. However, civil society does not
require one model or one definition in order to be a workable concept. Indeed, its very
essence lies in its diversity, difference and pluralism.
After these regional case studies, a list of “Practical Suggestions for Donors”
presents concrete proposals. The volume contains two Annexes: Annex 1, Civil
Society and Development Co-operation with extracts from the Final Report of the DAC
Ad Hoc Working Group on Participatory Development and Good Governance; and
Annex 2, the Programme and List of Participants of the July meeting.

20
 Conviviability:
The Role of Civil Society in Development
Lourdes Arizpe

Development processes have shown very uneven results over the last few
decades. While East Asia has had great success in combining economic growth with
social stability, other regions have fared less well, with some countries getting ahead
while others lag behind. Today, there is a consensus that economic growth is not
enough to improve the human condition. Other factors — including democratic
governance, the organisation of civil society, eradication of poverty, the role of culture
in development — are crucial for human development and must now be targeted in
development policies. Working with civil society touches on all of these aspects at
once, yet we lack an analytical concept that would allow us to understand all of them
together.
This chapter will propose that we work towards evolving a more encompassing
view of these factors. We need a concept to refer to the redefining of the relationships
between human groups in nation-states transformed by globalisation. This concept
should also provide a basis for working together towards a sustainable development
in the 21st century. While better terms could perhaps be suggested, the present writer
would like to put forward that of “conviviability”1.
Many studies have shown that sustainability — that is, the fulfilment of human
needs coupled with preservation of the natural environment for future generations —
cannot be achieved without human co-operation and peace. In many places, even
when people are willing to protect the natural environment, they may find it impossible
to do so because of economic, political or social pressures2. To eliminate these
pressures, we must solve problems of dire poverty, income inequalities, political
persecution and conflict, social exclusion and cultural repression — all of which are
related to the way in which different human groups live together. Thus, sustainability
cannot be achieved without conviviability.
Another reason why we need such a concept is the transformation of nation-
states as a consequence of globalisation. While nation-states probably will not wither
away, national economic and political decision making will undergo momentous
changes due to growing economic interdependence and to the rise of new social
movements and ideologies that cut across borders. These changes will, in turn, change
the way in which relationships between different groups — groups whose boundaries,
sometimes cutting across political borders, are defined by ethnicity, religion, language
and other factors — are perceived and managed. The decentring of knowledge and
identity in current thinking allows us to reconceptualise such relationships as a more
general field in which the speaker in power creates the boundaries and borders that
organise people into groups. In this new field, as Touraine has put it, political
democracy and cultural diversity come together on the basis of the liberty of the
subject3.

21
 The term “conviviability” could designate such a field. It would refer to the need
to redefine codes and attitudes so that human beings with different ideals of the good life can
live together compatibly to ensure sustainable development. It would provide a guiding
principle for the social and cultural transition that must be made in this global age,
and it could provide a barometer of performance for both the state and civil society.

Political Systems or Civil Society?

In this setting, the role of civil society becomes central. Many authors, including
several in this volume, rightly single out the activation of civil society as the alternative
to the many political systems which are disintegrating or losing legitimacy, not only
in developing regions but in some industrialised countries as well. Ed van Thijn asks
a key question: in this context, should we reinforce political organisations or civil
society? Percy B. Lehning broadens this question by asking how societal processes
can be channeled as the nation-state transforms itself.
Such a transformation, as Jyrki Käkönen argues, implies a transfer of power from
the political system to civil society. It is rarely mentioned, though, that the state’s
tenure of power derives its legitimacy from the fact that the state was created to keep
civil peace, that is, to prevent opposing communitarian groups — be they political
parties, capital and labour, ethnic groups, religious sects or local communities —
from coming into grievous conflict. In a large and increasing number of cases,
however, governments have proved unable to fulfil this function. Tragically, in many
places, they have even fuelled conflict by taking sides against particular ethnic
groups, as in ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Power transferred to civil society must therefore be used in a legitimate way, that
is, to foster greater conviviability rather than to reduce it by excluding other groups.
This is problematic, especially in the case of cultural minorities and autochthonous
groups that demand special treatment within the nation-state. One possible solution,
put forth by Albrow, is to think of the state as separate from its nations4. In this case,
the next move is to discuss how civil society and cultural enclaves will relate to each
other while living together within a state5.
The term “cultural enclaves” is used instead of “minorities”, “ethnic groups”
or “autochthonous groups” to highlight the fact that such groups are redefining their
cultural identities in opposition to the state and to other social groups included in the state.
In recent years, great confusion has resulted from the implicit assumption of many
writers that the revitalisation of cultural identities involves a reawakening of pristine
cultural forms which had remained dormant in 20th-century nation-states and which
will take up their old autarchical form. This is not the case. Most often, this revitalisation
involves use of the remembered elements of traditional cultures to build an identity
recomposed to stake out claims in the social and political territories opened up by the
transformation of nation-states in the context of globalisation.
As Harry Blair asks, how far should we go in opening up the state from within?
The answer must be: only as far as a stable, consensual state can continue to function.
If we go further — and there are some who see this as the inevitable outcome — states
will break down into a myriad of micro-states. Are such micro-states financially and
administratively viable? Will they be politically relevant in a global age? Would the
United Nations or other international organisations be able to manage such a
proliferation of states?
This question brings us to the need for new governance structures, as emphasised
by the World Commission on Governance. A new kind of political conviviability is
necessary, with special attention to emerging local and global forces. Movements
concerned with such matters as the environment, human rights and the status of
women are pressing their demands, and governments are attempting to incorporate

22
these demands into their programmes. In the long run, however, it is not a question
of forcing new movements into the old moulds of centralised, patriarchal, mono-
cultural states, but of changing the moulds. Civil society is the space in which new
moulds for conviviability must be developed.

New Issues for Civil Society

If we take conviviability as a guiding principle in our thinking about the role of

civil society, then discussion must be broadened to analyse citizens’ concerted
actions in several other settings.
– The relationship between civil society and the market. Frequently, the individuation
implied by the expansion of the market, which gives individuals the possibility
of becoming single consumers, is linked to the development of civil society as
a network of free individuals. The paradox here is that the more democracy
allows free choice for individuals, the more it undermines the communal or
consensual values and codes which form the social capital needed for
development.
– The establishment of trans-border connections between civil societies in response to
globalisation. Globalisation creates the need for re-alignment in local communities
which are now permanently linked to the outside world through
telecommunications, telematics and travel. Will civil society be the space in
which the local can at last be conceived of as making up the global? Is a global
civil society possible now that we have seen the photograph of this blue planet
from space?
– The women’s movement: the “longest revolution”. Today, many of the leaders and
activists in civil society are women, from urban renewal groups or associations
which work with the poor, the disabled, underprivileged children and so on.
Women are realising, however, that they will not alleviate many of the pressing
problems — urban and family violence, unemployment, exclusion, isolation —
unless governance structures and their associated social and ethnic boundaries
are transformed. As more and more women participate in politics, as well as in
private or international organisations, they realise that simply by incorporating
their own way of managing people and programmes into institutions, they are
replacing old ways of doing things by new patterns of behaviour. If this change
is propagated through awareness and co-operation, then whole institutions
begin to change. Thus, for women it is a question not only of being present in
public life but of helping to rethink and rebuild institutions.
The organisations of civil society are the foremost arena in which women can
acquire the personal experience and know-how needed to hold managerial or
executive positions in any kind of organisation. In traditional societies there were no
spaces for the informal training of women for such jobs, but these have opened up in
civil society — from feminist to political lobbying groups, from environmentalist to
cultural heritage associations.

Shaping the Flow

Civil society cannot be regarded simply as “that which is not government”. It

must be freed from this binary opposition to become the field of issues of public interest
which overflow the narrow definition of government and politics as these are handled — and
monopolised in many instances — by only a few social groups in most countries today. As

23
 such, civil society will be the laboratory for most of the social and cultural
experimentation which will give rise to the new ideas, codes, institutions and
attitudes of the global age.
There is no either/or choice to be made between supporting political organisation
or civil society. In fact, the boundary between the two will become increasingly
permeable as more civil society activists are entrusted with governmental or
institutional tasks, while politicians go back to civil society roles that will allow them
to understand their constituencies anew. What is needed, however, is not only a
greater diversity of actors on the political stage, but a rethinking of politics in a global
age in which political legitimacy is continually decentred while the power of money
and arms is simultaneously recentred and multiplied.
Civil society is also the breeding ground for new generations which have a
broader view of the multiplicity of issues that must be handled in this new era, at the
local, national and global levels. In the open spaces provided by civil society, these
generations can learn and they can create. If for no other reason than this, civil society
associations everywhere must be strongly supported.
We do not mean to idealise these associations. Participants in civil society, being
human, are prone to all the same inefficiencies, difficulties and deviations that others
face in government, without the strong deterrents of legal or authoritarian structures.
Constant criticism, evaluation and monitoring are needed, in order to redirect
programmes and people when necessary, but this must be done within or between the
groups themselves.
This brings to the fore the important role of ethics in the years to come. This ethics
must be consensual, but it must be derived from practice in unprecedented situations.
It must be a global ethics, as the World Commission on Culture and Development has
proposed, but must be evolved through our creative diversity6.
Let us consider the image of our societies trying to swim in a torrent which has
overflowed its dam. The flow seems chaotic, but it is searching for the meanders and
outlets which will give it shape. In time, given the freedom to flow while being carefully
monitored to ensure that positive outlets are found, the torrent will organise itself, as
it has always done in our history.

Notes and
References 1. English affords no equivalent to the Spanish term convivencia, which means “positive,
interactive living together”. The nearest equivalent is “conviviality”, to which the
suffix “-ability” has been added to create a pro-active, purposeful concept,
complementary to that of sustainability.

2. See, for example, our empirical study: L. Arizpe, F. Paz and M. Velazquez (1997),
Culture and Global Change: Social Perceptions of Deforestation in the Lacandona Rain Forest,
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

3. A. Touraine (1997), Pourrons-nous vivre ensemble ?, Fayard, Paris.

4. M. Albrow (1996), The Global Age, Polity Press, London.

5. Cf. the report of the World Commission on Culture and Development (1996), Our
Creative Diversity, UNESCO, Paris. The commission was chaired by Javier Perez de
Cuellar; the present author had the honour of being a member and of supervising
the work of its secretariat.

6. World Commission on Culture and Development, op. cit.

24
 P ART T WO

CONCEPTUAL QUESTIONS

25
26
 Towards a Multi-cultural Civil Society:
The Role of Social Capital and Democratic
Citizenship1
Percy B. Lehning

Introduction

The idea of civil society is attracting renewed interest. One explanation for this
revival is the fact that many societies, in West and East, in North and South, are
nowadays confronted with a similar fundamental political question: how to mediate
the tension between the private and the public, between the individual and the social,
between public ethics and private interests. Despite their many differences, these
societies share a common perspective: civil society is seen as a potential mediator
between these opposing forces, which are a threat to social cohesion and stability. If
a strong civil society can indeed sustain a stable, democratic order, the renewed
interest in this old concept is understandable.
The first question then is what this idea of civil society entails. The next is, if
indeed civil society is the thing to strive for, in what kind of institutional framework
it should be imbedded to preserve it as a civil society and to protect it from the
encroachment of the state.
It will be argued that there are three general prerequisites for a stable political
order that creates the “right” environment for civil society:
– a constitutional democratic regime that is liberal in nature;
– specific socio-economic factors; and
– specific socio-cultural factors.
After outlining the idea of civil society, we will consider each of these prerequisites
in turn.

The Idea of Civil Society

Modern democratic societies are characterised by a pluralism of incompatible

beliefs, religious and non-religious, liberal and non-liberal. Within a democratic
society, no one of these beliefs is affirmed by all citizens, and this plurality of views
concerning the nature of the good life is a permanent and ineradicable condition of
such societies2.

27
 Modern societies are then confronted with the following questions. How can we
conceive of a stable political order, based on principles and values that can be shared
by all members of society and that create social unity? How can we constitute a sense
of community among social actors who are conceived of as autonomous individuals,
acknowledging pluralism as well as the fact that men and women are motivated by
two divergent and contradictory principles: those of altruism and egoism3?
The idea developed in this chapter is that the notion of “civil society” can help
us in answering these questions, which are basic to any social-political order.
Although “civil society” is understood in many different ways, and although there
is much ambiguity in the concept, there seems to be a common core. In what follows,
the term “civil society” will refer to “a space or arena between households and the state
which affords possibilities of concerted action and social self-organisation”4. This
conception of civil society will be used as an analytical tool in finding answers to our
basic questions.
Civil society, or “civic space”, occupies the middle ground between government
and the private sector. It is the space we occupy when we are engaged neither in
government activities (voting, paying taxes) nor in commerce (working, producing,
shopping, consuming)5. It is in this civic space that people are “public” beings, and
in that sense civil society shares with government a sense of the public sphere and a
regard for the general good and the common weal, but unlike government it makes no
claims to exercise a monopoly on legitimate coercion. Rather, it is a voluntary realm
devoted to public goods. It is constituted by freely associated individuals and groups
and, unlike the private sector, it aims at finding a common ground and integrative and
collaborative modes of action.
This civil domain is where such traditional civic institutions as foundations,
schools, churches, public-interest organisations and other voluntary associations
properly belong. It is a space defined by activities such as attending church, mosque
or synagogue, doing community service, contributing to a charity, or being a member
of a sports club. Voluntary associations serve as social spaces in which the members
of the association reinforce their social webs and articulate their (moral) relationships.
To conceive of civil society as civic space where citizens rule themselves, we
must move beyond the two-celled, or “binary”, model of “government versus private
sector” and focus on the intermediate institutions in the civil society. In fact, we need
a three-celled model in which civil society intermediates between government and the
private sector. The civic space, this third arena, forms the glue between the individual
and the state.
The notion of civil society captures men and women in their multiple roles, even
in their multiple identities. The associational life of civil society is the ground where
multiple forms of the good life are actually worked out, tested and can be fulfilled.
Ideally, civil society is, in the terminology of Michael Walzer, a “setting of settings”:
all forms may be included, none is preferred6.
Civil society postulates and accentuates the pluralism of (partly) autonomous
spheres and many autonomous institutions acting within and between these spheres.
It accepts the diversity of the objectives pursued by individuals and institutions. It can
thus be considered the home ground of “distinction”, the realm of “difference” in a
universe otherwise united by the imperatives of common citizenship and equality
before the law7.
To sustain such a diverse culture, civil society requires a substantial degree of
tolerance. It thus indirectly legitimates the fragmentation of the social body according
to individual preferences. These, in turn, tend to reflect existing patterns of class,
ethnicity, belief, ideology and social cohesion based on people’s voluntary affinities.

28
 Civil Society and Multi-culturalism

Pluralism is the hallmark of civil society, with its diversity and difference, its
voluntary associations or groups based on associational ties. The term “pluralism”
can be misleading, however, as it might fail to distinguish the kind of differences that
are implied by multi-culturalism from the much more restricted and ethically often
less problematic differences of tastes and pursuits which the term “pluralism” also
encompasses8.
It may be suggested, in fact, that discussions of pluralism in the context of civil
society have mainly been concerned with these less problematic differences. If the idea
of civil society were restricted to that interpretation of pluralism, however, it would
not be a useful concept for answering our basic questions.
This pluralism must also take into account the heterogeneous multiple identities
of cultural and ethnic minorities who have the responsibility of living together in one
state. Thus, civil society includes not only groups based on associational ties, such
as sports clubs or self-help groups, but also groups based more on communal ties,
such as cultural groups of Muslims, Jews or Christians. After all, modern democratic
societies are made up of groups based on both kind of ties.
By broadening our perspective in this way, we can also include aspects of multi-
culturalism in our analysis of civil society. In fact, we can distinguish two broad
patterns of the cultural diversity encompassed by multi-culturalism 9. One source of
cultural diversity is the incorporation of previously self-governing, territorially
concentrated cultures into a larger state. Diversity here consists of the co-existence
within a given state of more than one “nation”, or “people” or “culture”. We speak
of “multi-nation” states in which the smaller cultures form “national minorities”
(e.g. Finland, Belgium, Switzerland). The second source of cultural diversity is
individual and familial immigration. Immigrants form ethnic groups based on, in the
first instance, communal ties. These “polyethnic states” consist then of immigrants
who have left their national communities to enter other societies.
The integration of these immigrants into the larger society is usually discussed
from the perspective of one of two models: the assimilationist or the pluralist model10.
In the assimilationist model, integration requires adaptation and adjustment to the
norms and values of the country of immigration; integration is not considered
possible without complete adjustment to the culture of the land of immigration. In fact,
assimilation is seen as essential for political stability11. The pluralist model, to the
contrary, adopts a more tolerant and pluralistic policy, allowing and indeed
encouraging immigrants to maintain various aspects of their ethnic heritage. It is now
widely accepted that immigrants should be free to maintain some of their customs
regarding food, dress, religion and to associate with each other to maintain their
practices.
Pluralists hold that a multiplicity of cultures can co-exist within the boundaries
of one political order and that keeping a specific ethnic identity is not a barrier to
integration. Ethnic resilience may in fact be a part of the process of political incorporation
and an important factor for successful integration. The distinctiveness of immigrants
is manifested primarily in their family lives and in voluntary associations; it is not
inconsistent with some institutional integration. Immigrants participate in the public
institutions of the dominant culture. In this perspective, they must at least learn the
dominant language of the country of immigration and its shared political values so
as to be able to interact and communicate with their fellow citizens, but this does not
mean they must give up their distinct culture. It is in fact hard to maintain that “full”
assimilation of immigrants is necessary for political stability.

29
 The First Prerequisite for Civil Society: Liberal Constitutional Democracy

If civil society, with its broad spectrum of voluntary associations, is indeed the
home ground of “distinction”; if it is characterised by differences and diversity, by
tolerance and pluralism; and if civic space is seen as providing the ties that bind
society, we must now ask: What kind of institutions would create a framework in
which these aspects of civil society can flourish?
First of all, the basic structure of society should be that of a constitutional
democracy. The institutions of constitutional democracies should satisfy the following
four conditions:
– respect for the rule of law;
– the protection of fundamental freedoms (including the right to form independent
associations);
– secure property rights; and
– conformity to the principle of majority rule in the making of public policy 12.
The first three of these conditions stipulate the requirements of constitutional
government, and the fourth stipulates that the constitutional government should also
be democratic.
At the same time, the institutional design should be liberal. This term is not used
here to denote a political ideology, nor as a label for a specific political party or
movement. Rather, it is used in a sense and perspective derived from political theory13.
From this liberal perspective, all citizens should be equally free to choose their
own conception of the good life. Ultimately, arguments in favour of a specific
conception of the good must make reference to the interests of individuals, and cannot
stop at the interests of collective entities like cultures, churches, communities, languages
or nations. This perspective is thus based on a minimal liberal democratic criterion:
in a pluralistic culture, citizens cannot expect all other citizens to share their ends,
although they should be able to expect others to respect their interests. The interests
of each person are entitled to equal consideration, and in the absence of a compelling
demonstration to the contrary an adult is assumed to understand his or her own
interests better than anyone else14.
The decisive question for a liberal constitutional democracy is, then, the terms
under which people with diverse cultures and interests can live together in a political
association. To avoid oppressive state power, political liberalism defines the common
good of political association by means of a minimal moral conception15. Fundamental
political principles must express a moral conception that citizens can affirm together,
despite their inevitable differences about the worth of specific ways of life.
From this perspective, the first fundamental principle is concern for the protection
of individual liberty. A liberal constitutional democracy gives special priority to
certain basic rights, liberties and opportunities, especially with respect to claims of
the general good. These basic rights must take priority because of the plurality of
conceptions of the good life and because of the constraints of liberty and toleration
stipulated by democratic institutions.
Second, the idea of shared liberal political values is essential. These values form
the core of liberal democratic citizenship. The creation of a shared identity founded
on democratic citizenship performs a vital integrative function and is, in fact, the basis
of social unity. Consensus on these political values creates the ideal setting for civil
society16. In this perspective, a political community united in one comprehensive
religious, philosophical or moral doctrine or belief is not seen as an ideal17.

30
 This leads us to distinguish between, on the one hand, the norms and values
connected with various associational ideals (the ideals of churches and universities,
occupations and vocations, clubs and teams) and with the family, and on the other,
shared political values.
In a multi-cultural society, social integration is established by shared liberal
political values which make social co-operation possible between people with very
different social-cultural values. Underwriting the shared political values, which is the
essence of multi-cultural citizenship with its common set of citizenship rights, enables
one to interact and communicate with one’s fellow citizens, but does not mean that
one must give up one’s own culture. To the contrary, it leaves citizens the space for
their various cultural or ethnic identities.

Civil Society, Toleration and the Neutral State

The range of the permitted social-cultural values is, of course, limited. Freedom
in civic space is constrained by the minimal moral conception that the shared political
values formulate. The permissible conceptions of the good life, expressed in specific
social-cultural values, are those that do not overstep the boundaries set by these
shared political values. Whereas citizens are free to pursue their culture and religion
within civil society, in the public political sphere they should disregard their membership
in particular associations and should be united by the imperatives of common
citizenship and equality before the law.
Faced with the fact of pluralism, political liberalism has the important function
of removing from the political agenda the most divisive issues, which otherwise
would undermine social co-operation. More specifically, when certain matters are
taken off the political agenda, they are no longer regarded as appropriate subjects for
political decision by majority or other plurality voting. This means that the basic
constitutional liberties covering equal liberty of conscience, the separation of church
and state, and the rejection of slavery and serfdom, are reasonably taken as fixed, as
settled once and for all. They are part of the public charter of a democratic constitutional
regime and not a suitable topic for ongoing public debate and legislation18.
Since liberal democracy acknowledges the fact of pluralism, it requires both
respect for minorities’ rights and a willingness to be tolerant. The flip side of this
argument is, of course, that religious fundamentalism is incompatible with tolerance.
Fundamentalist religions, or certain non-religious (secular) doctrines such as those
of autocracy and dictatorship, are incompatible with a tolerant political order in
which civil society can grow. Such an order can be seriously endangered by religious
moral fanaticism, which, by definition, attempts to impose its rules on everyone and
sees compromise as a betrayal of first principles19.
It would be a mistake to think that civil society consists only of voluntary
associations that strengthen democracy, or to think that all voluntary associations
should be considered permissible. Some civil society formations contribute to
democratisation; others do not. The Michigan Militia movements in the United States,
for instance, are voluntary associations based on hostility to the state and to the
existing political order. They do not accept the shared framework of political values;
they are intolerant; and they conflict with rather than reinforce democracy.
We touch here on an essential characteristic of a liberal democratic order: its
neutrality. We should hasten to add, however, that this neutrality should not be
confused with the idea that “anything goes” or that the liberal state is a non-
interventionist state. The requirement of neutrality applies primarily to the fundamental
— i.e. constitutional — principles of political association, which fix basic rights and

31
 duties for citizens. Its principles are to be neutral with respect to (maybe even
controversial) ideas of the good life, which typically include religion, lifestyles,
conceptions of the good and cultural preferences.
It is surely impossible, however, for the basic structure of a liberal constitutional
democratic regime not to have important effects and influences on which comprehensive
doctrines or views of the good life endure and gain adherents over time. The basic
institutions required by liberal political values inevitably encourage some ways of life
and discourage others, or even exclude them altogether.
Thus, although political liberalism seeks common ground and is neutral in aim
(but not neutral in effects and influences), it may still affirm the superiority of certain
forms of moral character and encourage certain moral virtues. This encouragement
is based on its minimal moral conception, which includes an account of certain
political virtues, such as tolerance, reasonableness and a sense of fairness.
If a liberal constitutional regime takes steps to strengthen the virtues of toleration
and mutual trust — for example, discouraging various kinds of religious and racial
discrimination (in ways consistent with liberty of conscience and freedom of speech) —
it does not thereby establish a particular religion. Rather, it is taking reasonable
measures to strengthen the forms of thought and feeling that sustain fair social co-
operation between citizens regarded as free and equal 20.

Civil Society, the Neutral State and Education

We can illustrate this view of “state neutrality” with the example of education.
Society’s concern with the education of children lies in individuals’ role as future
citizens, and hence in such essential matters as their acquiring the capacity to
understand the public culture and to participate in its institutions, in their being
economically independent members of society over their lifetimes. Society should
therefore, first and foremost, encourage education on the shared political values, with
the political virtues of toleration and honouring the fair terms of social co-operation
in their relations with the rest of society. Education is fundamental to building the
necessary preconditions for social cohesiveness even across multi-cultural diversity.
A liberal constitutional democracy should aim to educate citizens in such things as
knowledge of their constitutional and civic rights so that, for example, they know that
liberty of conscience exists in their society and that apostasy is not a legal crime. The
point is to ensure that their continued membership when they come of age is not based
simply on ignorance of their basic rights or fear of punishment for offences that do not
exist21.
This argument shows that the liberal democratic state is not only not indifferent
to education, but also not neutral in effects and influences. It wants the shared political
values to be taught and encouraged, so that children learn the importance of, for
instance, tolerance for diversity. A liberal democratic state is thus not neutral with
respect to the elements that should be included in the core, standard curriculum of
schools, private or public.
This view also determines the position of political liberalism with respect to
private schools. In a private Islamic school, for instance, children may of course be
taught the specifics of Islamic culture, religion and language, but they must also be
taught a core, standard curriculum, analogous to the one in public schools, which
teaches them the essentials of political liberalism and the importance of its shared
political values such as tolerance for diversity. The public and private segments of the
educational system should thus have a shared core curriculum, public exams and
legally valid diplomas that can be recognised by every institution in the society22.

32
 Is Liberal Toleration Enough?

One may ask whether public recognition of minority cultures is sufficiently

guaranteed by this kind of state neutrality. Minority groups within contemporary
democracies sometimes claim that gaining formal citizenship in a liberal democratic
society is not enough, as it does not capture their demand for inclusion of their
collective identities in the public sphere23.
Among the diverse possibilities of giving public recognition to cultural diversity,
and accommodation of the cultural differences of minority groups, attention might be
given to the extension of individual rights by establishing group-differentiated rights,
especially for ethnic and cultural minorities24.
These rights would be granted within a country along group lines, but would
typically be held by, and justified with reference to, the interests of individual members
of the group. In societies which recognise group-differentiated rights, the members of
certain groups are incorporated in the political community not only as individuals,
but also through the group, and their rights depend in part on their group membership.
There are at least three forms of group-specific measures for accommodating
national and ethnic differences:
Polyethnic rights, or “recognition rights”, would provide public recognition of
and support for certain minority cultural practices or forms of identity. They might
consist of financial support and legal protection for practices associated with
particular ethnic or religious groups; rights to education that recognises the cultures
and languages of minorities; and exemptions from certain laws, such as dress codes
(e.g. the right to wear a chador at school)25.
Special group representation rights could, for instance, guarantee seats for
disadvantaged ethnic or national groups within the central institutions of the larger
state26. One could also envisage measures like the promotion of “consociational”
policies (in Liphart’s sense) involving the consensual interaction between group
leaders in multi-ethnic societies. The threat to political stability posed by permanent
ethnic or religious minorities forms the core of the argument for a consociational state
that recognises and incorporates the organisation of such minorities. Another
possibility would be the diversification of parliamentary government through novel
forms of bicameralism (or multi-cameralism) which allow representation of different
constituencies27.
These polyethnic rights and special group-representation rights might support
a sense of solidarity and cohesiveness for liberal society; they could promote social
integration and political unity and would not challenge the shared identity of
democratic citizenship. On the contrary, these rights should serve precisely to
strengthen the integrative role of that shared identity. They are intended for groups
that feel excluded and want to be included: the recognition and accommodation of
their social-cultural “difference” is intended to facilitate their inclusion.
The third form of group-differentiated rights is self-government rights: the
delegation of power to national minorities, often through some form of federalism. It
is not clear that such rights would support solidarity and cohesiveness in liberal
society. They seem to open the door for separation and secession rather than
performing an integrative function28.
Group-differentiated rights may be necessary for the recognition of the identity
of minority groups and accommodation of their cultural differences within modern
liberal democratic societies. It should be stressed, however, that group-specific rights
can be granted only if the right of individuals to opt out of a minority group is
guaranteed. Thus, minority rights should serve to prevent one group from dominating

33
 others, but they should not enable a group to oppress its own members. In other words,
liberal political values require that there be equality between groups, and freedom and
equality within groups29.
Within these limits, group-differentiated rights could play an integrative role
within a multi-cultural political order, especially if they prevent the development of
adversarial voluntary associations in civil society. The recognition and inclusion of
different ethnic and religious groups in political life could have a positive effect on
the democratisation of the society concerned.
At the same time, the idea of, for instance, polyethnic rights raises certain
difficulties. What kind of minority groups should get those rights? Is the decision to
grant specific rights based on ethnic, religious or linguistic criteria? How large must
a minority group be to qualify for such rights? Who is the claimant of these rights? Who
eventually grants them? Should a parliament in which minority groups have little or
no representation do this30?

The Second Prerequisite for Civil Society: Socio-economic Factors

The second prerequisite for the viability of civil society is specific socio-economic
factors. Contemporary democratic theorists have stressed various aspects of
modernisation (wealth, education and so on) in their discussion of the conditions
underlying stable and effective democratic government31. The organisational, social
and cultural prerequisites of sustainable democracy largely depend on the society’s
level of economic development32. It seems obvious that effective democracy is closely
associated with socio-economic modernity, both across time and space. We can add
that the institutions we have described as necessary for a constitutional democracy
exist only in countries that also possess a market-oriented economy.
It should be noted, however, that “market capitalism”, as a translation of socio-
economic modernity, does not preclude guarantees of economic justice, standards of
living or welfare-state provisions. These provisions are necessary not only for a viable
liberal constitutional democracy, but also for a thriving civil society.
We are, of course, interested not only in the relation between “democracy” and
“economy”, but also in that between “economy” and “civil society”. A civil society
with the features described above is certainly inconceivable without the institutions
of a liberal constitutional democracy. At the same time, the seemingly obvious notion
that effective democracy is closely associated with socio-economic modernity needs
to be elaborated. Networks of voluntary associations can explain economic
development and performance, as Putnam and Fukuyama have pointed out. The
deeper conclusion is that the performance of democratic institutions is also influenced
by the citizens’ engagement in community affairs33. This leads us to the third
prerequisite for civil society: socio-cultural factors.

The Third Prerequisite for Civil Society: Socio-cultural Factors

It has become clear that procedural-institutional mechanisms, based on the

institutional design of liberal constitutional democracies and a certain level of
economic development, cannot guarantee a viable civil society in present-day
democracies. More is needed if civil society is to intermediate successfully between
the private and the public, the egoistic and altruistic sources of action. This brings us
to the third prerequisite for viable civil society, which is closely connected with the
performance or sustainability of democratic institutions. For a viable civil society,
specific socio-cultural factors must also be present.

34
 The analysis of the role of socio-cultural factors has, of course, a long tradition,
the most illustrious example of which remains de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
In this work de Tocqueville highlights the connection between the mores of a society
and its political practice. Especially important in our context is his assertion that civil
association reinforces the “habits of the heart” which are essential to stable and
effective democratic institutions34.
The vibrancy of associational life, good governance and democracy are therefore
linked. A vigorous civil society enhances not only the accountability, but also the
representativeness and vitality of democracy. A flourishing oppositional civil society
is the key to further democratisation35. Voluntary associations, for instance, constitute
a crucial institutional supplement to democratic political parties36. The performance
of government and other social institutions is powerfully influenced by citizens’
engagement in community affairs37.
A necessary condition for this performance is some level of social capital and
public-spiritedness. Without this, democracies become difficult to govern or unstable,
and civil society cannot flourish. The concept of “social capital” refers to features of
social organisation or social life — networks, norms, social trust — which enable
participants to act together more effectively in pursuit of shared objectives. Social
capital, in short, refers to social connections and the attendant norms and trust38. The
theory of social capital presumes that, generally speaking, the more we connect with
other people, the more we trust them, and vice versa. People who join are people who
trust. In civic communities, individuals become citizens who will act with and trust
others, even when they do not know them personally. Participation in voluntary
associations such as clubs creates social capital in the form of dense networks of civic
engagement that foster sturdy norms of generalised reciprocity and encourage the
emergence of social trust.
To the extent that norms, networks and trust link substantial sectors of the
community and span underlying social cleavages — i.e. to the extent that social
capital is of a “bridging” sort — the enhanced co-operation is likely to serve broader
interests and is to be widely welcomed. Social capital, then, is important for our
relations with others, for the volatility of voluntary associations, for civil society and
— eventually — for a democratic order. Trust is an essential component of social
capital, because trust lubricates co-operation.

Why We Lose Social Capital and Trust

Our central question in analysing the concept of civil society has been to what
degree it can intermediate between the opposing forces of the private and the public,
forces that are a threat to social cohesion and stability. At present, there is a growing
fear that the public-spiritedness of citizens of liberal democracies may be in serious
decline; that these societies are suffering a loss of social capital and trust, and thus
of civil society; that altruism is driven out by egoistic sources of action.
For those who claim that modern Western democracies suffer from a lack or a
loss of civil society, the core problem is the way in which trust, in becoming more
“universal”, has become at the same time more abstract and impersonal. The paradox
of modern democratic society is that its cohesiveness can be rooted only in impersonal
and generalised trust, but that this very universalisation of trust has, at the same time,
undermined the concrete mutuality and the communality upon which trust must be
based39.
We stumble here on the conflicting characteristics of justice and solidarity. For
instance, programmes in welfare states that guarantee a decent standard of living,
based on a conception of a fair and just society, can be interpreted as programmes
based on generalised solidarity. As these programmes work through impersonal

35
 networks, this generalisation is necessarily accompanied by de-personification and
abstract classifications. Solidarity delivered in this manner thus creates its own
contradiction, because the notion of community of need and solidarity implies
solidarity with concrete, identifiable individuals40.
This is clearly an illustration of the following general problem: the greater the
number and diversity of persons in a group, the more universalist norms require
altruism, and yet — at the same time — the weaker the force of altruism. We see here
the antagonism of two crucial concepts: “face to face” trust versus universal rights for
“strangers”41. In Western welfare states, the very abstract and generalised nature of
trust militates against that solidarity upon which civil society must also stand 42.

Building Civil Society

If civil society is indeed important as an intermediating force between the

individual and the social, the question is how to keep it if we have it, how to obtain
it if we do not yet have it or how to get it back if we have lost it. This question is also
of prime importance if we want to know how international co-operation and
development assistance can contribute to building or strengthening civil society
within a specific nation-state, and thus strengthen democratic development.
The problem of building civil society can be discussed from either a society-
oriented or a state-oriented perspective. When the emphasis is on civil society and on
how the interactions within it are the sources of effective government, the assumption
is that local voluntarism is fundamental, the primary cause of all that is healthy in
democratic politics and effective governance, in contrast to the dreaded “bureaucratic
state”.
Such society-centred perspectives appear in the work of Fukuyama and Putnam.
In Fukuyama’s view, the preservation and accumulation of social capital occupies
centre stage. State influence appears to be trivial or negative. In this view, the
centralised state — through over-regulation and reduction of the mediating roles and
influence of intermediate institutions such as the church and the family — destroys
trust and social capital43. For Putnam, state influence is largely extraneous to generating
trust; rather, intermediate associations are the major source of generalised trust.
Democratic institutions must be built up in the everyday traditions of trust and civic
engagement, and are not (or not easily) built from the top down.
Intermediate associations may well play an important role, but it is not clear that
they generate enough social capital and trust to produce the generalised trust that is
a necessary precondition for the working of civil society and liberal constitutional
democracy44. The society-centred perspective seems to be a romantic reconstruction
of de Tocqueville’s ideas, and supposes that voluntary groups spring up de novo from
below, created by individuals in small geographic areas who spontaneously decide
to associate to get things done “outside of” government and politics. In this view, as
Skocpol has argued, social capital appears as something that arises or declines apart
from politics and government45.
The problem with such a society-centred perspective on civil society is that it
treats political patterns and developments (such as the level of trust in government,
and rates of electoral participation or attendance at public meetings) simply as
dependent variables. Citizens are not the only source of social capital, however;
government policy performance can also give rise to social capital and trust. Thus,
investigation of alternative means of producing social capital requires also a state-
oriented perspective46.

36
 The idea that there is a zero-sum transaction in society, that as the state waxes,
other institutions wane, is too simple an interpretation of the relation between state
and society. In fact, the state’s ability to rule effectively may erode as civil society
expands, even when the associations in civil society overtly legitimate the state; and
this erosion, in turn, may make civil society become increasingly uncivil.

Conclusion

It seems clear from this analysis that a liberal democratic state can influence the
creation of a democratic civil society and that only a democratic civil society can
sustain a democratic state. The civility that makes democratic politics possible, with
its shared liberal political values, can be learned only in associational networks; civil
society can constitute a site for democratisation because it can be a space where people
choose to live their public lives and solve their joint problems.
The roughly equal and widely dispersed capabilities that sustain the networks
— i.e. social capital — must be fostered by the democratic state47. One way to foster not
only the shared political values but also social capital is through education, which
has a strong relationship with civic engagement48.
The problem of civil society and of citizenship in the modern world remains the
reconciliation of justice and solidarity, of private interest and public good, of shared
citizenship identity and collective differences, of tolerance and cultural diversity, of
multi-culturalism and integration. The institutionalisation of liberal democratic
citizenship, with as its core the idea of shared political values, is in this analysis an
important step towards resolving this problem.
Social capital is not a substitute for effective public policy but rather a prerequisite
for it and, in part, a consequence of it. Neither bottom-up, nor top-down nor government-
driven solutions are the panacea. The state and civil society can be mutually
reinforcing through their common support for the legitimacy of state rule. Discussion
of “social capital” should not be a debate about “the state” versus “civil society”. Both
are important and each has (empirically speaking) a complicated relationship with
the other49.
The state can never replace civil society, nor civil society the state. The state must
defend the shared political values of a liberal constitutional democracy, where state
and civil society occupy separate realms in the democratic political order, and where
the power to make decisions is based on public accountability. Civil society should
thus be seen as a double-sided phenomenon: we should be concerned, on the one
hand, with the reform of state power along liberal, constitutional, democratic lines
and, on the other, with the (re)structuring of civil society. As Held has noted, this
involves recognising the indispensability of a process of “double democratisation”
which means, in practice, the interdependent transformation of both state and civil
society50.

37
Notes and
References 1. This chapter is a revised version of a keynote address, delivered at the conference
on “Governance in the Euro-Mediterranean Region” organised by the Dutch
government in conjunction with the Dutch presidency of the European Union,
17-18 March 1997, The Hague, The Netherlands.

2. These are the fundamental problems which require the development of a framework
of liberal constitutional democracy, which can be accepted by all citizens who are
to live within it. See Rawls (1996), pp. xxvii, 3-4.

3. See also Seligman (1992), p. 205; Seligman (1993), pp. 158-159.

4. Bryant (1993), p. 396. See also Bryant (1995); Giner (1995), p. 304; Shills (1991), p. 3;
Seligman (1992), pp. 5-6.

5. For these and the following remarks on the idea of civil society, see especially Barber
(1996a) and Barber (1996b) pp. 277-292.

6. See Walzer (1995), p. 163.

7. Giner, (1995), p. 306.

8. Horton (1993), p. 2.

9. See the description of “multination states” and “polyethnic states” in Kymlicka

(1995a), p. 6.

10. For this distinction, see Waters (1990), pp. 4-6.

11. See Parekh (1990) for a discussion of the shortcomings and problems of the
assimilationist (“national”) model in the British situation. Parekh compares this
model with the integrationist (“liberal”) model, but finds that the latter has its own
shortcomings since it does not give public and institutional status to cultural
differences of minorities. With respect to this critique, see also the section “Is Liberal
Toleration Enough?”, in this chapter.

12. Rawls (1971), pp. 221-243.

13. A prime example of a contemporary liberal political theory is that formulated by

Rawls (1996).

14. Dahl (1983), p. 107.

15. Larmore (1996), pp. 121-127.

16. Lehning (1997).

17. This is a consequence of the fact that political liberalism is not a comprehensive
doctrine. It differs sharply from — and rejects — Enlightenment liberalism, which
is a comprehensive doctrine. See Rawls (1996), p. xl.

18. Rawls (1996), p. 151, footnote 16.

19. Przeworski et al. (1995), p. 61.

20. Rawls (1996), p. 195.

21. See Rawls (1996), p. 199, for this role of education. See also the empirical study of Nie
et al. (1996).

22. See also Galeotti (1993), pp. 598-600.

23. See Taylor (1992); Galeotti (1993), p. 595.

24. For an extensive defence of this idea of group-differentiated rights, see Kymlicka
(1995a). See also the collection of articles on the rights of minority cultures in
Kymlicka (1995b).

38
25. For the label “recognition rights” and a more general discussion of Kymlicka’s
distinction of three kinds of group-differentiated rights, see Carens (1997). Kymlicka
now prefers the term “accommodation rights” (Kymlicka, 1997, p. 73).

26. An example of recognition and access by effective representation is the setting aside
of a number of Maori seats in New Zealand’s parliament. Another is that of the
German Land Schleswig-Holstein, where one parliamentary seat is reserved for the
tiny Danish minority. See Dryzek (1996), p. 476.

27. Lijphart (1977, 1984, 1995).

28. On these aspects of separation and secession, see Lehning (1998).

29. See Kymlicka (1995a), p. 194.

30. As Dallmayr has noted, none of these devices is free from problems or possible
abuses; hence, all need to be carefully screened and calibrated to ensure the
democratic character of multi-culturalism. Dallmayr (1996), p. 289.

31. See for instance Dahl (1989).

32. Przeworski et al. (1995) p. 62. For a review of the literature, see also Diamond (1992).

33. See Putnam (1993, 1995a, 1995b). Fukuyama (1995) links trust to economic performance.
Trust cannot be delivered by the economic contract alone: there is a non-contractual
element in all contracts.

34. For an analysis of these “habits of the heart”, see Bellah et al. (1985).

35. “Oppositional” is not, of course, the same as “adversarial”. “Oppositional” voluntary

associations share the framework of the liberal democratic society; “adversarial”
voluntary associations do not.

36. Diamond (1993).

37. See Putnam (1995a, 1995b).

38. This description follows Putnam (1993a). Putnam, in turn, bases the concept of “social
capital” on Coleman (1988).

39. Seligman (1992), p. 194.

40. See Benhabib (1986), pp. 340-43.

41. One could interpret this as the antagonism between communitarian political
theorising and the theory of political liberalism. For a recent communitarian
perspective on these problems, see Etzioni (1996).

42. Seligman (1992), p. 196.

43. According to Fukuyama (1995), social capital “is like a ratchet that is more easily
turned in one direction than another; it can be dissipated by the actions of governments
much more readily than those governments can build it up again” (p. 326). Although
the government can play only a small role in nurturing the formation of social
capital, government policies can and do affect the level of social capital. Careful
design of governmental institutions may be able to reverse the ratchet which,
according to Fukuyama, has driven social capital out. See Schneider et al. (1997), p. 91.

44. For a critique of Putnam’s empirical conclusions, see Levi (1996); Norris (1996);
Skocpol (1996); Tarrow (1996).

45. See Skocpol’s (1996) critique of Putnam (1993b).

46. This is not to say that public policy has never had negative effects on the formation
of social capital. In some well-known instances, e.g. slum clearances, public policy
has destroyed highly effective social networks and norms. See also Putnam (1995a),
p. 76.

39
 47. In this perspective, Walzer (1991) sees state-sponsored association as an antidote to
a rampant individualism which is producing “dissociated individuals”. In the United
States, at least, he believes conditions have deteriorated to the extent that “it makes
sense to call the state to the rescue of civil society”, (p. 125). See also Walzer (1997)
pp. 111-112.

48. Putnam (1995b, p. 667) identifies education as having a strong relationship with his
measure of civic engagement. See also Schneider et al. (1997), for the effects which
institutional arrangements governing the delivery of education by local governments
may have on the formation of social capital.

49. See also Putnam (1996), pp. 26-28. According to Dahrendorf (1990), “[b]oth are
needed, civil society and the state, but they each have their own raison d’être and their
own autonomous reality”, p. 96.

50. The aim would be progressively to equalise the power of men and women, and
thereby their capacity to act in political and social life, i.e. to acquire full liberal
democratic citizenship (Held, 1993), p. 24.

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Citizenship and Social Theory, Sage Publications, London.

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the “Politics of Recognition”, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

WALZER, M. (1991), “Constitutional Rights and the Shape of Civil Society”, in R.E. Calvert
(ed.), The Constitution of the People: Reflections on Citizens and Civil Society, University
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WALZER, M. (1995), “The Civil Society Argument”, in R. BEINER (ed.), Theorizing Citizenship,
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WALZER, M. (1997), On Toleration, Yale University Press, New Haven and London.

WATERS, M.C. (1990), Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America, University of California
Press, Berkeley.

42
 Shaping Civil Society
Axel Hadenius and Fredrik Uggla1

Introduction

Donor interest in civil society has increased over the last decade, for a number
of reasons: NGOs are seen as more efficient and reliable sources for foreign aid; this
perception has been coupled with a growing mistrust of the “developmental state”
(Moore, 1995); aid to and through civil society has been seen as a way to escape the
inefficiency of the state as well as the inequality of the market.
A great deal of confusion persists as to the exact definition and implications of
civil society and related concepts, such as “civic community”, “social capital” and
a myriad of acronyms (NGO, CSO, GRO, etc.). Theoretical discussion has yet to reach
a consensus on a definition of civil society. While some scholars see civil society as
the social area between the closed family group and the state, others claim that actors
in the market should be excluded, and still others assert that civil society must be
assessed from its theoretical foundations in Hobbes, de Tocqueville, Hegel or Durkheim.
In this chapter, we will not concern ourselves with formal definitions, but rather
will seek to provide a framework for discussion about donor possibilities in this
regard. Starting from a discussion of what we expect from civil society, we will inquire
into what may contribute to such favourable outcomes, and attempt to discern some
possibilities and pitfalls for external agents such as donor agencies. We will not
present a coherent and comprehensive theory, but rather some sketches that highlight
our main points. Furthermore, the chapter is not built on extensive study of particular
cases, but uses empirical examples only to illustrate our account.

The Beauty of Civil Society

In the literature on civil society, it is often maintained that a vigorous civil sphere
is an essential pre-condition for a functioning political democracy. The nature of civil
life, according to this argument, affects the nature of political life (see e.g. Hall, 1995).
We will begin by trying to clarify the relationships that are then (often just implicitly)
held to exist. More precisely, we intend, first, to point out the possible mechanisms of
influence between civil society and political life and, second, to identify the
characteristics of civil society which could be expected to have a positive bearing on
political democracy (cf. Levi, 1996).
In addressing these problems, it seems appropriate to take the broader concept
of social capital as our point of departure. This concept refers to various forms of
linkages or bonds that hold people together. In other words, social capital is a
collective entity: it is the “cement” that makes individuals part of a group or a

43
 community (Coleman, 1990; Putnam, 1993). Basically, these bonds can be of two
types. The first has to do with norms of reciprocity and trust between people. This
implies that we share a certain identity with a specific circle of people and that we
thereby have a sense of solidarity with and responsibility to the group in question.
This mode of social capital thus designates certain attitudes and values that tie people
together. Here we may speak of a community of an affective or cultural trait.
Another, more concrete side of social capital has to do with ties of a manifest,
formal character. These institutionalised networks of interaction are normally our
points of reference when we talk about civil society. More specifically, we refer to a
certain kind of formal interpersonal linkages, namely the popular organisations
established outside the “primary” family units. Here the term “civil society” denotes
various kinds of associations of a “secondary” nature, operating as intermediary
linkages in the sphere between the family and the state (Hadenius and Uggla, 1996,
p. 1621).
Why is the quality of the associational sphere judged to be of such importance
for the well-being of political democracy? Civil society is believed to serve as a vital
source of strength for democratic political practices. Popular organisations provide
people with certain attributes that make them better equipped to function as political
citizens. We can discern three forms of influence through which associational life, by
enhancing the democratic capacity of citizens, could affect the quality of political life:
– External effects. Associational linkages can be seen as collective political resources.
The existence of such routinised modes of interaction makes it easier for people
to co-ordinate their actions and hence to bring pressure to bear on external
actors, whether they be other groups or the state. This capacity relates to a
pluralist view of politics, to the notion that people gain strength by developing
instruments for concerted action. Organisational capacity has been singled out
as the key to enhancing the power of the powerless (Verba, Nye and Kim, 1978).
– Internal effects. Here we refer to the processes of socialisation and skill
enhancement which organisational involvement may entail. Repeated
interaction with other people confronts us with different views and ways of life.
Such experiences tend to make us more tolerant and understanding of the norms
and beliefs of others. In this way, organisational collaboration may serve as a
means of integrating the individuals involved and developing a sense of
identity and fellowship among them. In addition, practices explored by the men
and women who run these associations nurture the extension of certain
procedural norms and the advancement of organisational skills. Through a
process of learning by doing, such actors internalise and participate in the
“rules of game”, and they become experienced in performing the various
administrative tasks that keep the organisation going. The importance of such
educational effects has been emphasised in particular by de Tocqueville ([1835]
1994), who considered that associational life could, under favourable conditions,
serve as a school of democratic performance.
– Spillover effects. Given the external and internal consequences of organisational
engagement, it is assumed that these capabilities can be transformed from one
sector of society to another. This can take place by means of diffusion
(i.e. through the power of example) or as a result of organisational activists’
bringing their experiences with them to other fields of operation. The seeds of
social capital can thus strike roots and flourish in new soil. In the mind of de
Tocqueville, this nurturing effect of involvement in civil society is the keystone
of democratic politics: people develop practices in the private sphere which
enable them to play the roles of political citizenship. As an example, we may
mention the famous Grameen Bank, a rural bank in Bangladesh that actively
pursues group formation and capacity building. In addition to providing credit
to the rural population, it has helped to erode clientelism and nearly to double
the number of women who vote (Rahman and Wahid, 1992; Fuglesang and

44
 Chandler, n.d.). As Putnam (Putnam, 1993) reminds us, such qualities can also
be stored and preserved over long periods of time. A group (or in Putnam’s case
a region) which has once developed associative skills can maintain this
collective asset and — when the institutional windows of opportunity are
reopened — can make practical use of it again (see also Fox, 1996). Thus, the
effects of associational life can spill over between groups and between different
sectors of human activity, and can also transform social capital from one period
of time to another. The same phenomenon was reported by Hirschman (1984)
in his study of grassroots organisations in Latin America, where he noted that
previous organisational experience tended to stimulate new efforts in the same
direction.
Civil society thus appears as a necessity for the efficient functioning of a political
and administrative system, as it equips citizens with the social capacity to unite and
co-operate for common purposes. In addition, Fukuyama (1995) has presented
evidence that points to the beneficial economic effects of social capital. Fukuyama
attempts to explain the different performances of economies around the world. The
differences found, he argues, can to a great degree be attributed to the different social
systems upon which each economy is constructed. Where social norms of trust,
collaboration and spontaneous sociability prevail, economies tend to function better,
since co-operation is easier and transaction costs lower. Thus, social capital can
improve not only political performance but also economic performance.
Finally, we may cite a UNDP report that argues strongly for the need to consider
social capital in development projects. As the authors note, “Without social capital,
the other forms of capital cannot be maintained or used properly” (Banuri et al., 1994).
The existence of social capital thus appears as a pre-condition for the proper
functioning of any economic, political or social system.
Vigorous civil life cannot always be expected to have positive consequences for
democracy. On the contrary, we could easily point out a number of associational
activities which — if they were widespread — would in all probability have detrimental
effects, e.g. organisations with a criminal orientation (like the mafia) or racial
caucuses (such as the Ku Klux Klan or the Rwandan Hutu militia). Clearly, not all
forms of civil society are “beautiful”. Only civil associations of a specific kind can be
assumed to have a positive bearing on democracy2. In our view, the following qualities
of civil organisations should be taken into account.
1) Autonomy. To fulfil their pluralist function of representing ordinary citizens,
popular organisations must be largely independent of the state authorities and
other power centres in society. In the view of Gellner (1994), this requirement
stands out as the determining criterion of civil society. In concrete terms, this
means that organisations must i) be free to formulate their own policy agendas,
ii) command essential economic and administrative resources and iii) be able
to control the process of selecting their own leaders (Hadenius, 1996).
2) Organisational upgrading. Organisational development should not be limited to
local communities. If organisations are to serve as a means of exerting popular
influence, intermediate structures — combining activities at the regional and
national levels — should be constructed (Fox, 1996). Such structures can fulfil
two purposes: first, uniting in national coalitions and social movements may
enhance the power and influence of individual organisations, while conserving
their closeness to the people and personal relationships (Tarrow, 1994); second,
it has been suggested that such structures may actually offset the risks of
oligarchy inherent in every organisation, by offering different levels of
participation and balancing different elites against each other (Fox, 1992;
Lipset, Trow and Coleman, 1962; for the risks of oligarchic domination, see
Michels [1915], 1983).

45
 3) Inclusion. Although we have said that associations should be autonomous from
the state and in command of their own affairs, this does not mean that they
should be entirely separated from the public sphere. On the contrary, linkages
between the civil and public arenas are highly desirable in a democratic setting.
They naturally open routes of influence for the associations, which in turn
seems to increase the attractiveness of joining the units in question (Hadenius
and Uggla, 1996). Moreover, such connections strengthen political actors,
especially the political parties, which are thus provided with linkages out to
society (Kohli, 1990). The relationship between civil society and political parties
will be further examined below.
4) Inter-segmental affiliation. In accomplishing their integrative function,
organisations should be open to members from different segments of society. In
this way, associational involvement may counteract the tendency to reinforce
homogeneous (and outwardly hostile) group identities. Ideally, people should
be linked to a number of different associations. Such multiple affiliations, and
the process of cross-influence which is believed to result, are held to stimulate
a general sense of tolerance and understanding in society (Lipset, 1960).
5) Internal democratic structure. To function as a “school for democratic instruction”,
the organisations should themselves be democratically structured. This
presupposes the application of procedures for holding the leadership responsible
and for voting it out of office. It also implies the existence of arenas of interaction
among members and channels for influencing the association’s operations
(Fox, 1994). One may ask whether it is not paradoxical to demand democracy
from a struggling organisation, and whether this puts its efficiency at risk. From
a theoretical point of view this argument can be made, but only if we focus
entirely on the role of civil society with respect to other agents. An elite-led
organisation may be successful in its external activities, but is unlikely to
construct social capital. Furthermore, a comprehensive study of local
organisations in developing countries found that more participatory forms of
decision actually tended to enhance organisational efficiency (Esman and
Uphoff, 1984).
6) Horizontal affiliation. The question here is with whom — in terms of power,
position and socio-economic status — one is to associate. If we join associations
formed of people of our own sort, a horizontal pattern is formed (this is normally
the case in trade unions and peasant associations). In a vertical pattern, by
contrast, people join associational networks dominated by elite figures and
must constantly play the role of subordinates. As is pointed out by Putnam
(1993), the basic advantage of the horizontal mode of combining is that in this
case the ordinary member stands a better chance of influencing the organisation
in question and of benefiting from its operations.
These criteria should be read as a list of ideal conditions. If they are met to a
substantial degree, there is reason to believe that civil society will have a stimulating
impact on political democracy. In the real world, however, these conditions are
usually only partly met and, in developing countries, only a few, if any, tend to be met.
Nevertheless, seen as a yardstick of potential evolution, these favourable conditions
are worth observing even in a developing country context. We must realise, however,
that progress along these lines is not easily achieved. Democratic advancement in the
realm of civil society can take place only in a gradual and slow manner. Establishing
social capital is a time-consuming process but, if it is achieved to some important
extent, it tends to pay off for long periods of time.
The numbering of the criteria above may be taken as a rough indication of
priority. In an authoritarian context, where restraints are placed on associational
activities, attaining some degree of autonomy for civic units and the upgrading (or
upholding) of intermediate organisational structures can be regarded as the most
urgent tasks. Even at the early stage of democratisation, these objectives stand out as
the most pressing ones. Eventually, when institutional conditions have become less
46
hostile, items further down the list may become realistic targets. Priority among the
latter set of criteria would vary from country to country, depending on the problems
(from a democratic point of view) prevailing in each.

The Need for Political Parties

Recent theoretical discourse has often focused on the apolitical nature of civil
society. Indeed, the very definition of civil society stems from its autonomy from the
state, and this has often come to signify autonomy from the political sphere as well
(e.g. Blair, 1994). In this view, linkage to political parties is sometimes seen as harmful
for the organisations of civil society.
Given the nature of the political system in most developing countries, this view
appears quite justified, but recent research has pointed out the importance of a well-
functioning party system for civil society. This research argues that the political
system — which many theoreticians writing about civil society have barely
mentioned — is crucial if civil society is to have beneficial effects (Foley and
Edwards, 1996). The emphasis on autonomy from politics has come not only from
analysts but also from social movements themselves; however, recent evidence from
Latin America and Eastern Europe indicates that this emphasis has deprived these
movements of political influence after the transition to democracy (Adler
Hellman, 1992; Smolar, 1996; Oxhorn, 1995). To take an older historical example,
Berman (1997) demonstrates that although civil society under the Weimar Republic
was highly developed, the party system was highly exclusionary with respect to these
movements, which let them become a breeding ground for the Nazis. Berman
concludes: “...associationism should be considered a politically neutral multiplier
— neither inherently good nor inherently bad, but rather dependent for its effects on
the wider political context” (p. 427).
To these observations we may add that civil society in a number of countries has
declined in strength after the transition to democracy (Smolar, 1996; Oxhorn, 1995;
James and Caliguire, 1996). There are certainly many explanations for this paradoxical
and troubling fact, such as the sudden decline in external funds after transition, and
the fact that organisations tend to be beheaded as leaders are drawn into the new
administrations. What is equally if not more important, however, is that the transition
to democracy implies an identity crisis for the organisations of the former opposition.
Often born out of the struggle against the state, they must adapt to a new framework
in which the state is no longer a pole of opposition but a potential partner. This creates
problems of image and strategy for many organisations. Actions that are valid against
a dictatorship may prove less useful in a democracy, where the state has at least a
certain legitimacy. At times, the struggle must leave the street to sit at a negotiating
table.
In a representative democracy, this is the work of political parties. Although
parties cannot substitute for civil society’s potential to build social capital, offer an
arena for independent action and provide means for horizontal collaboration, they
are nevertheless important for the functioning of civil society in a number of ways.
Parties channel demands in the political system. As such they act as intermediaries
between civil society and the state, and provide access for the former to the latter
(Mainwaring and Scully, 1995). Furthermore, they may negotiate these demands and
grievances from an encompassing perspective. They thus play a very special role in
politics, through their ability to weigh different solutions and to integrate the
multitude of conflicting demands from society into workable packages (Sartori, 1976).
Finally, they may have the important function of co-ordinating the activities of
associations from different social spheres. In a democracy, the representative and
integrative role performed by the party system is the functional substitute for Hobbes’
Leviathan, i.e. the institutional filter that (by means of its capacity for co-ordination)
prevents the outburst of an anarchic “state of nature”.

47
 In all this, political parties function as a link between civil society and the state.
Oxhorn (1995) has pointed to the absence of functioning party systems as one of the
main difficulties in forging new state-society relations in Latin America, and the
present authors’ own research tends to echo this claim. This finding can probably be
generalised to other recently democratised states as well. Without an integrative party
system, relations between civil society and the state will become more difficult, at times
framed in various corporative arrangements, or even lacking stable institutions. If so,
democracy may become destabilised or threatened by movements that despise the
representative system, as the mobilisation of civil society bypasses the democratic
institutions (Huntington, 1968; see also Berman, 1997, cited above). Similarly, a
study of the problems of contemporary India notes that: “These two trends — the
growing democratisation of traditional power relations in civil society, and the failure
to create a rational basis for generating new leadership through formal political
institutions — are at the heart of the increasing authority vacuum in Indian politics”
(Kohli, 1990, p. 385). This, in turn, leads to a crisis in governability and to increased
leverage for violence and demagoguery.
The problem lies in the possible trade-off between two of the criteria listed above:
autonomy and inclusion. Although close relations with a political party may
circumvent the autonomy of any organisation, such relations may be necessary for
organisations to achieve inclusion in the political system.
We must also note that political parties and civil society can never substitute for
each other. Each has its own importance in the functioning of a stable democracy, and
neither can be discarded (Gorlier, 1992). It is clear, moreover, that not all political
parties will perform the role that we here attribute to the party system. More often than
not, political parties in developing countries are elitist, populist and/or without
stable relations to the organisations of civil society. Thus, while some parties facilitate
the expansion of civil society, others may outright hinder it. Let us consider two
examples.
Until World War II, the Argentine labour movement was, despite its relative
strength, largely left out of politics. This was due to the power of the oligarchic elite,
but also to the prevailing syndicalist ideology of the movement’s own leaders. After
the coup d’état in 1943, the new Minister of Labour, Juan Perón, set out to build his
power base precisely from organised labour. It was the right time, as labour leaders
had begun to look for paths into the political system, although they were still reluctant
to give up their autonomy (Torre, 1990). This constituted a trade-off, however, as
Perón offered access in exchange for control over the movement — an option that
ultimately prevailed. Thus, the labour movement was co-opted by Perón and became
his “vehicle of personal support” (Collier and Collier, 1991). This certainly brought
numerous material benefits to the movement, but it subordinated labour to Perón’s
own political projects (Torre, 1990).
For a different experience, let us consider Brazil, where grassroots activists
(mainly unionists) have formed the leftist PT. Although we do not want to idealise this
party, it clearly represents a new pattern in Latin American politics, being “one of the
few parties in which social movements have an organic link with the party organisation
through the so-called base groups” (D’Alva Kinzo, 1992, p. 13). This linkage builds
on “…committed activists, extensive grassroots participation, and a considerable
party discipline” (Mainwaring, 1995, p. 369). The PT is thus an example of a party
with a bottom-up structure, strong linkage to social movements and a potential to
bridge the gap between the social and the political spheres3. Although the party has
not fulfilled all the expectations to which it gave rise, it certainly has introduced a new
element into Brazilian politics — that of a reformist, social democratic option
(Castañeda, 1994). As such it offers civil society an alternative to auto-exclusion,
revolutionary romanticism or the traditional populist politics. We can find a similar
example in Mexico’s FDN/PRD, which builds on the evolution of grassroots
organisations to present an alternative to the hegemony of the PRI, reportedly with
no loss of power for the participating organisations (Adler Hellman, 1992).

48
 These three cases hold obvious similarities, in that previously excluded social
movements entered the political sphere through new political parties. The difference
lies in the effects of this inclusion on the autonomy of these civil groups. In Argentina,
the labour movement was co-opted and traded its independence for political inclusion,
but this appears not to have been the case in Brazil and Mexico. This difference can
be attributed to a number of factors, among them the nature of the organisations and
the mode of relations between political party and civil movements. Another crucial
difference is whether the direction in those relationships comes from above or below4.
In these and numerous other examples, we find that in the absence of a party
system that integrates the associations of civil society, the latter may be increasingly
bypassed in the political game or may become an easy prey for populist movements.
Political parties thus seem to a great extent to shape the political arena for civil society,
and must be taken into consideration by donors attempting to foster the emergence
of the latter. The trade-off between autonomy and inclusion can reach very different
outcomes, depending on the nature of the relationship between party and movement
and the internal structure of each.

Institutions and Civil Society

In his study of democratic governance in Italy, Putnam (Putnam, 1993) found

that state administration at the regional level worked much better in certain regions
than in others; roughly speaking, it was a divide between north and south. This
contrast was in turn closely related to differences in civic engagement in the two parts
of the country. In the northern regions, people were actively enrolled in democracy-
promoting networks of social interaction, which generally was not the case in the
south. He therefore explained the observed differences by the fact that the north
possessed the civil society generally lacking in the south.
How had this difference in civic engagement come about? The answer, as
Putnam demonstrated, could be found in the different institutional legacies prevailing
in the two parts of Italy. The north has a long history of open and plural politics,
whereas the south for many centuries has suffered from authoritarian and highly
centralised modes of government. In the north, institutional patterns have set the stage
for a flourishing and democratically operating civil society; in the south, the
predominant institutional structure has placed a strong constraint on the evolution
of a democratically functioning civil sphere.
We can see the imprints of a recursive mode of causality here. The way
institutions operate, from a democratic point of view, is determined by the nature of
civil society. In the long term, however, civil society is modelled by the broad
institutional context that prevails. Just as the surrounding organisational setting
patterns the behaviour of individuals (as we have learned from Herbert Simon), so
associational life is affected by the way that the overall institutional system operates.
Just as the discourse on civil society frames the political power of individuals in social
relations, civil society is itself shaped by the institutional framework, and state
institutions may provide incentives (or disincentives) for associational development.
In considering support to civil society, accordingly, there is good reason to take the
institutional side of the matter into account.

Official Institutions Which May Act in Support of Civil Society

The state may, in some cases, create favourable circumstances for the emergence
of civil society even when it provides no direct support to associations. We shall first
note that direct support can take on many guises: transferring some tasks to particular
organisations, giving them direct benefits or simply recognising an organisation as

49
 a valid counterpart. The risks which such support entails for the autonomy of
associational life are obvious. If certain associations become dependent upon the state
for recognition, benefits and/or tasks, they can be expected not to fulfil their roles as
counterweights to the state. (They may do so nevertheless, of course, but only under
peculiar circumstances.)
There is probably less risk of co-option when state action in support of civil
society is limited to providing favourable institutions. An institutional structure
supportive of independent associations benefits nearly all organisations, the exceptions
being those which refuse all relations with the state. Such arrangements can therefore
be considered as public goods.
How, then, can the state favour civil society? We can begin by noting that the
formation of an organisation entails costs for the participants. These consist in the
amount of effort dedicated to supervision, regulation, settling conflicts, relating to
official institutions and so on. In a repressive environment, these costs may be very
high, since participants risk harassment or violence. Under other circumstances, they
may be lower but still exceed the potential benefits. It is still possible to organise under
these conditions, but probably only when members share norms and a sense of
community, i.e. when social capital already exists. State action may increase these
costs (by repressive measures, an unresponsive bureaucracy, etc.) or lower them5.
After reviewing a number of cases in which independent grassroots associations were
formed to administer common resources, Ostrom (1990) concludes: “Individuals who
are not able to supply new rules [for the formation of an association] in an indifferent
setting may succeed in adopting new rules under a political regime that allows local
autonomy, invests in enforcement agencies, and provides generalised institutional-
choice and conflict-resolution arenas. In other words, regional and national
governments can play an positive role in providing facilities to enhance the ability of
local appropriators to engage in effective institutional design” (p. 212).
Above all, states must recognise the right to independent association. If this is
not the case, none of the positive institutions outlined below can be expected to
function. Only under a political democracy can we hope that state structures will
improve the conditions of civil society. Fortunately, more countries than ever before
are today establishing these democratic state practices.
Ostrom suggests a number of particular official institutions that may be of help
in civil society formation. We will discuss them in turn:
– Local autonomy, or decentralisation, provides civil society both with an arena
for action and with channels for relations with the state (Crook and Manor, 1994).
Regarding the first point, we find that decentralisation in many cases opens up
an area for organisations to emerge and come forward as legitimate actors. It is
therefore commonly seen as promoting popular participation (Tordoff, 1994).
Second, since many organisations in civil society are locally based, state
structures that reflect this distribution may prove more responsive to their
demands (Canel, 1992). Decentralisation thus changes the “political opportunity
structure” in a way which can have positive effects for civil society
(Tarrow, 1994)6.
– The existence of enforcement agencies provides civil society with a slightly
different kind of benefit. The establishment of an organisation entails costs
associated with internal enforcement, monitoring and imposition of sanctions.
Basically, this has to do with the problem of “free-riding”, i.e. what to do with
a participant that reaps benefits from a project without contributing to the costs.
If a state agency, such as a court, can be expected to deal fairly with these matters,
the participants can thereby externalise these costs. Mechanisms for institutional
choice and conflict resolution work in the same way. A study of Asian irrigation
projects highlighted these features and noted that state enforcement of collective
decisions “…would help farmers help themselves” (Burns, 1993, p. 1846).

50
 Similarly, Esman and Uphoff (1984) have described how the possibility of
invoking government sanctions against loan defaulters boosted the membership
of a Mexican farmers’ organisation. Clark (1995) has even gone so far as to
propose state regulation and supervision in order to avoid abusive practices
and corruption within independent organisations. He recognises, however,
that caution is needed, as such active state involvement in the internal life of civil
society may turn into a kind of government control.
To these we may add some other institutions that appear fundamental for civil
society. One is the establishment of the rule of law (Evans, 1996). If this principle is
not upheld, independent organisations cannot expect to receive just treatment from
state officials. In contrast, if officials act in a predictable and even-handed manner,
this may provide another channel for the organisations in civil society. Working
through the court system becomes an option, as has been shown in a number of cases
concerning environmental organisations (Clark, 1991; Swain, 1996). A bureaucracy
and a legal system that operate according to a universalistic ethic thus provide
favourable conditions for civil society (Esman and Uphoff, 1984, pp. 273ff).
Unfortunately, the nature of the state in most developing countries has
traditionally been the opposite of what has just been outlined. The state and the modes
of political relations have been adverse to the emergence of civil society (Gyimah-
Boadi, 1996; Fals Borda, 1992). This should not, however, lead us to discard the state
entirely as a possibly benevolent agent. State reform is in progress in many countries,
aimed at what is often referred to as “good governance”. This term can also be used
as a generic term for the measures outlined above. We thus conclude that efforts to
strengthen civil society actually may go hand in hand with reforms to strengthen the
state7. What we look for is a state that relies on a kind of “embedded autonomy”, in
the sense that it reinforces its administrative capacity without losing its contacts with
society (Evans, 1995). The fates of state and society are tied together: projects that aim
at transforming the state are also likely to affect social change.

Implications for Donors

In this view, support for civil society and good governance go hand in hand. As
we noted above, a basic finding of current theory on civil society is that a society
possessing a multitude of organisations may enhance the efficiency of the state
apparatus. Therefore, the relationship should not a priori be seen as conflictual, but
may under certain circumstances be synergistic (Evans, 1996). This obviously holds
wide implications for donor agencies. When discussing civil society and support for
individual organisations, donors must consider a number of other possibilities. A
focus on independent organisations is one way to strengthen civil society, but not the
only way. Indeed, such attempts may be doomed if they do not consider existing
institutions (Howes, 1997). Moreover, aiming aid efforts at the general conditions
faced by civil society in a given country, although it is more difficult, may be more
rewarding than a focus on particular organisations. Instead of direct help in
organising, this would amount to a kind of “infrastructural help” in providing
conditions more favourable to popular, horizontal organisation and co-operation. As
Esman and Uphoff noted more than a decade ago: “No strategy to strengthen local
organisations in support of rural development can avoid or bypass reform of the
instruments of public administration through which the state relates to local publics”
(1984, p. 273).
Such favourable conditions should probably be seen as public goods, in the
sense that they can benefit a much greater number of organisations than direct
support can ever hope to reach. The very idea of civil society pre-supposes a multitude
of organisations, and donors can hope to reach only a portion of these through
support to particular organisations. In contrast, an administrative reform that, for

51
 example, restructures the judiciary system to render it more responsive and just, may
provide all independent organisations with better conditions to carry out their work.
It may thus substantially lower the costs involved in independent organisation, and
this might trigger a much greater evolution of civil associations (Ostrom, 1990).
It may therefore not be too far-fetched to consider support for such an enabling
environment as potentially more useful for civil society than direct support (Holmén
and Jirström, 1996). Moreover, such support will not always be an undesirable
strategy from the viewpoint of particular organisations. In describing the demands
from Tanzanian civil society on the state, Tripp (1992) noted that these were focused
not so much on delivery of goods, but rather “...on getting the state to extricate itself
from society and strengthening its role as a facilitator of independent activities”.
Insofar as such aid enhances the indigenous possibilities for organisation and
provides greater opportunities for initiative from below, it may also limit the risks of
dependence on foreign aid and thereby increase the sustainability of the organisations
in civil society.
Donors should thus consider the institutional circumstances that shape civil
society. These may be described as informal or formal. Informal institutions
— cultural habits, norms, traditions and so on — can be changed only with the
greatest difficulty. In contrast, formal institutions — laws, constitutions,
administrative guidelines, state agencies and so on — are probably easier for a donor
to influence and change. Such reform efforts may be undertaken through a number
of methods, from applying pressure for respect for the right to association to educating
bureaucrats. Other important measures would include help in establishing a valid
legal framework and information about the obligations and duties of state officials.
In addition to official institutions, we should take into account some other
formal institutions that weigh heavily on civil society’s ability to perform its democratic
functions. As argued above, one of these is the party system. Aid efforts in this field
face special problems, as support for particular parties can be taken as involvement
in national politics. Still, some donor efforts have been made in this area, and the
Swedish International Development Agency is currently undertaking a pilot project
(in a way similar to the German system) to channel this aid through Swedish parties.
Efforts could be made to forge contacts between organisations in civil society and
political parties, as well as to support the internal democracy of the latter.
Another important institution is the media. Pluralist media can provide civil
society with a channel to express demands and grievances, can diffuse information
about positive experiences and, generally, can provide an important arena for the
organisations of civil society.
This perspective on the need to couple support for civil society with institutional
reform entails some further considerations. First, detailed assessment of the prospects
and problems in each nation is vital to determining how aid efforts may be used more
efficiently (Hydén, 1995; Clark, 1995). Such an assessment should consider the
nature of organisational life in the community, but also the formal and informal
institutions that facilitate or hinder the development of a viable civil society. Second,
efforts to support civil society would clearly benefit from greater co-ordination, at both
the national and the multilateral levels. In this respect, the Swedish strategy of
channelling support to independent organisations through Swedish NGOs has been
repeatedly criticised (Riddell et al., 1995; Holmén and Jirström, 1996). While not
denying that these NGOs often have good connections, are innovative and appear to
be embedded in the local environment (all factors that contribute to making them
successful in supporting local civil society), these critiques focus on the NGOs’ lack
of a broader strategy, and question the effects of their assistance on national
development. Once again, we see the argument that support for civil society must not
be limited to working with particular independent organisations, but must also
consider these organisations’ prospects and problems in the prevailing institutional
environment.

52
 These last points should be qualified. Working with civil society and NGOs also
requires keen attention to the particularities of individual projects. Unlike infrastructure
or human capital, civil society and social capital are not likely to benefit from patent
solutions. Support for civil society must rely instead on local conditions and indigenous
initiative (Banuri et al., 1994). Therefore, the call for more co-ordination and a broader
perspective should not lead us to advocate universal solutions, supposedly applicable
to each and every environment. We must also remember that institution building is
a difficult task in comparison with other development efforts; numerous studies have
shown that projects with this aim are much more prone to failure and inefficiency than
projects in other areas (Moore, 1995, p. 35). Given the nature of the problems, this
should come as no surprise. Nevertheless, we should bear in mind the potentially
great rewards of this kind of support.

Conclusions

This chapter has outlined a theoretical foundation for a discussion concerning

civil society. We have supposed that civil society cannot a priori be considered as
beneficial. Under various circumstances, organisations in civil society may not fulfil,
or may even contradict, our expectation that they will generate positive effects.
Therefore, we must take into account both the internal characteristics of individual
organisations and the external conditions that influence them. Among the latter we
have discussed the roles of political parties and state institutions. This leads us to
conclude that external donors must, in supporting civil society, take these factors into
account and should consider aid to them as a potential way to foster civil society.

Notes and
1. Uggla’s contribution to this paper derives in part from a previous report to the References
Swedish International Development Agency.

2. This qualification links up with the notion of “civicness” launched by Putnam (1993).
This concept depicts organisational life as furthering democracy, but the evaluatory
criteria are left fairly open.

3. We do not wish to romanticise the PT. As Mainwaring (1995) notes, certain members
have sectarian traits and do not appear overly pleased with “formal” democracy.
Still, in its organisation we see new elements that do appear favourable.

4. It could be argued that the PT and the PRD have remained autonomous only because
neither has yet reached state power. We have no report, however, that they have been
co-opted when either of them has captured municipal government.

5. Note that the state is not the only agent which imposes costs. These may also stem
from existing norms and tradition, local power-holders, and so on.

6. On the other hand, decentralisation may, in some cases, provide local bosses with
the possibility of enforcing their rule. This unfortunate situation has been reported
from Brazil, in which the federal structure has “[strengthened] regional political
oligarchies by restoring to them the resources with which to grease their political
machines” (Hagopian, 1992, p. 274).

7. An obvious objection is that group pressure will instead damage state efficiency. This
is the argument of Mancur Olson. Where we see civil society, he saw a number of
organised interests that compete for state resources, with the ultimate result being
decreased efficiency and stagnation (Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, cited in
Putnam, 1993). One of the few responses to this troubling argument is Fukuyama’s
reminder that we must weigh the positive effects of civil society against the negative
effects from lobbying and pressure (1995).

53
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56
 Civil Society and Global Governance:
Globalisation and the Transformation of Politics
Kees Breed

The Renewed Interest in Civil Society

In recent years, attention to the concept of civil society has been growing steadily.
This is a world-wide phenomenon, although the debate has a specific character in
different regions. At the same time, the character of civil society itself has been subject
to transformation.
– The role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and networks (seen as
representative of civil society) is not discussed only in terms of their effectiveness
and efficiency in advancing economic and social development, but also — and
increasingly — in terms of their contributions to stimulating democratic change
and stability (see e.g. Hadenius and Uggla, 1996).
– Relations between NGOs and the state are no longer necessarily antagonistic.
Today, the perspective of a more co-operative relationship and of mutual
recognition that the two spheres are complementary has become a challenging
possibility to be considered by both NGOs and representatives of the state.
– Where political scientists and development economists have been struggling for
many years with the question of how to attain a proper balance between the state
and the market, the importance of an autonomous civil society as a “third cell”
has become an explicit and relevant part of the debate (see e.g. Lehning, 1997).
Such developments can be seen as a direct consequence of, among other factors,
the new global realities resulting from the end of the cold war. The perspectives for
democracy have improved not only in the former socialist countries but also in
countries formerly under authoritarian rule which were considered part of the
Western sphere of influence. Previously, conflicts of a national and even local scope
were almost invariably perceived (rightly or wrongly) in terms of the world-wide
power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, and hence almost
automatically took on an antagonistic character. Nowadays, conflicts are more
properly perceived within their specific regional, national or local contexts. Contending
interests, views and parties can be analysed in more detail and valued with more
respect. This provides us with the possibility, and ideological space, to look for new
ideas, pragmatic solutions and specific answers under concrete circumstances. At the
same time, the development of local ideas may, through interactive bottom-up
learning processes, pave the way for new ideas and concepts of a more general and
abstract nature.

57
 In general, arguments for “more market” or “more state” are no longer
automatically seen as ideological support for one of the two global camps (capitalism
or socialism), and arguments that include a possible third approach (such as the
strengthening of civil society) are not labelled immediately as vague, hybrid views to
be placed “somewhere in between”, or as some form of support for one of the two
dominant ideologies. The potential role of civil society in the shaping of a new world
order can now be analysed from a fresh perspective.

Civil Society and Social Cohesion

Some analysts, notably Fukuyama, have claimed that the end of the Cold War
marked the end of history. It is probably more true to say that history has been freed
from a frozen state in which it was artificially kept for decades, and that it can take
its own lively course again.
The first result of this “thaw” was the rapid expansion of the free world market
and the recognition by governments all over the world that, in our times, economic
progress cannot be achieved without at least some linkage to the global economy. The
second result is that after a few years of almost unrestricted expansion of capitalism
world-wide, it has become clear that social problems do not just fade away when
economies prosper. In many countries, even when the economy recovered and
boomed, the social problems have only been aggravated, leading to new social
tensions with rather unpredictable consequences.
The need to promote social cohesion and to arrive at some sort of socially
sustainable development has resulted in a renewed interest in the concepts and
practices of civil society. This interest is not limited to poor countries. In the developed
countries, the growing gap between political institutions and the civic populations
that they claim to represent has led to growing concern. It is not certain that political
parties and new leaders will be able to close this gap, even if they recognise its
existence and its potential danger. Thus, analysts are exploring new ways to ensure
dialogue with citizens as well as to sustain their commitment to political institutions
and decisions, and citizens’ initiatives and actions are receiving renewed attention
and recognition.
In Latin America, NGOs have become the major voice of those who look for a
countervailing power against the unbounded rise of capitalism, with its destructive
consequences to the socially weak and even to the middle classes. Although
governments regard NGOs with suspicion and at times with outright hostility, it is
inconceivable that the economic recovery in this continent will be sustainable if the
voices of the poor continue to be neglected or suppressed.
In the Arab world, social scientists point out that the rise of fundamentalism can
be halted only when young people and the newly developing middle classes have
independent outlets to express their political and social ideas. Such possibilities
might be offered by the development of a strong civil society consisting of a wide
variety of autonomous NGOs.
In Africa, it has become clear that sustainable new democratic institutions at the
national level cannot be developed without a proper social and political infrastructure.
The development of a decentralised civil society might allow these countries to link
traditional socio-cultural institutions with the necessary economic and political
modernisation nation-wide, and thus to provide the latter with a more solid social
foundation.

58
Civil Society and Societal Learning

For a better comprehension of the potential function of civil society in furthering

social cohesion, it is useful to introduce the concept of the “learning society”. This term
refers not simply to the importance of education, even permanent education, but
rather to the recognition that social and cultural values are developed in social and
cultural processes. A society without common values, or in which these values are
eroding, is in great danger. Common values cannot be enforced or proclaimed by
governments without the endorsement of the broad majority of the population. Values
can develop and be modified over time, but generally these developments and
modifications must be in line with endogenous historical patterns that characterise
the development of a certain cultural group or entity. Common values are thus
developed in the processes of social interaction. NGOs — and networks of NGOs, or
civil society — can act as mediators in such processes. Only when governments
recognise this key function of NGOs and are prepared to interact with them can they
hope and expect to formulate common national values which are rooted in society and
thus can be effective.
This argument applies not only to general values like democracy, liberty, respect
for human rights or ecological awareness, but also to the implementation of concrete
political decisions. Governments cannot implement their policies effectively unless
these policies enjoy a sufficient level of support in society and, hence, they are to a
certain extent dependent on the support of civil society. At the same time, NGOs can
hope and expect to achieve their goals only when they are able to persuade governments
to accept their ideas and proposals. To do so, they must be capable of showing the
societal relevance of their proposals, or at least the interconnection between their
specific goals and societal interests. Where they fail to do this, NGOs will be mere
pressure groups, trying to influence policy. In this case, they will always be subject
to the ultimate argument of governments that their demands are not in line with the
“general interest” which governments claim to represent, and cannot be accepted.
This concept of the “general interest” stems from classical political philosophy
as formulated by liberal theorists in the Enlightenment. It was meant to distinguish
between the private interests of individuals and the interests of society as a whole, i.e.
the survival of the community. The question remains, however: who is capable of
formulating what the general interest is, and how is it to be defined? In classical liberal
political theory, it is politicians who have the capacity to look beyond their private
interests and also beyond those of other individuals or specific groups; citizens, for
their part, are expected merely to look after their own gains. This model has two major
flaws. First, when politicians perform their tasks in isolation from society, they may
perceive their own ideas (however impartial and honest they may be) as a reflection
of the general interest (the author’s experience with the European Commission has
shown some striking examples of the consequences to which this may lead). Second,
and even more seriously, this model is prone to underestimate or even deny the need
or desire of citizens to share the responsibility for the community in which they live.
It makes them objects of policies adopted in the name of the general interest, and denies
their willingness to act as the subjects of such policies. In other words, the danger is
that citizens will no longer regard the policies as their own, but perceive them as
something imposed on them by some outside power (this argument is elaborated in
Breed, 1996).
According to Lehning (in this volume), one of the paradoxes of democracy in
modern, developed nations is that it undermines the very solidarity among people on
which it is founded. The reason for this is that personal trust and concrete mutuality
among people in communities is increasingly replaced by an impersonal and
generalised trust imposed by the rule of law and represented by the state. As a result,
in the end the political infrastructure which is meant to ensure the survival of the
community undermines the foundation on which that survival depends.

59
 In practice, it is striking that many NGOs, around the world, criticise their
governments precisely for neglecting general values such as human rights, the rights
of women, protecting the labour conditions of workers and protecting environmental
balances. This seems to indicate that the classical model of democracy needs to be
revised in order to be able to do what it claims to do: guarantee and safeguard the
freedom and sustainability of societies. Such a revision need not be very radical or
difficult, at least in theory: all that is necessary is to recognise at every level the essential
role of people and of their organisations in societal learning and political processes.
This is the essence of the political transformation needed to prepare the world for the
next century.

The Redefinition of Politics

In reality, this transformation is far from easy to achieve, because of the many
obstacles, vested interests and traditional patterns that must be overcome. Underlying
all this, there are deeply rooted ideas and beliefs that hamper the consistent
development of a new, “people-based” ideology. A concentrated effort is needed to
identify at least some of these, to trace their origins and to reformulate or amend them
in the light of modern experience. It is not enough to realise that the general interest
is but an empty concept when it is disconnected from the sense of communality
(although even this realisation appears already to be quite difficult). Indeed, it is
necessary to rethink some of the basic paradigms of modern political thought.
From the perspective of this chapter, politics cannot be regarded solely in terms
of power struggle or, in the classic words of David Easton, as a process that leads to
the authoritative allocation of values in society. Politics, when reviewed in the light
of its relevance for the survival (or sustainability) of communities, must also be
regarded in terms of its relevance for societal learning processes. The organisation of
societal dialogue and of societal cognition processes are at least as important as the
maintenance of a certain balance of power, the prevention of conflicts between
different groups or sectors of society. Stated differently, the concept of “authoritative
allocation” must be replaced, or at least supplemented, by some notion of interactive
societal dialogue. It can no longer be understood just in terms of a top-down concept,
where values are imposed from above and authority is based merely on a claim of
acting in the “general interest”. In fact, the allocation of values can be effective or
legitimate only when local and individual values have been able to contribute to the
formulation of these values.
Modern governments must empower people and social organisations. They
must enable and facilitate societal processes and actions. They can act as a catalyst
in such processes and formulate general proposals and solutions based on them.
However, they can no longer impose decisions on their citizens without active
participation of those citizens in the formulation of the underlying policies. NGOs,
or civil society in general, might act as the mediator between governments and citizens
in such a societal dialogue.

Global Governance and Civil Society

Although governments claim to represent the general interest within the

boundaries of a state, they do not pretend to do so in the international political arena.
In that arena, they are the defenders of their own national interests, and they pursue
international co-operation only as far as these interests include internationalism.
This situation has led some in the past to express the need for a global government
or state, to take the responsibility for a harmonious world development and even
world integration. However, since nations are unwilling to give up their sovereign

60
rights voluntarily, and since even superpowers have never been able to go beyond a
kind of (extended) regional hegemony, it is very unlikely that a global state will emerge
organically from the present world-wide system of nation-states.
It is said that the global market might bring about what governments have
“failed” to achieve, i.e. a world-wide integrated system where every region and
country depends on, and is linked to, all the others. It cannot be denied that economic
globalisation, together with the power of new communication technologies, has
profoundly influenced national tastes, value systems and ways of life around the
globe, but this is not the same as bringing about a cohesive world system. The
arguments above concerning the relevance of interactive socio-cultural processes at
the national level are also valid when we look at the possibility of developing global
values and international coherence. Global values can emerge only from the steady
interaction of locally and nationally expressed values and beliefs, and it is highly
unlikely that they will ever replace the latter.
Although it is realistic to assume that the pressure to develop global values will
become stronger in the years and decades to come, it would be unrealistic to assume
that governments (and their diplomatic representatives) will play a great role in the
formulation of these values. This would simply go beyond their mission, namely,
defending their national interests. Civil society, in contrast, has already contributed
to the development of such values in the past decades. This has become manifest in
(parallel sessions of) events like the Rio summit on environmental issues and the
Beijing conference on women. Thousands of NGO representatives from all over the
world have met at these occasions and exchanged ideas, experiences and action
proposals. Communication technology has made it possible for them to continue
these exchanges on a permanent basis, through globally accessible bulletin boards
and discussion lists.
It might be that at the global level as well, civil society will develop into a “third
cell” with independent significance, apart from the system of nation-states and the
world market. It is conceivable that NGOs will prove to be the main bearers of the
banner of global socio-cultural and political integration. While it is unlikely that
anything like a global government will develop in the near future, a system of world
governance might be in the making. Such a system seems to be inconceivable without
a substantial contribution from the global civil society, consisting of NGOs and all
kinds of networks around the world.
The dream of world integration and unity is as old as humankind itself. It is
reflected in ancient religions since the dawn of human existence (where disasters and
diseases were conceived to be the result of a distorted balance between humans and
the universe, as represented by gods). It is reflected in Greek cosmopolitanism in the
days of the first Western political philosophers. It can be perceived in the aim of moral
unity as formulated by Seneca in the era of Roman domination of the Mediterranean
world. President Woodrow Wilson echoed these values at the beginning of this
century. Might the emerging global civil society prove to be the bearer of this dream
in the next century?

61
Bibliography
AL KHOURI,R. (1997), “The Impact of Free Market Ideologies on Political Structures
Reconsidered”, working paper, Munich.

BREED, K. (1996), Democracy after 2000 - Sense, Freedom and Politics in Narrative Society (title
translated), Kampen, The Netherlands.

HADENIUS, A. and F. UGGLA (1996), “Making Civil Society Work, Promoting Democratic
Development: What Can States and Donors Do?”, World Development, Vol. 24, No. 10.

KHADER, B. (1997), “État, société civile et démocratie dans le monde arabo-musulman”,

conference paper.

LEHNING, P.B. (1998), “Towards a Multi-cultural Civil Society: The Role of Social Capital and
Democratic Citizenship”, in this volume.

62
 PART T HREE
THE ROLE OF EXTERNAL ACTORS

63
64
 Civil Society and Building Democracy:
Lessons from International Donor Experience1
Harry Blair

In the mid-1990s, international donors face conditions quite different from those
of even a decade ago, particularly with respect to supporting democratic development.
The current situation can be characterised as follows:
– the end of the Cold War has meant much less donor concern with matters of
military and geostrategic security, and more donor interest in longer-term
structural strategies like democratisation;
– concomitantly, the move towards democracy by many countries previously
under authoritarian regimes has provided a greatly enhanced milieu for foreign
assistance in support of democratisation;
– while “donor fatigue” with foreign aid has led to decreased funding, the
relatively cheap price tag on most types of assistance to democracy has added
to its appeal in donor capitals;
– democracy assistance efforts have now accumulated a track record long enough
to make it possible to draw lessons and suggest strategies, at least in broad
outline.
One prominent donor approach in the democracy area has centred on civil
society. This chapter endeavours to sum up lessons and strategic implications
stemming from a recently completed assessment of support for civil society as an
approach to assisting democratisation. The study, conducted in 1994 by the United
States Agency for International Development (USAID), focused on civil society and
foreign support for it (supplied by other donors as well as USAID) in five countries:
Bangladesh, Chile, El Salvador, Kenya and Thailand2. These five countries do not
constitute a comprehensive or definitive sample (the former Soviet bloc, for example,
is not represented), but they do offer a variety of developmental settings and a range
of experiences with democracy.
The objective of the USAID assessment, as of the present chapter, is two-fold:
– to find out what USAID and other donors have learned about supporting civil
society as a way of promoting democracy; and
– to distil from this experience lessons and guidance to help design more effective
assistance to democracy.
As should be evident, the intent is a practical one: to help donors support
democratisation in fruitful ways. The best way to do this is to answer the two needs
most prominent in any donor’s planning: priorities and sequencing. That is, once it
has been decided to offer development assistance in a given sector such as democracy,
and given that there is not enough money or management capability to do everything
at once, a donor needs to know what to do first and in what order to do things after
that. This chapter addresses both those needs, at least in a preliminary fashion.
65
 We begin with a working definition of civil society and an overview of its
functions in supporting democracy. The next step is to establish the setting within
which our sample countries have embarked on their democratic experiments. This
leads to a brief analysis of democratic phases of development and appropriate donor
strategies for each phase. The chapter ends with lessons learned and several cautionary
notes for donors interested in supporting civil society.

Definitions, Functions, Types

Although the concept of “civil society” has a long philosophical provenance,

dating back at least to Hobbes (see Hydén, 1995), its current usage has come only
within the last decade or so, coincident with the increasing global trend towards
democracy. Today, it is generally taken to refer to groups that exist between the state
and the individual (or family), but within that vast middle terrain there has been much
dispute, despite concerted attempts to fix a definition (e.g. Diamond, 1994; see also
Blaney and Pasha, 1993). Consequently, definitions are still essentially stipulative at
this point, and the present chapter is no exception.
Here civil society is taken to mean those organisations existing in the space
between the state and the family that both enjoy autonomy from the state and seek to
have a significant influence on public policy, at any level (national, local or in
between); the actors here are “civil society organisations” (CSOs), as distinguished
from service delivery organisations that have no policy agendas3. Together, these two
types make up the universe of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as indicated
in Table 1.
CSOs appear to come in two basic types, as the examples in the table show. The
first is concerned with systemic reform, that is, with changing the “basic rules of the
game”. Organisations in this category focus on human rights, legal systems, division
of power between the national and local levels, and the like. The second type also
focuses on changing rules, but only those rules that apply to the CSO’s particular
interests, or the “operating rules of the game”, which may also be called sectoral
agendas. These CSOs deal with such areas as the environment, business, agriculture
or women’s issues4.

Table 1. Organisations in Civil Society Defined by Characteristics (What They Are)

and by Function (What They Do)

Organisations in civil society defined by what they do

Service delivery CSOs: policy-oriented organisations

organisations

Advocacy (promote Policy impact

system reform) (advance own
agendas)

Organisations NGOs: professionally Family planning Human rights group,

in civil society run organisations agency, interna- public policy think
defined by what tional relief tank
they are agency

GROs: accountable Water users’ Mayors’ association, Farmers’ association,

membership association, environmental group chamber of commerce
organisations forestry users’
group

CSO = civil society organisation

GRO = grassroots organisation
NGO = non-governmental organisation

66
 This schema is only one way to look at the matter. A quite different approach
to defining civil society and its organisations emerges in Diana Mitlin’s contribution
to this volume (Mitlin, 1997), in which she defines organisations in civil society
essentially by their behavioural characteristics (what they are), whereas they are
defined here more by their functions (what they do)5. The resulting classifications are
rather different, as can be seen in Table 1, as are the ideas advanced concerning donor
support. Mitlin is concerned to make the NGOs of her taxonomy more responsive to
constituencies like grassroots organisations (GROs), while this chapter focuses more
on how to support CSOs as opposed to organisations specialising in service delivery.
There is no reason to think that either approach is superior to the other, but it should
be recognised that they are different and that they can give rise to different
recommendations.
CSOs as defined here serve three basic democratic functions.
– They increase citizens’ participation in the policy-making process, beyond the
narrow élites that have traditionally constituted the relevant body politic in so
many developing countries. This function primarily involves mobilising
constituencies (particularly marginal groups like women, ethnic minorities
and poorer strata) and advocating public policies on their behalf (e.g. women’s
inheritance rights, tribal property rights, urban squatters’ land rights).
– They increase the state’s accountability to the citizenry — that is, its responsibility
for what it does and what it fails to do — primarily by monitoring the state’s
activities, analysing public policy and publicising shortcomings and
malfeasance.
– They provide civic education in democratic politics, both in the substance of
what they disseminate and in offering citizens the opportunity to participate in
democratic politics. This function amounts to a combination of cognitive
understanding and learning by doing.
The first two functions stress civil society as a means to further democratic ends,
while the third tends more to view it as an end in itself, embracing the idea that
democratic politics is an intrinsically worthy enterprise. In the language of political
science, what these activities do collectively is to “build pluralism” — a political
system in which all significant constituencies (or “publics”, with emphasis on the
plural) can make their interests heard, but no particular group (or coalition of groups)
can obtain a dominant role.
Civil society is by no means the only institution capable of building democratic
participation, ensuring accountability and providing education. Other mechanisms
which work to similar ends are elections, political parties, the media and formal
redress procedures, all of which have vital roles to play in the democratic process6.
Thus civil society is only one of several ways to strengthen and sustain a functional
democracy.

The Passage to Democracy and Democratic Phases

It quickly became evident in the course of the USAID field work that the different
political trajectories of our five systems placed them on rather different paths to
democracy and that these paths offered substantially different openings for civil
society. In particular, the history of each country’s “passage to democracy”7 appeared
to have a great effect on what kind of civil society efforts might be most effective.
These passages are summed up in Table 2 and illustrated in Figure 1, which
presents the Freedom House rankings for each sample country over the 1972-96
period8. Here we find a number of patterns.

67
 Table 2. The Democratic Passage in Five Countries

Bangladesh Kenya El Salvador Thailand Chile

Earlier Early & late Donor-initiated Cycle of Early 1970s and Viable democracy
democratic 1970s, openings 1991 opening openings and 1990s openings 1930s until 1970s,
openings & their suppressed by later closed suppressions, ended by coups ended by 1973
fate coups 1930s-80s coup

Most recent Anti-Ershad (none) Peace accords, Democratic Plebiscite,

democratic movement, Jan. 1992 uprising, Oct. 1988
passage Dec 1990 May 1992

Civil society role Little develop- (passage yet to Largely Contribution to CSO think tank
in promoting mental CSO occur) precluded by 1992 democracy “safe havens”,
democratic involvement civil war movement civic education
passage

Figure 1. Freedom Rating in Sample Countries, 1972 to 1996:

Combined Political Rights and Civil Liberties
Most freedom

10
Least freedom

12

14
1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995

Bangladesh Kenya El Salvador Thailand Chile

Source: Freedom House reports (various years).

– In some cases the passage was quite dramatic. In Bangladesh it occurred over
a three-month period in 1990-91, beginning with the resignation of President
Ershad in December 1990. The president had ordered the army to suppress the
rapidly rising popular opposition to him, but the army instead forced him to
resign immediately and proceeded to set up the first genuinely democratic
election in the history of the country. In Chile, the passage took more time: it
began with the plebiscite of October 1988, in which the Pinochet government
was defeated, and continued through successive elections and constitutional
changes over the years immediately following.

68
– Other cases are hard to pinpoint in time. The democratic uprising in Thailand
in May 1992 was only one phase (if perhaps the high point) of a long, back-and-
forth passage to democracy, which by the end of 1992 had established a
democratic set-up in the country9.
– Some countries had earlier experience with democracy (see Table 1), as in Chile,
which had enjoyed a vibrant democracy until the coup d’état in 1973, in which
thousands were executed and a repressive police state instituted that lasted for
many years. Here the challenge was to re-introduce democracy, not to start it up
from scratch. This was also the case in Thailand, which had gone through
essentially democratic periods in the mid-1970s and mid-1980s.
– Other countries had never known any real democracy. Bangladesh never quite
got there after independence in 1971 (and had never been democratic during its
earlier colonisation, first by Britain and then by Pakistan). El Salvador had never
expanded participation beyond a very narrow oligarchic elite, a situation
which led to a brutal and bitter 12-year civil war, culminating in the peace
accords of January 199210.
– Kenya has yet to become a functioning democracy, although in 1992 it seemed
about to do so; instead, the country relapsed into authoritarian despotism (see
Holmquist and Ford, 1995a), where it remains.
As these countries are clearly in different places along what we may call the
“democratic path”, it makes sense to draw up a sequence of “phases of
democratisation” that incorporates these differences and also lays out a broader
picture.
Figure 2 sets forth such a sequence of phases, along with a set of democratic
needs corresponding to the phases. We will begin with the phases and then proceed
to the needs.

Figure 2. Civil Society and the Democratic Transition: Phases and Needs

Phase Democratic Needs Legend

Major priority
Democratic Advocacy Impact
passage (systemic (sectoral Secondary priority
Pre-transition reform) agendas)
(Kenya) Possible major priority

Democratic passage

Early transition
(Bangladesh, El Salvador)
CSO sustainability

Late transition
(Thailand)

Consolidation
(Chile, India)

69
 In the pre-transition phase, an authoritarian regime remains in control;
democracy has yet to emerge in any substantial way (though it may have existed
earlier). In some cases, CSOs can help to push along a democratic opening (see
Table 2). In Chile, religious organisations, universities and think tanks all helped in
this respect, and one CSO — Participa — mounted a civic education drive that was
instrumental in turning popular opinion against the Pinochet government in the
October 1988 plebiscite (the key event in the democratic passage). Thailand saw
similar advocacy from universities and think tanks in support of the democracy
movement in 199211. In the other three countries, there was little CSO involvement in
this pre-democratic phase12.
Once the democratic passage has been negotiated, a system enters the early
transition phase. Full-fledged democracy does not come into being automatically, and
this phase involves a great deal of work to set up “basic rules of the game” for
democratic politics. Human rights, the electoral system, perhaps even the form of
government itself are all up for debate. CSOs can be instrumental here. In El Salvador,
they have become key instruments for bringing the former guerrillas into the
mainstream political system as players who can legitimately participate in politics,
make demands on the system and hold it accountable. The critical task in this phase
is to reform the basic political system and make it work — in other words, “system
reformic”, as indicated in Figure 2.
In the succeeding late transition phase, the main pieces of the system are in place,
and the real need is for pluralistic politics to thrive. A wide variety of CSOs come into
their own at this point, each pushing its own “sectoral agenda” and seeking to change
the “operational rules” of the game13. Democratic pluralism flourishes in the interplay
of all their initiatives. Examples of such CSOs are:
– business associations pressing the state to deregulate the private sector;
– trade union associations pushing for more liberal collective-bargaining rules;
– environmental groups demanding stricter controls on toxic wastes;
– women’s organisations seeking protection against domestic abuse.
In the final step of the process, the consolidation phase, both the basic and the
operational rules are already in place, and there is relatively widespread participation
and accountability. The basic policy recipe is to deepen both participation and
accountability, which means “more of the same” for CSO activity. By this point,
however, the sources of external support for CSOs are drying up, if in fact they have
not already dried up and left the country. This has happened in Chile, and is virtually
complete in Thailand. It is a pattern to be expected as foreign aid money dwindles, new
claimants emerge and donors place increased emphasis on “graduation” from aid
recipient status14.
CSOs must therefore find some domestic means of subsistence, through
memberships, local philanthropy, selling their own services (e.g. competing for
government contracts to supply health services) or operating commercial enterprises.
This drive to reach sustainability does not come about by itself; it happens only when
external funding will soon be cut off, and CSOs need help in dealing with such
matters.
This schema of phases is formulated in only the most general terms. It is quite
clear when a country is still in the pre-transition phase and at least reasonably clear
when a polity has proceeded far enough along the democratic path to be considered
a fledgling democracy, and hence in the “early transition” phase, but the subsequent
stages cannot be sharply distinguished from one another. One may argue, however,
that basic rules must be more or less in place before one can pursue sectoral agendas
with any hope that decisions will be honoured and promises kept. In Hobbesian or

70
Lockean terms, the social contract must be securely established before people can
operate with any degree of security and certitude about the future. It is this idea which
underlies our distinction between “early” and “late” transition.
The divide between late transition and consolidation is perhaps even hazier
than that between the two transition phases, but the basic idea is that, in the
consolidation phase, democratic pluralism has become a dynamic with its own
inertial momentum. Since democracy can never become complete, the box labelled
“consolidation” in Figure 2 is open-ended15.
From the standpoint of donor strategy for supporting civil society, each phase
has a characteristic major need, as indicated by the thicker arrows in Figure 2.
– The pre-transition phase calls for foreign aid to CSOs pushing for democracy.
– The early transition phase warrants donor assistance to CSOs engaged in
systemic changes.
– The later transition phase is a time to concentrate on sectoral CSOs.
– Consolidation calls for helping CSOs to become self-sufficient in finding their
own funding.
Of course, real life is not quite as simple as this, and donors will probably need
to pursue several strategies simultaneously (whence the thinner lines in addition to
the thicker ones in Figure 2).
– In pre-transition, some reforms can be pushed even in the absence of a democratic
opening. In El Salvador, human rights organisations were very active during
the civil war, and in Thailand environmental groups began advocacy campaigns
before the May 1992 democracy movement.
– In early transition, the main focus should be on systemic reform, but it is never
too soon to begin a sectoral agenda — guarantees for tribal property rights,
ending environmental abuses, etc. Moreover, as foreign aid funds shrink,
international donors like USAID will begin to wind down their programmes
even in this stage, before democracy has a firm foothold (as in El Salvador,
starting in fiscal year 1996). In such cases, help in achieving sustainability may
be needed, and may even become the main priority (as indicated by the heavy
broken line in Figure 2).
– In late transition, sectoral agendas will predominate, but some systemic reforms
are still likely to be needed16. Here again, CSO sustainability may become the
main priority, as in Thailand today.
– In the consolidation phase, sectoral agendas are still pursued, but systemic
reforms will also continue to be proposed (as in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain of
the 1980s or in the current Republican “Contract with America”).

Civil Society and Democratic Decentralisation

Our major emphasis has been on civil society as a democratic institution at the
national level. Indeed, the bulk of the literature on civil society addresses the macro
level. If democracy is to succeed at the local level, however, civil society is important
there as well, and for the same reasons: it can facilitate popular participation in local
governance; it can help to hold local government accountable to the citizenry; and it
can provide civic education and experience to the public about how democracy works
in practice. Civil society should thus be a critical ingredient in any democratic
decentralisation initiative17.

71
 A recent USAID assessment of democratic decentralisation in six systems
(Blair, 1997b) found civil society to be largely absent at the local level, although
democratisation itself showed some signs of success. The study, which covered
Bolivia, Honduras, the Indian state of Karnataka18, Mali, the Philippines and Ukraine,
found evidence of civil society’s presence only in the Philippines, and even there the
evidence is decidedly mixed. At the low end, Ukraine showed an almost complete
absence of not only civil society but also its principal building block, social capital
— the interpersonal trust that enables people to work together for a common purpose.
The explanation is that during the Soviet period the state organised everything, even
ostensibly non-political groups; after its demise there was virtually no social “glue”
[to adopt the phrase of Lehning (1997)] to bind people together, apart from the
religious arena, which immediately began to flourish.
Bolivia and to some extent Honduras have considerable social capital, but this
has not yet translated into appreciable civil society activity, although democratic
decentralisation programmes were in place (and had been for several years in the
Honduran case) when the USAID study was carried out. Similarly, Mali’s social
capital at the local level is in many respects well developed, but shows little sign of
helping to build civil society as the country moves towards decentralisation. Perhaps
most surprisingly, Karnataka exhibited virtually no local civil society, although civil
society is lively at the macro level, local governance has been democratic for more than
three decades under the Panchayati Raj structure, and there is at least some evidence
of social capital at the local level. This sobering finding indicates that the gestation
period for building civil society at the local level may be long indeed19. Only in the
Philippines was there much sign that civil society was functioning at the local level.
CSOs had taken an active role in a significant number of municipalities, though in
many others the more traditional oligarchical form of local governance endured
despite the implementation of a new Local Government Code in the early 1990s.

Lessons Learned and Policy Guidance

From the five case studies, there emerge a number of lessons that should be
helpful to international donors planning assistance to civil society.
1) First and foremost, it is feasible to outline in the broadest terms a strategic
approach, which is portrayed in Figure 2. This approach has two particular virtues
for donors: it lays out some priorities to follow (given that donors do not have the
resources to do everything at once) and a sequence to pursue in supporting civil
society.
The schema offered in Figure 2 is not intended as definitive guidance for donor
efforts to support civil society. Each country is indeed different (as is obvious from the
cases examined here), but patterns do exist here; that is, there is some social science
to be developed (if one is an academic) or some general policy to be devised (if one is
a practitioner). Democratic development is not sui generis in each country, and
understanding it is not solely the province of a historical or phenomenological
approach. Fostering such development is still very much a programming art for
practitioners, in which the circumstances of individual countries must be taken into
account.
2) CSOs seem more effective in helping to restore democracy than in creating it
de novo. In Chile and Thailand, for example, CSOs were instrumental in the pre-
transition phase, helping to speed the advent of democracy; but this was a return to
democracy in both cases. In the other two cases where a democratic passage occurred
— Bangladesh and El Salvador — CSOs were of relatively little help. Previous
experience would appear to have a practical educative value.

72
 It follows that in many pre-transition situations, low-profile CSOs pursuing
sectoral agendas may be the only possible democracy strategy. Kenya would be an
obvious case, as was Bangladesh before its democratic breakthrough in 1990; Suharto's
Indonesia was probably another. In such situations, the regime is so hostile to change
that CSOs pursuing systemic reform would probably make little headway, as well as
putting their members at significant risk20. Sectorally oriented CSOs can achieve some
success in pursing their narrower agendas, and their activity can provide experience
that will be useful once systemic reform becomes possible after the democratic
passage.
3) Donors should be ready to deploy considerable diplomatic leverage to
support civil society strategies when needed, particularly in the periods just before
and after the democratic passage. CSOs are generally not strong enough to carry the
whole load of reform and simultaneously maintain the momentum towards democracy.
Two examples are:
– the application of international pressure on the Thai military to restore democracy
after its 1991 coup d’état; and
– the maintenance of pressure on El Salvador after the peace accords and on Chile
after the 1988 plebiscite to honour promises made by the governments.
Needless to say, such pressure does not always work, as in Kenya, where
repeated diplomatic efforts have been of little avail in moving the system towards
democracy21. Contemporary Nigeria could be cited as a similar case.
4) Donors should exercise caution in supporting CSOs in the early phases of the
democratic process. The fall of a dictator or the end of a civil war can bring infusions
of donor aid that encourage the formation of many ill-considered, poorly managed
and ultimately unviable CSOs. As money suddenly becomes available22, CSOs will
immediately form to claim it, only to founder and collapse when funds begin to dry
up. More donor caution initially and assistance to fewer CSOs (along with more
guidance to those that are supported) could help to produce more viable NGOs over
the longer term.
5) As a corollary to the previous point, donors should start guiding CSOs to plan
for sustainability right from the beginning. As “donor fatigue” picks up momentum
in the advanced countries and emergencies like Rwanda make heavier claims on
resources, the longevity of assistance to CSOs will shorten. The preparation for self-
reliance that once could be reserved for the consolidation phase must now be moved
much earlier in the sequence of phases. Table 3 shows the pattern for the five countries
studied. In the near future, it is likely that more countries will resemble El Salvador
than Bangladesh in this regard.

Table 3. CSO Sustainability and Strategic Outlook in Five Countries

Bangladesh Kenya El Salvador Thailand Chile

CSO Donor funding Donor funding Donor funding Donor funding Donor funding
sustainability still plentiful high, but subject soon to diminish now ending; essentially ended;
to political rapidly; little some exploration CSO contract work
conditionality preparation of domestic as alternative
as yet foundations

Major systemic Defective party State repression Creating a wider A new military- Overwhelming
problem and role system – can and ethnic political space bureaucratic- need for consensus
for CSOs CSOs fill gap? division – can – can CSOs do business to overcome
CSOs take on this? oligarchy – can partisanship
both? CSOs widen – a role for CSOs?
participation?

73
 6) Although some would argue that to be genuinely effective in supporting
democracy, a CSO should be itself democratic (e.g. Hadenius and Uggla, 1996), the
evidence gathered in the USAID study indicated that CSOs need not be internally
democratic to further the wider democratic cause. No more than a handful of all the
CSOs observed across the five countries exhibited any real internal democracy, but
this did not appear to inhibit their effectiveness at moving democracy forwards and
at playing democratic politics23. In somewhat more theoretical terms, an analogy
could be made to the neo-classical concept of the competitive marketplace, where the
motivations of individual agents do not matter as long as the agents are competing
in the market. Market players can be selfish (in fact, economic analysis generally
assumes that they are) and CSO groups can be internally autocratic, but when markets
and polities function as they should, the efforts of both kinds of agents work to the
public good. In other words, the success of competitive markets and pluralist polities
does not depend on the altruism or generosity of those engaged in them. Needless to
say, markets can fail and pluralist polities can collapse, but this has little to do with
the generosity of the players.
7) Civil society is not a panacea; it cannot solve all of democracy’s problems. As
indicated in Table 3, each of our five countries had at least one major systemic problem
that appeared beyond the scope of civil society and CSOs alone to resolve (although
they can help in the solution). This theme will be taken up in more detail below.
8) The media are vital. In the long run, public accountability is probably more
critical to democratic sustainability than participation. If certain groups are inhibited
from participating or become too apathetic or alienated to do so, a system is undoubtedly
in trouble, but it has a chance to survive until participation improves. In contrast, if
the state (or significant elements of it) can evade accountability to the citizenry for any
length of time, democracy is in all likelihood doomed. Low participation and
democracy can co-exist, at least for a time; impunity and democracy cannot.
The key element in accountability is the media. Unless the media are free to detect
and publicise official wrongdoing, people will not know what goes on; and unless
malfeasance becomes public knowledge, the chances of its being stopped are slight24.
The CSO role takes the form of journalists’ associations, investigative organisations,
linkages between think tanks and the media, and the like.
9) Civil society may be quite different at the macro and micro levels. A flourishing
civil society at the macro level does not necessarily have its equivalent at the local level.
Even in countries like India and the Philippines, both of which have very rich,
pluralistic political systems at the higher level, civil society at the base tends to be
absent (though less so in the Philippines). More sensitive and long-term approaches
may be called for on the part of national governments and donors.

A Cautionary Note

This chapter should not leave readers with the impression that civil society and
democratic pluralism are unmitigated benefits that conduce only to the public good.
There is considerable reason to think that they can have less beneficial effects on
democracy and the common weal. At least two major concerns can be raised: whether
the political universe will really open up enough to include all those who might want
to participate; and whether an open polity can protect itself against groups that want
to overthrow it.
The first concern runs counter to an influential strain of thinking on pluralism
that has recently arisen in the advanced industrialised countries. Olson (1993) and
Rausch (1994) express the concern that too much pluralist interest-group influence
on the state can lead to a hardening of the democratic arteries, or “demosclerosis”,

74
rather than to a vibrant polity. According to this argument, a state enfeebled by too
much pluralism involving too many strong players may lose its ability to act in the
common interest and may succumb to political immobilism.
In the less developed countries, a more appropriate concern is that pluralism
may be stunted too early in the democratic day by a few very powerful players who
can prevent others from entering the political arena. The political arena in Thailand,
previously dominated by the military and bureaucracy, has expanded in recent years
to include the business community. Environmentalists also appear to have gained a
toehold, but will the arena of significant players expand much beyond this? Or will
this slightly enlarged élite manage to shut out new aspirants?
In Bangladesh, the arena had been essentially restricted to three groups — the
military, the bureaucracy, the political leadership — with rural landed élites as silent
partners in the arrangement. Today it has expanded to include the upper echelons of
the business community, as in Thailand. Will the political universe expand
meaningfully beyond this level? Will holders of medium-sized farms, women or the
rural poor lay claim to a place at the political table, as they have in large parts of India
over the years?
In El Salvador, many of the leaders of the FMLN guerrillas have been integrated
into national political life, and some portion of the lower FMLN strata has found a
voice at the local level through elections, local CSOs and cabildos abiertos (open town
meetings which are required before municipalities may appropriate local funds). Will
these advances constitute a real widening of the political space in a system that has
traditionally restricted power to a small oligarchic elite? Will they become the
spearheads of a genuine expansion of the polity to include presently marginal
elements? Or will these new entrants be co-opted into minor walk-on parts in a drama
that continues to be dominated by a few major actors?
In Chile, where civic education CSOs championed the enlargement of the
political system, the need for self-sustainability may dampen some of this dynamism:
organisations may find themselves taking on government contract work to survive
and muting some of their civil energies in order to obtain (and retain) their contracts.
A second, and possibly more serious problem, lies in the need for consensus among
the major parties, which most leaders feel is critical to avoid the kind of tensions and
confrontation that led to the disasters of 1973. Could part of the price of this consensus
be a weakening of civil society, so that elements perceived as injurious to the
consensus are excluded from public life?
In Kenya, where meaningful political participation has been largely restricted
to a few tribal groups, and where many CSOs tend to be divided along tribal lines, the
present regime could adopt a strategy to improve its bad international image and
improve its foreign aid flow by combining a policy of enlarging the arena with a
“divide and conquer” policy. That is, it could admit a few additional CSOs into the
system, along with the ethnic groups they represent, and freeze out the others, thereby
fragmenting opposition to the regime.
The second issue involves willingness to play by the rules of the pluralist game.
At various times, this dilemma faces all democracies: what is to be done with a CSO
(or political party) that wants to gain influence or power in order to smash the system
itself? Examples of such organisations include radical leftist groups in earlier years,
and Islamic fundamentalists today. Bangladesh in the early 1990s offered a graphic
example in this respect; the case is especially striking in that the anti-social reaction
has come in direct proportion to the achievements of CSOs in empowering marginal
elements in the population.
CSO efforts in Bangladesh to empower and make self-sufficient the weakest
constituency in the country — poor rural women — have been remarkably successful.
By the early 1990s, the Grameen Bank, a well-known CSO, had a membership of more
than 1.5 million women who are becoming independent income earners and literate
in the process, an extraordinary achievement in a country with $220 average per

75
 capita income, 23 per cent female literacy and a religious tradition of purdah that
discourages women from moving outside the home. Several other CSOs have produced
equally impressive results25.
This very success caused a virulent reaction among fundamentalist Muslims
and village élites, who wanted to keep the lower classes in their place. Women were
threatened and beaten; their schools and meeting places burned down in several
hundred incidents; and the fundamentalist opposition began conducting a national
campaign to end the CSO programmes for the benefit of women26. After much outcry
from the Bangladeshi organisations involved and some pressure from foreign donors,
the government did provide some protection to the CSO participants, and the problem
now appears to be under control.
The policy implications stemming from these two issues are not that support for
civil society can widen the political universe only enough to admit a few more élites
or that efforts to empower rural women are sure to boomerang and so should not be
tried, but rather that donors must expect civil society to grow slowly and must be
prepared to provide support when reverses occur. Democracy is not necessarily easy,
and the good people do not always win. It is worth trying, however, and donors can
help it along. Supporting civil society should be at the heart of such efforts.

Notes and
References
1. Most of this chapter stems from work done for USAID as part of a civil society
assessment project during the period 1993-95; some is based on a study of democratic
decentralisation undertaken from 1995 to 1997. Earlier versions were presented at
a workshop on civil society sponsored by the OECD Development Assistance
Committee, held in Uppsala, Sweden, 12-13 June 1995, and the annual meeting of the
American Political Science Association, Chicago, 2 September 1995. A special
acknowledgement is due to Gary Hansen of USAID, with whom the author collaborated
on USAID’s civil society assessment and who wrote the final USAID evaluation
report (Hansen, 1996). USAID is not in any way answerable for the views and
interpretations expressed here; responsibility is solely the author’s.

2. Individual country assessments were completed for Bangladesh (Blair and

Jutkowitz, 1994; for an update, see Blair, 1997b), Chile (Jutkowitz, 1995), El Salvador
(Blair et al., 1995), Kenya (Holmquist et al., 1995) and Thailand (Hansen and
Calavan, 1994).

3. Narrower definitions would include only those CSOs which are internally democratic
(Hadenius and Uggla, 1996); broader definitions would incorporate any and all
NGOs (e.g. Sorenson, 1995) or, alternatively, all activity between the individual and
the state (e.g. Lehning, 1997). Still another approach is to include a governance
dimension, i.e. to view civil society as substituting for the state in delivering
essential services (Shoemaker, 1995). In USAID, earlier definitions tended to emphasise
the advocacy role of CSOs (e.g. Hansen, 1996), but more recent ones have embraced
the impact side as well (e.g. USAID, 1997, Annex 2, pp 51-54).

4. Oakerson (1995), writing in the institutional analysis framework pioneered at

Indiana University, speaks of “constitutional” and “governance” rules rather than
“systemic” rules, and refers to “operational rules” where the present author alludes
to “sectoral agendas”, but the concepts are quite similar.

5. Interestingly, the DAC Working Group on Participatory Development and Good

Governance takes both approaches in its final report (OECD, 1997). At one point
(Part I, §10, pp. 7-8), the report makes a distinction similar to Mitlin’s, whereas at
another (Part II, § 2.5, p. 7) it draws a distinction similar to that used in this chapter.

76
6. Some analysts would include political parties as part of civil society, but they are
excluded here on the grounds that they (at least the major parties) are trying to take
over the state rather than to influence it. “Formal redress” refers principally to the
judicial process, though some systems have citizen-initiated recall or referendum
mechanisms.

7. The term “democratic passage” here means a systemic change that takes a polity from
a non-democratic (and in practice authoritarian, though in theory the pre-democratic
condition could be anarchic) to a democratic dispensation. This passage takes on a
variety of forms, but all have in common the fact that after the passage the polity is
essentially democratic (and therefore suitable for different donor strategies), whereas
before the passage it was not. The term “democratic openings” is used (e.g. in Table 1)
to refer to potential passages, which may turn out to be genuine passages (as in Chile
in 1988) or may not (as in Bangladesh in the 1970s). Figure 1 shows the progress and
retrogression of recent decades.

8. The figure combines the Freedom House rankings on civil rights and political
liberties, showing a range between 2 (the best rating) and 14 (the worst). For an
explanation of the annual rating system, see Ryan (1995). Note that the figure is
inverted: the best rating is at the top of the chart and the worst at the bottom.

9. Note the up-and-down path of hourglasses (representing Thailand) in Figure 1; one

must wonder whether the 1992 movement was the defining moment on the democratic
path, or whether the 1991 coup (which changed the Freedom House combined index
from 5 to 10) was just an aberration in an otherwise slow but steady progress
beginning in late 1970s.

10. The author would take exception to the favourable Freedom House rankings for El
Salvador in the early and mid-1970s. It is true that there was an apparent freedom
to mobilise and organise opposition to the oligarchic state (which may explain the
positive ratings of those years), but opposition groups never came close to winning
any real power (e.g. the disputed and almost certainly stolen presidential election
of 1972), and their activities of the earlier 1970s led to repression later in the decade
and to the brutal civil war beginning in 1980. See Montgomery (1995, pp. 62-68); also
Woodward (1985, pp. 251-252).

11. In both cases, much of the donor support (especially in Chile) came from non-US
government agencies. The aim here is to assess the experience of donors generally,
not only that of the United States.

12. There was significant human rights activity in El Salvador before the 1992 peace
accords. For the most part, however, the 1980-92 civil war had prevented civil society
activity.

13. The term “operational rules” is Oakerson’s (1995); he distinguishes these from
“constitutional” and “governance” rules, which have been consolidated in the
present treatment into “basic rules of the game”.

14. The “graduation” emphasis has become a major aspect of USAID’s “New Partnerships
Initiative”, launched in the spring of 1995 (see USAID, 1997).

15. By the same logic, the pre-transition phase has no beginning but stretches back
indefinitely in time, as shown by the topless box in Figure 2.

16. Are human rights ever completely secure in any system, no matter how democratic?
CSOs like Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union would
certainly say no.

17. This argument finds support from the DAC. See OECD (1997), Part I, §11, p. 11.

18. India’s huge size and federal system (within which local governance has been largely
a state-level prerogative) made it more reasonable to select one Indian state rather
than the country as a whole. Karnataka (with a population of 48 million in 1991) was
treated as the equivalent of a national system for the purposes of the USAID
assessment.

77
 19. Not so long, one hopes, as the term for building social capital in Italy, where social
groups in the early Renaissance laid the foundation for civil society today
(Putnam, 1993), but evidently much longer than anyone would have thought when
Panchayati Raj began at the end of the 1950s.

20. Human rights CSOs appear to be an exception, since they can not only survive but
even make some progress in attenuating conditions, as was the case in both
Bangladesh and El Salvador during the pre-transition phases. The work of international
organisations like Amnesty International or Asia Watch and their linkages to in-
country CSOs like the Co-ordinating Council for Human Rights in Bangladesh and
Tutela Legal in El Salvador were surely instrumental in this respect. In addition to
their hard work under difficult conditions, a major reason for the relative success of
these human rights CSOs appears to lie in their linkages to the outside world, which
have been strong enough that an anti-democratic regime finds itself reluctant to
repress them for fear of the international embarrassment and opprobrium that such
an action would bring about.

21. These diplomatic pressures intensified as the 1997 election campaign began to take
shape, and as of this writing (early August 1997) may have begun to have an impact
in liberalising the Kenyan political process. See, e.g. J.C. McKinley, “Under pressure,
Kenya allows rally for reform”, New York Times (27 July 1997) and “A woman to run
Kenya? One says, ‘Why not?’”, New York Times (3 August 1997).

22. In a phrase often heard during the USAID field visits, donors tend virtually to “hand
out NGO kits” to almost anyone who asks during the first heady days of freedom.

23. It can be argued that internal democratising influences at work within and between
CSOs conduce towards internal democracy (see Fisher, 1995), but these did not seem
immediately evident in the organisations observed in the USAID study reported on
here.

24. Interestingly, the critical role of the media appears to lie not so much in identifying
malfeasance as in publicising it. In both Bangladesh and El Salvador, for instance,
politically aware circles seemed to know the basic outlines of official misbehaviour
even in the absence of media exposés, but once something emerges into public print,
it becomes extremely difficult for the state to deny. A similar pattern was observed
in the Philippines (Blair et al., 1993) and Argentina (Blair et al., 1994c) during the course
of USAID-sponsored studies of judicial reform. In both cases, media institutes were
responsible for press stories that precipitated public outrage and forced corrective
official action in response.

25. There have been many analyses of the Grameen Bank; a good example is Hossain
(1988). Among the other large groups involved in similar efforts, the best known is
probably the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), which is well
analysed in Lovell (1992).

26. Part of the fallout in all this — and the part best known in the West —was the
fundamentalist vendetta against the Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin, who was
threatened with death for what she had written and who has found asylum in Sweden.

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80
 The NGO Sector and its Role in Strengthening
Civil Society and Securing Good Governance1
Diana Mitlin

Introduction

Civil society is increasingly recognised as being critical to the successful

realisation of development. In part, this interest reflects a growing awareness of the
importance of local institutions in supporting and undertaking development. For
development agencies concerned with objectives such as poverty reduction and good
governance, it is often considered essential to strengthen local institutions which are
able to work independently in these areas and to ensure that government policies and
programmes are effective. Such institutions, outside of government and committed to
a range of often diverse (and sometimes contradictory) objectives to increase the well-
being of one or more groups in society, have become loosely associated with the term
“civil society”.
This chapter is a contribution to understanding how development assistance
agencies can best support civil society organisations. It is divided into three main
sections. In this introductory section, the concept of civil society is briefly examined
and is refined for the purposes of the discussion which follows. The second section
considers the contribution of civil society organisations to poverty reduction and,
therefore, their potential contribution to the work of development agencies which
place primary importance on poverty reduction. The third section examines some of
the strategies commonly used by NGOs and development assistance agencies to
support civil society, looking somewhat critically at the experience to date.
Defining Civil Society: Definitions of civil society are often broadly drawn and
encompass many kinds of non-governmental and non-profit associations, including,
for example, trade associations for commercial enterprises. In some definitions, civil
society appears to be synonymous with the “third sector” (or voluntary sector or not-
for-profit sector), which includes all organisations that are neither part of the
government nor part of the private sector (Salamon and Anheier, 1992; Landim, 1993).
Other definitions go beyond this categorisation to include informal organisations and
self-help groups (see the discussion in Bebbington and Mitlin, 1996a). Some such
village associations and community organisations have no formal legal status, even
though they may be long-standing and operate according to accepted structures and
principles. The commonality within this interpretation lies in organisational capacity
(however informal) and independence from the state; purely private-sector
organisations are generally excluded.
The literature on development has long recognised the importance of the third
sector. Bilateral agencies first began to offer co-financing arrangements to Northern
NGOs (whereby the government agency contributes a proportion of the costs of some

81
 NGO projects) in the mid-1960s, and most OECD bilateral donors had launched
similar programmes by the mid-1970s (OECD, 1988). Throughout the 1980s there was
an evident and growing enthusiasm for the contribution of NGOs (the voluntary
bodies specifically focused on development issues), particularly for their ability to
work directly with the poor and with grassroots organisations (Turner, 1988;
Gorman, 1984). According to Carroll (1992), it was in 1985 that official development
agencies arrived “at the same conclusion that a small band of aficionados had reached
earlier: that the advantages of NGOs, such as flexibility, informality, commitment,
and participatory style, outweighed their disadvantages and made them especially
suited for the complex task of rural development projects aimed at alleviating poverty,
in which physical capital is combined with human and organisational resources”.
By the end of the 1980s, reports from the OECD (1988), Asian Development Bank (1990,
1991) and World Bank (1991) all argued that NGOs have a particular ability to work
effectively with the poorest communities.
The early 1990s saw a distinct change in emphasis, with greater weight being
placed on the term “civil society” than on “non-governmental organisation”. Although
this change cannot be attributed to any single factor, a number of emerging concerns
may offer some insights. First, the social movements that were so effective in advancing
democratic change in several nation-states often did not fit neatly into definitions of
voluntary-sector agencies, but they could be seen to be playing an important role in
development. A number of official development assistance agencies, which had
begun to place a higher value on good governance and support for democracy, were
interested in the potential role of such social movements. Second, the importance of
institutional trends and institutional change was much more clearly recognised. The
work of authors such as Putnam (1993) showed the importance of non-governmental
and non-private sector institutions and demonstrated that it would be useful to work
with wider definitions than were typically being used. Third, it was recognised that
many informal self-help groups of local citizens were important in promoting and
achieving social change but that conventional definitions of the voluntary sector often
excluded such associations. Finally, the legitimacy of some NGOs as agencies
financed by external sources has been called into question (Hulme and
Edwards, 1997a). Whilst the term “NGOs” continued to be used, sometimes
interchangeably with “civil society”, there was a significant shift in emphasis away
from some of the traditional voluntary-sector development organisations towards a
larger group of agencies also concerned with broader issues of democratic
representation and the public good.
Although the term “civil society” is commonly used to refer to an aggregate body
of non-governmental and not-for-profit agencies, in practice such an aggregation can
hardly be said to exist. At specific points in history, such as the fall of a dictatorial
government, members of this body may come together with some degree of awareness
of themselves as a unified grouping but, for the most part, civil society remains an
amorphous grouping of organisations and networks of organisations, often with
poorly defined boundaries and without a common purpose.
Within this broad aggregation, only some components of civil society are of
direct interest to those development assistance agencies which emphasise poverty
reduction. The most immediately relevant are the NGO sector and the associations of
the intended beneficiaries of aid, including membership groups, self-help groups,
community-based organisations, neighbourhood associations and grassroots
organisations. As noted above, after a long period in which the NGO sector was
viewed as the intermediary through which development assistance agencies could
best work with their intended beneficiaries, concern has recently been expressed
about both the capacity of NGOs and their relationships with their own societies
(Edwards and Hulme, 1995). Today, the second grouping may be of greater interest
to development agencies, with the support offered to NGOs best being viewed as a
means rather than an end in itself. The primary focus of this chapter is placed on such
grassroots organisations and their contribution to poverty reduction 2, although it is

82
recognised that development assistance agencies have other areas of concern in their
engagement with civil society, most notably that of good governance. These issues are
further considered below.
In this chapter, we use the following definitions. “Civil society” is used as an
all-embracing term consistent with the broader definition given above, i.e. it includes
non-governmental organisations, non-profit associations, informal organisations
addressing issues of public interest and self-help groups. The term “institution”
refers to groups of organisations in the categorisation of civil society. Both NGOs and
grassroots organisations are institutions within civil society, defined as follows:
NGOs are professional, non-profit, non-membership intermediary
organisations which are independent of the state and which undertake a
range of activities in order to further development objectives3.
Grassroots organisations are membership organisations which are also
independent of the state. The risks, costs and benefits are shared among
the members, and the leadership and/or management are accountable to
the membership. Most are non-profit organisations, but some operate as
co-operative commercial enterprises.
Before discussing the roles of these two types of institutions in working with
development assistance agencies, we place civil society within a wider context by
briefly exploring its links to the state and to the market. The varied roles undertaken
by civil society (as broadly defined) are important in securing development, and our
emphasis on poverty reduction in this chapter is not intended to diminish the value
of these activities.
Civil Society and the State: Civil society is often contrasted with the institution of
the state. Indeed, the popularity of the concept of civil society can be considered as due
to the current ideological context, which is characterised by the understanding that
government has become too large and that government agencies should be reduced
in number and scale. Civil society has been given increasing importance as the state
withdraws from certain areas and functions4.
Structural adjustment has reduced the scale of the state in many countries, but
it may also have reduced the effectiveness of the state. Whilst NGOs have been drawn
into playing a more significant role in the delivery of services, their work clearly
remains negligible in comparison to the scale of need. Hence the interest in more
representative organisations in civil society which can undertake a broader range of
activities and multiply several-fold the efforts of NGOs.
The fall of dictatorial governments coupled with an emphasis (by development
assistance agencies and others) on representative democratic government has also
increased the range of roles and potential activities of civil society. Those concerned
with good governance have emphasised the importance of encouraging the growth
of civil society, particularly those institutions which are concerned with maintaining
democracy and ensuring that government is accountable and effective.
NGOs have a special role to play with respect to civil society organisations and
the state, because they are willing to be advocates for all of civil society and because
they frequently act as interlocutors between civil society organisations and between
such organisations and the state. In the latter activity, they seek to bring the different
parties together and re-align the relationships among them in order to obtain
outcomes more consistent with the NGOs’ objectives for development. In many
countries, NGOs have struggled to make the state more accountable and more
inclusive of different social groups. The importance of NGOs relative to other
institutions depends on the broader political and social context. For example, NGOs

83
 are likely to be more active in an emergency or under a hostile authoritarian regime,
in the first case as providers of emergency relief and in the second as “safe havens”
for those who might otherwise join more explicitly political organisations.
Civil Society and the Market: Some groups in civil society have a close, even direct,
relationship with the market. Some, such as trade associations, are formed specifically
to protect market advantage. In self-help groups such as village associations, the
membership may secure at least part of its income through entrepreneurial activity
supported in some measure by the association. Some such groups have sought to
reduce the exploitation of low-income households and groups by strengthening their
trading position within the market through collective buying and selling, the provision
of credit for investment and the provision of training in business skills.
Other groups within civil society try to ensure that the market works more
effectively, through activities such as consumer protection or the maintenance of
trading standards by independent regulatory bodies. In this and other areas, there
may be conflicting relationships between some civil society organisations and the
market. This is perhaps most evident in areas such as labour relations, where trade
unions negotiate directly with private enterprises whilst advocating strong legislation
for employment protection, environmental protection and occupational health; or
when NGOs try to ensure that companies accept responsibility for the pollution and
environmental degradation that result from their activities.
The relationship between civil society, the market and government cannot be
understood simply as a set of bilateral relations. A strong market sector supports civil
society by broadening the number of institutions involved in civil society activities
and by providing a further source of funds. Civil society and market organisations
may have a common interest in ensuring that government functions honestly and
with reasonable effectiveness; and a strong market sector, by providing a counterweight
to the state, may enable greater freedom of action for civil society organisations.

The Contribution of Civil Society to Development

There are perhaps two main reasons why local and international development
assistance agencies have sought to support civil society organisations. Such support
is seen as a means of achieving other goals, notably poverty reduction and, as an end
in itself, through strengthening democratic tendencies within broader issues of
governance and the institutional fabric of society.
Strengthening Grassroots Organisations to Address Poverty Reduction: Specific
institutions and organisations within civil society have been supported by
international development assistance agencies in order to make poverty-reduction
programmes more effective and to foster peace and stability. Either implicitly or
explicitly, it is understood that effective programmes require strong local organisations
(both grassroot organisations and NGOs). It is also generally understood that such
organisations are more effective if they are independent of government5.
Governments are generally considered to have a critical role in ensuring that
their citizens’ basic needs are met. In some specific areas, such as infrastructure and
basic services, it may have a more direct responsibility. Most local authorities,
however, lack the resources and institutional capacity to meet many of these
responsibilities. Relatively few turn to supporting local groups to make their resources
go further, and even those which are fully committed to working with local groups
may find it difficult to work in ways that enable the concerns and experiences of local
people to be fully represented. Many development agencies now believe that the
intended beneficiaries of any intervention must be involved in planning and
implementation if the programme is to be effective. Often, state commitment to
community participation is only partial, and development agencies believe there is

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a need to develop local organisations to ensure that citizens can help themselves,
either through direct service provision or through campaigning for improvements in
the scale and quality of government provision.
Within poverty-reduction programmes, two distinct roles are being offered as
the primary reasons for strengthening grassroots organisations. First, for a
development programme to be effective, local communities need to feel a strong sense
of “ownership” over it, and this sense of ownership can, in part, be mediated through
some form of representative organisation. Such organisations may be asked to assume
various roles, which might include being consulted on (or drawing up) plans for the
design and operation of the programme, the collection and management of financial
or non-financial contributions by local residents and monitoring programme activities
during its implementation. Specific measures may be taken to help establish the long-
term involvement of the organisation. In one multi-donor project in Dar es Salaam, for
example, the community organisation was encouraged to undertake the management
of skilled labour in order to provide a source of revenue for the organisation and to
ensure that local residents were employed6.
Second, support is being given to extend the role of grassroots organisations
beyond the specific projects undertaken. There is now a much greater recognition of
the need (and potential) for grassroots organisations to have the capacity to identify
development needs, put in place new strategies and solutions, and negotiate with a
range of external agencies (i.e. those based outside the local community) to address
their needs. In neighbourhood upgrading programmes, for example, infrastructure
supplied within the programme is often not maintained by the local authority, and
it is hoped that stronger neighbourhood organisations will help to pressure
government staff into improving maintenance records7. In the Philippines, for example,
the Community Organisation of the Philippines Enterprise has sought to ensure that
local community organisations are aware of their rights to certain basic services, and
training is provided to help community leaders obtain these rights. Through these
goals, the professional agencies are seeking to strengthen local organisations, both
as an end in itself and as a means of extending the range of activities undertaken. Much
support aims to provide both programmatic and institutional development, and
individual activities often contribute to both.
This work to strengthen grassroots organisations involves an explicit hope that
governments will be pressured into more effectively serving the needs of the poor 8.
Through such strategies, poverty-reduction programmes may strengthen civil society
even if this was not their explicit intention.
Strengthening Civil Society to Support Democracy and Better Governance:
Development assistance agencies may support civil society in order to strengthen
democratic groupings and tendencies within nations, thereby encouraging greater
political pluralism. In part, agencies have acted on the understanding that a
redistribution of income within the state is more likely to occur if the government
represents all citizens. Clearly, other objectives may also be important, for example,
the need to strengthen the national economy and thereby to ensure that private-sector
entrepreneurs can influence policy making; and/or the need to ensure that different
(and potentially divisive) political groups are involved in policy dialogue, thereby
avoiding violent conflict. We may point out, however, that the relationship between
a stronger civil society and better government is poorly understood.
Inevitably, perhaps, these discussions touch on the nature and distribution of
power within society. Civil society organisations may compete (or be seen to compete)
with government agencies or with other elements within civil society. They may be
considered and treated as a threat to government. In Kenya, legislation to ensure
greater state control of NGOs was introduced in 1992 and has been used to de-register
an NGO that had criticised government corruption9. Relations between civil society
and the state are not necessarily conflictual, however, and the engagement can be used
to intervene positively in a development process, for example, by encouraging

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 co-operation between agencies and introducing new ideas. These dimensions are not
exclusive, and many groups in civil society pursue both simultaneously, with respect
to their relations with government. In the Philippines, one neighbourhood association
in a large squatter settlement successfully defended the settlement against eviction
attempts under the Marcos government and then worked with the Aquino government
to find an acceptable strategy by which the residents might be granted title to the land.
Although this situation has not been resolved, the discussions helped the government
to develop programmes that have since enabled over 55 000 households to obtain
land10.
The strengthening of grassroots organisations is linked in two ways with more
ambitious goals of strengthening democracy in local and national government. First,
many low-income groups in both North and South have very little effective
representation in government. In the United Kingdom, an estimated 30 per cent of the
population is now systematically excluded from many benefits and opportunities
(Hutton, 1995). In Southern towns and cities, a far higher percentage is excluded from
the benefits and opportunities that, many would argue, should be offered to all
citizens. Even if government becomes more pluralistic and includes a wider range of
groups, it will continue to exclude many of the neediest citizens unless effective
representative movements are developed among low-income settlements. Second,
traditions of democracy are partly formed through local political activities, and such
traditions can be established through influencing the nature of the interaction
between residents associations and local government bodies. If, for example,
governments are encouraged to be accountable to local residents, to state how much
funding is available and how it has been allocated, the nature of the relationship
between citizen and government is likely to change substantively. If local government
officials are encouraged to engage in dialogue with local residents, they are likely to
be increasingly aware of the potential contribution of local perspectives. Once that
dialogue has taken place, local residents have a political opportunity which they can
follow up and develop. Helping local residents’ organisations to interact in these
ways strengthens both the individual organisations and their local councillors. It also
helps to establish traditions of accountability, transparency and a plurality of
organisations and interests in politics. Building the capacity of local citizens’
organisations to work in this way is indispensable to building a democracy that is
representative of a wide spectrum of citizens rather than a small number of élite
groups.

How Can Civil Society Be Strengthened?

The Role of NGOs

In their efforts to reach grassroots organisations, many Northern-based

development agencies do not seek to work directly with organisations of the poor but
rather focus their support on NGOs11, primarily because they need support from
institutions familiar with the local context and able to work closely with local
residents (and government agencies) over a long period. Moreover, the presence of
Northern-based development workers may increase the expectations associated with
the project and thereby discourage the development of a strong sense of local
ownership, making it more difficult to strengthen grassroots organisations. (For ease
of reading, the term “NGO” should be taken here to mean local NGOs working directly
with grassroots organisations. In most cases, this is synonymous with Southern
NGOs, although occasionally Northern NGOs work locally in an operational role.)
NGOs and Grassroots Organisations: For many years, it has been accepted that
NGOs (or some organisations within this general categorisation) work effectively
with local grassroots organisations to achieve participatory development (see, for
example, Gorman, 1984; Hirschman, 1984; Clark, 1991; Korten, 1990). A prime

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objective of many NGOs working directly with low-income communities is the
empowerment of the local community. Although Desai (1995) argues that few NGOs
are primarily concerned with building the capacity of the people with whom they
work, many of the strongest people’s organisations have been supported by NGOs,
and grassroots organisations have few obvious alternative sources of sympathetic
professional advice. In Brazil, the National Movement for Housing Struggle is a
grassroots organisation conscious of the need to maintain its independence but still
prepared to draw on NGO staff as needed12.
Difficulties in relationships between NGOs and grassroots organisations may
be more widespread than was once thought, however, and NGOs may undermine the
activities and strengths of grassroots organisations in a number of ways:
– NGOs may impose their own agendas on the local self-help organisations with which
they are working.
Following a study of community development in Kenya, the Ford Foundation
recently established a local foundation to support the work of community-based
organisations. The researchers concluded that communities had little control
over the development process and gained little useful experience during the
implementation of development projects: “...whilst NGO capacity tends to
develop over time and with experience, it appears that the communities they
work with are not being developed to the same degree. They remain relatively
weak in terms of confidence and ability to carry out their own development”
(Thurman, 1994, p. 7). A number of reasons were identified: NGOs’ lack of
accountability, negative community attitudes towards them and a strong
project focus in their work which prevents community determination of activities
(Munyakho, 1994; Thurman, 1994).
– NGOs may be insensitive to political and power struggles within the community, failing
to work effectively with existing organisations and/or failing to transform them into
more representative organisations.
Desai (1995) reports that some community organisations in Bombay felt that
NGOs were too reliant on the traditional community leaders, who use these
contacts to reinforce their own position. Howes (1997) draws on a study of eight
NGOs, all of which work closely with membership organisations, to argue that
many NGOs which aim to build membership organisations prefer to establish
new organisations, ignoring (and therefore undermining) the existing capacity
of the primary stakeholders (Bebbington and Mitlin, 1996a). In one of the few
studies to explore these issues further, he argues that this strategy is probably
unhelpful and that new forms of membership organisation are most effective
when rooted in existing structures. These conclusions are echoed in an early
study of NGO initiatives in Thailand, Bolivia and Chile (Christian Aid, 1993).
– NGOs are “over-active”, undertaking most of the activities themselves, and in consequence
the abilities and skills of grassroots organisations are not developed.
A commentator on the relationship between NGOs and community organisations
in Argentine towns and cities suggests that NGOs develop close personal
relations with the staff of local authorities and thereby “create a form of
dependency between NGOs and the grassroots organisations not dissimilar to
the clientelistic relations between politicians and voters...there is no systematic
transfer of knowledge from the NGOs to the grassroots organisations to enable
the latter to deal autonomously with the state” (Gazzoli, 1996, p. 163).
– NGOs do not attempt to be accountable to the communities that they seek to help.
In Pakistan, the Orangi Pilot Project produces quarterly accounts of income and
expenditure to provide community members with information on the projects
it offers. It began this practice because local residents were suspicious when the

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 staff attempted to persuade them to invest their own finances in sanitation
improvements. The residents believed that the Orangi Pilot Project had received
donor support to provide sanitation and that they were keeping this money
whilst persuading the local residents to pay for the work. The significance of this
example is that the practice is so rare: few NGOs provide local grassroots
organisations with information on the financial management of their joint
projects.
Taken together, these concerns suggest that NGO staff may be reluctant to
delegate power and responsibility to local residents. As a consequence, NGOs may
be failing to strengthen independent and capable agencies. In some cases, they may
even be failing to create such organisations. In a study of micro credit programmes,
Montgomery (1996) expresses concern that there is little attempt to support autonomous
organisations, whilst savings groups are seen as branches of the NGO. Other
concerns have been raised about NGOs’ ability to provide the necessary support in
areas such as social development, technology, communication and accountability13.
No clear consensus exists on the necessary conditions for positive interaction
between NGOs and grassroots organisations. NGOs may be defensive when their
activities in this area are criticised. In Kenya, when the Ford Foundation proposed to
establish a local foundation to support community-based organisations, local NGOs
were uncertain and critical of the proposal. In South Africa, an NGO attempting to
forge a new kind of relationship with low-income communities found it difficult
initially to have its work and strategies accepted.
Some concern has been expressed that the problems faced by local NGOs in their
relationships with grassroots organisations are associated with the kind of funding
constraints placed on them by Northern NGOs and official donor agencies
(Verhagen, 1987; Thurman, 1994). These issues are explored further below. It is also
true, however, that local NGOs need not passively accept the problems associated
with much development assistance funding. Some can, and do, develop strategies to
avoid dependence on any single donor and have sought to diversify their funding
bases, for example, through income generation or greater financial support from local
agencies.
The situation is not necessarily as severe as the concerns raised above might
suggest. Carroll (1992) concluded that NGOs are in fact slightly better at service
delivery and at reaching the poorest than federations of grassroots organisations.
Some NGOs have sought to develop structures and ways of working which offer better
support to grassroots organisations14. NGOs have also responded to criticism by re-
examining their practices; for example, ActionAid has been developing participatory
monitoring and evaluation processes to ensure that communities become more
effectively involved in NGO planning (Goyder, 1995). Gazzoli (1996) works with an
Argentine NGO that has sought to develop a supportive relationship with grassroots
organisations. Box 1 describes the relationship developed by an Indian NGO which
sought to avoid the kinds of problems identified by Desai (1995).
NGO Legitimacy: Discussions of the relationship between grassroots
organisations and NGOs raise the issue of NGO legitimacy. Many Northern-based
development assistance agencies give grant aid to Southern NGOs, thereby conferring
legitimacy on them as intermediaries in development, able to receive other resources
and to contribute to formulating the development agenda. Membership organisations
in civil society have increasingly questioned the legitimacy of NGOs’ continuing to
play these roles and to receive resources as they had done in the past. According to
some organisations in civil society, NGOs should be considered legitimate
intermediaries only when they have well-founded, consolidated, transparent and
participatory relationships with the organised and unorganised poor. Whilst some
NGOs may have a legitimate role as intermediaries in supporting civil society and
reducing poverty, clearly this is not the case for all NGOs: this legitimacy must be
dependent on the strategies that they follow. Donor agencies have a role in selecting

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 the NGOs with which they wish to work and in devising strategies for working with
them — strategies which may strengthen NGOs’ capacity to work with grassroots
organisations.

Box 1. SPARC, the National Slum Dwellers Federation

and Mahila Milan
In the early 1970s, a group of community leaders from over 30 cities in
India formed the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF). Many of them
had worked with NGOs but had been frustrated by the inequality of the
relationship: they were neither consulted on project priorities nor involved
in resource use or allocation. Seeking an alternative, they registered their own
trusts and societies, and tried to obtain direct funding. This strategy proved
difficult, as they were unable to fulfil the formal-sector agencies’ requirements
for reports and audits.
SPARC (a newly formed NGO) started to work with women pavement
dwellers in Bombay in 1984. The staff were unsure what kind of partnership
they sought, but they hoped to work with communities which could come
together to form some kind of autonomous organisation. SPARC tried to work
in ways that would strengthen communities.
In 1988, SPARC and NSDF began to co-operate more closely. They
formed Mahila Milan, a federation of women’s collectives, to secure a
separate and defined space for women within local federations. Together, the
three organisations have developed an educational and organisational
strategy which allows local communities to play a central role in development.
Each organisation has evolved specific roles:
– Mahila Milan helps women in the collectives to develop a set of skills
which will allow them to become involved in community decision
making along with the NSDF; it also helps communities to accept the
role and contribution of women and not to see women as competing
with men in the community.
– The NSDF (with Mahila Milan) mobilises communities — and women
in particular — to participate in their own development and builds the
credibility and skills needed to represent the poor in a dialogue with
the state and other resource-providing institutions.
– SPARC is retreating from its former functions and seeking new roles in
assistance to local federations. It manages finance for these federations,
experiments with institutional forms which will ultimately be managed
by the federations, works to obtain funding, supports research activities
and acts as a liaison with state and international agencies.

The Role of Development Assistance Agencies

Generally, the 1990s have been dominated by market-oriented development

strategies aimed at strengthening the capacity of private-sector institutions to contribute
to poverty reduction. The growing recognition given to civil society by official
development agencies has been an important counterweight to some of these market-
oriented strategies. More pragmatically, the concept of civil society has also helped
to promote an understanding of the role of development institutions that extends
beyond the government agencies which are the inevitable focus of official aid
programmes. Recognising the importance of representative groups, development

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 assistance agencies are seeking to put in place specific policies and programmes that
involve engagement with organisations and institutions within civil society. Official
development assistance agencies have placed an understandable emphasis on
working with state agencies and still allocate most of their funds to these bodies. In
this context, it is even more important to ensure that the limited funds allocated to civil
society organisations are allocated effectively.
Working with Civil Society: A critical factor in the design of development
programmes is the need for a good understanding of civil society institutions, of the
historical conditions within which such organisations and institutions developed
and of the present context in which they operate. One meeting concluded that even
when historical or contextual research on civil society organisations exists, very few
of the practitioners implementing projects which involve such organisations have
sought to incorporate this understanding within the project design (Bebbington and
Mitlin, 1996b). A poor understanding of context and, particularly, of necessary
preconditions may account for the many failures in replicating pilot projects.
Donor strategies towards civil society have often placed particular emphasis on
the NGO sector, both as a means of strengthening other civil society groups such as
village organisations and as more direct operational agencies for development
activity. As we have noted, there is now concern that NGOs’ performance in this
respect might be improved upon but, for many reasons, NGOs will likely remain an
important conduit for development assistance to grassroots organisations. The latter
may find it difficult to manage donor finance by themselves (see Box 1), and donor
agencies may be reluctant to fund grassroots organisations unless they are formalised
to the extent of having financial management experience and a bank account.
Bebbington and Riddell (1997) also raise the substantive issue of official development
agencies’ pursuing contradictory policies, namely, supporting grassroots
organisations which lobby governments to reverse changes on which the agency itself
has insisted. Supporting such contradictions through funding to NGOs is likely to
be difficult enough; supporting them through direct finance to grassroots organisations,
which may be integrally involved in such protest, may be impossible.
The discussion above raises some general issues concerning the relations
between NGOs and grassroot organisations. A number of further issues bear
specifically on the nature of the funds that NGOs receive from donor agencies15.
Hulme and Edwards (1997a) argue that some NGOs may be almost completely
dependent on Northern donor agencies and, as a result, often do not have close
relations with other local organisations in civil society, thereby reducing their
effectiveness as an institution of civil society; Bebbington and Riddell (1997) share
this concern. Increases in funding may have encouraged rapid growth, but
organisational relationships cannot develop at the same pace as activities. NGOs may
welcome new sources of funding, but they may also find it difficult to integrate the
reporting requirements with continuing and flexible support to grassroots
organisations. Increasing size is often associated with increasing professionalisation
and bureaucracy, and consequently with a reduction in NGOs’ effectiveness in
working directly with communities (Desai, 1995; Smillie and Helmich, 1993). NGOs
may be drawn away from their original missions by donors’ preferences for new areas
and donors’ willingness to offer additional funds to NGOs which are associated with
successful projects (Bebbington and Mitlin, 1996b). The formal project-management
tools required by development assistance agencies — such as professionalisation,
project-cycle tools and measurable outcomes — may run counter to the stated objectives
of capacity building and promoting civil society (Goyder, 1995; Crowther, Shepherd
and Wallace, 1997).
Other aspects are related more directly to official support for grassroots
organisations and their role within civil society. In general, these aspects have been
little explored; the kinds of difficulties that might be faced can be exemplified through
the relationship of grassroots organisations to political parties. Many individual

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members of grassroots organisations (and members of other institutions within civil
society) are closely involved with political activity and, in some cases, with political
parties. Indeed, part of the attractiveness of these organisations to development
assistance agencies lies in their willingness and capacity to engage in political issues
with local politicians. Inevitably, some members become directly engaged in politics,
and local organisations deal differently with this situation. Some ask that officers of
grassroots organisations who stand for political posts resign from their positions
within the organisation so as not to compromise it (Gamage, 1993). Others are willing
to allow local councillors to remain as leaders of the organisation; for example, there
are two councillors on the national committee of the South African Homeless People’s
Federation. Such relations may be difficult for official development assistance agencies,
which are required to refrain from explicit political engagement.
In this context, do the current methodologies and procedures which surround
funding and project management correspond to the concepts — such as participation,
empowerment and civil society —that such agencies are trying to promote?
Improving the Quality of the Support Offered by External Agencies: We have
identified a number of problems concerning donors’ strategies for supporting
grassroots organisations through NGOs. In the light of these problems, what might
be the most useful practical steps to render external support to grassroots organisations
more effective?
1) Reaching a better understanding of civil society16. The following research
areas would all add to the effectiveness of external support and might enable
development assistance agencies to target support more precisely, to become more
aware of some potential difficulties.
– What roles may grassroots organisations play in poverty reduction and how
may these roles (together with their activities and relationships) be enhanced
in terms of both effectiveness and scale?
– How have NGOs contributed to the development (or lack of development) of
such civic associations and which, in general, are the institutional forms
through which participatory approaches (methods and techniques) may best
be realised?
– What are the implications of decentralisation for civil society organisations
(especially NGOs and grassroots organisations) and how does decentralisation
change the constraints and opportunities that they face?
– To date, the discussion on civil society has been dominated by Northern
perspectives and experiences. What are the South’s perspectives on civil
society?
2) Addressing the autonomy of grassroots organisations. NGOs will continue
to offer significant institutional support to grassroots organisations (and will be the
mechanism through which many development assistance agencies seek to support
such activities). Grassroots organisations can be strengthened through specific
measures which address their lack of autonomy and power in such relationships:
– establishing local sources of finance (such as foundations or earmarked funds)
to enable grassroots organisations to access funding directly, with local
knowledge replacing some of the more stringent accountability requirements
needed when donor and recipient are a great distance apart17;
– ensuring that grassroots organisations develop independence in learning and
in direction by encouraging community-to-community links, using both informal
mechanisms (e.g. local exchange programmes) and formal mechanisms (e.g. the
establishment of federative structures).

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 3) Assisting NGOs to be more effective support agencies. The question of how
to improve the quality of the official aid offered to NGOs has been much discussed,
and there is no value in repeating these discussions here. However, with respect to
the role of official development agencies in support of grassroots organisations, the
most pertinent points are:
– flexible funding that allows NGOs to work with and follow the direction of the
communities concerned rather than develop rigid plans that make it difficult to
incorporate the views, perceptions and understanding of grassroots
organisations;
– long-standing relationships between grassroot organisation and NGO, and
between NGO and donor, enabling all parties to learn from past experiences;
– recognition that one of the most important elements of NGO accountability is
accountability to the poor and to organisations of the poor.

Conclusions

“Civil society” is a rediscovered rather than a new concept. This rediscovery

reflects a growing interest in non-governmental and not-for-profit agencies and
associations by other development professionals and practitioners. The scale, breadth
and diversity of civil society organisations is now being recognised. Although the
nature of, and relationships between, many such associations is poorly understood,
there is a widespread sense that they could make a substantial contribution to
development. Whilst the participation of local residents in development assistance
programmes has long been held to be important, the new focus on civil society has
resulted in an interest in institutional process through which such participation can
be strengthened.
“Civil society” is too general and overarching a term for thinking through
specific development strategies. Development assistance agencies need to give priority
to those civil society organisations which are most significant to low-income groups:
the membership organisations of the poor themselves. The consequences of increased
interest in civil society are already evident. There is a new questioning of the role and
attitudes of NGOs (the most common of the intermediary agencies which work
directly with the poor) and their effectiveness in addressing poverty and in working
with such membership organisations.
Although it is evident that NGOs can strengthen civil society, both through their
support for membership organisations and through their other work, more emphasis
needs to be placed on understanding the nature of community-based/membership
organisations and identifying the conditions under which they can emerge and
become strong representative institutions, able to strengthen democracy and alleviate
poverty. This effort may bring to light new roles and relationships for NGOs.
If development assistance agencies wish to reduce poverty more effectively, they
need to support the work of local representative organisations. Whilst they need a
better understanding of the roles, relationships and activities of such organisations,
current experiences suggest that they can help through immediate interventions: by
providing direct local funding to grassroot organisations; by investing in community
institutions for learning, in order to promote the independence of civil society
organisations; and by ensuring that NGOs improve their relationships with local
communities. In addition, they need to recognise and reconsider current trends in
development assistance (such as the nature of project financing, the professionalisation
of NGOs and the introduction of project frameworks, quantifiable indicators and
other such tools) that may impede the strengthening of civil society.

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 Notes and
1. This chapter draws on a synthesis study and a workshop for the Overseas Development References
Administration (since renamed Department of International Development) of the
British government. The synthesis study, NGO Capacity and Effectiveness: A Review of
Themes in NGO-related Research Recently Funded by ESCOR (Bebbington and Mitlin,
1996a), brought together the conclusions of the research projects listed below. The
workshop (“The NGO Sector and Its Role in Strengthening Civil Society and Securing
Good Governance”) was attended by leading British academics and practitioners
working in the areas of NGOs, governance and capacity building, with a few guests
from overseas. Both activities were undertaken jointly by the author of this chapter
and Anthony Bebbington (then of IIED, now of the University of Colorado).

The individual research reports:

Critical Assessment of NGOs: Coordination in Emergency Humanitarian Assistance: The

Case of Kenya (Kathina, Refugee Studies Programme and Centre for Socio-legal
Studies, University of Oxford) examines the factors influencing co-ordination and
how co-ordination might be improved. The research focuses on the influx of Somali
refugees into Kenya between 1989 and 1993, considering the experience of a range
of agencies: Northern NGOs, Southern NGOs, UN agencies, donor governments and
the Kenyan government.

Developing Country NGOs and Donor Governments (Bebbington and Riddell, Overseas
Development Institute) is a commissioned report which examines the strengths and
weaknesses of Southern NGOs and considers how official development assistance
might better support such organisations. It looks at how these NGOs might be
assisted, the types of aid they can use most effectively and alternative partnership
relationships.

The Effect of External Funding on the Capacity of Indigenous NGOs (Moore and Stewart,
Institute of Development Studies) includes studies of six local NGOs and a range of
donor agencies in Zimbabwe and Nepal. The interviews with donor agencies
explored two major issues: the impact of funding and organisational practice on
indigenous NGOs, and an understanding of the local NGO scene.

Filling the Gap: An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Urban NGOs (Desai, Institute of
Development Studies) focuses on 67 NGOs in Bombay, examining their roles and
relationships in the provision of a range of support services. The study developed
a typology of urban NGOs and considers a number of issues related to NGO
effectiveness.

Methods and Indicators for Measuring the Impact of Poverty Reduction Interventions
(Goyder, ActionAid) seeks to address the mismatch between participatory approaches
for project implementation and conventional evaluation methodology. The research
considered existing poverty indicators and evaluation methodologies, and explored
some new approaches to impact evaluation. It contains studies of four countries:
Bangladesh, Ghana, India and Uganda.

NGO Project and Programme Management (Crowther, Shepherd and Wallace,

Development Administration Group) considers the practices of British-based NGOs
in programme planning, the conceptualisation and implementation of project
design, and management of the project cycle. The research analysed the funding
patterns and strategies of 17 NGOs focusing on three main areas: planning, gender,
and monitoring and evaluation.

A Review of NGO Strategies for the Institutional Development of Membership Organisations

(Howes, Institute of Development Studies) explores how NGOs have contributed to
the development of such organisations and whether it has been possible to maintain
their claimed comparative cost advantage and the inclusion of both the poorest
groups and women. The issues are considered through case studies of eight Northern
and Southern NGOs in Asia and Africa.

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 Strengthening the Capacity of Southern NGO Partners (James, INTRAC) develops an
overview of the capacity-building approaches being used by Northern NGOs
through a postal survey of 101 such organisations. The report considers the relative
importance of various strategies and the characteristics of the NGOs which favour
each of the different approaches.

Value-based Effectiveness: Organising NGOs for Value-based Effectiveness (Zadek, New

Economics Foundation) explores ways in which NGOs might play more effective
roles in development by evolving methods of organisation more suited to their
social and ethical beliefs. Through studies of three NGOs in Africa, Asia and Latin
America, four tools have been developed to help NGOs understand and handle
situations and environments characterised by the perspectives and needs of multiple
stakeholders.

2. As argued by Clark (1997, p. 45), such governance issues are considered more
significant for the poor.

3. NGOs are generally included within definitions of civil society. Some suggest that
they stand apart from other civil society groups in that they act as intermediaries
between groups within civil society, between civil society and government agencies,
and (less often) between civil society and the market (see Bebbington and
Mitlin, 1996b). Others use the term “civil society” as synonymous with NGOs,
demonstrating both the lack of clarity about the exact boundaries of the term and the
dominance of the NGO sector in some perceptions of civil society. For example, the
NGLS blurred the distinction between the terms in the title Social Priorities of Civil
Society: Speeches by Non-Governmental Organizations at the World Summit for Social
Development (United Nations, 1996).

4. Hulme and Edwards (1997a) summarise recent history by associating the 1970s with
“the myth of the state”, the 1980s with “the myth of the market” and the present
decade with “the myth of the market plus civil society” (p. 277).

5. The Swiss Development Corporation has negotiated the ability to allocate about
5 per cent of bilateral funds to Pakistan to support the involvement of civil society
organisations within its programmes (Mitlin and Satterthwaite, 1997).

6. Hanna Nassif, project documentation, United Nations Development Programme.

7. See, for example, the strategies used in the Slum Improvement Programme in India
by the British Department for International Development.

8. Community Organisation of the Philippines Enterprise, internal evaluation, 1997.

9. From a discussion with Murtaza Jaffer, chief executive of the National Council of
NGOs (Kenya).

10. Personal communication, T. Katigbak, former director, Housing and Urban

Development Co-ordinating Council.

11. The nature and extent of general support offered by official development assistance
agencies to NGOs has been fairly widely discussed and is therefore not further
explored here. Interested readers are referred to OECD (1988), Smillie and Helmich
(1993) and Edwards and Hulme (1995).

12. From a discussion with Yves Cabannes, “NGO” advisor to the National Movement
for Housing Struggle, Brazil.

13. See, for example, the discussion in Hulme and Edwards (1997a).

14. To give just one example, the Community Organisation of the Philippines Enterprise
took a substantive look at its strategies for working with grassroots organisations
in 1994. One concern was that its training programme encouraged community
leaders to behave like NGO staff rather than helping them to become stronger leaders
in their own right. In co-operation with the communities concerned, it devised a new
training programme with stronger emphasis on building links between community
leaders and the local membership.

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15. Such issues have been much discussed. See, for example, Gordon Drabek (1987),
Smillie and Helmich (1993), Theunis (1992) and Hulme and Edwards (1997b).

16. This section draws on Bebbington and Mitlin (1996b), as a major purpose of the
workshop was to identify and discuss future research needs in this area.

17. See Mitlin and Satterthwaite (1996) for further discussion about how one type of fund
might operate.

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BEBBINGTON, A. and D. MITLIN (1996b), “The NGO Sector and Its Role in Strengthening Civil
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 PART FOUR
PERSPECTIVES
FROM D EVELOPING R EGIONS

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98
 The Growing Civil Society in Asia:
An Overview and Proposals for Future Action
Aye Aye Win

Introduction

In recent years, the concept of “civil society” has aroused renewed and heightened
interest. It has been discussed and debated in many international circles, particularly
the donor community. Despite the amount of attention paid to the concept, there is
surprisingly little agreement on a working definition of civil society, and it has largely
been up to individuals to adopt a definition to suit their needs. In this chapter we shall
define civil society as the institutions of civil society.
Asia has seen phenomenal growth among civil society institutions,
accompanying the region’s rapid economic development. These institutions display
a strong tendency to form collaborative arrangements across national borders,
reflecting the emergence of regional consciousness and of an identity based not only
on the cultural heritage and values of Asia, but on ideas encompassing the region’s
economic and political future. The development of such institutions in Asia also
reflects a significant advance in the processes of democratisation and pluralisation
in the region. This chapter will provide an overview of these developments, examining
the reasons for the rapid increase of the institutions of civil society and the constraints
they face as they evolve further. The final section will suggest various ways in which
civil society in the region might be strengthened.
Owing to the vast geographical spread, the cultural richness, and the economic,
social and political diversity of the region, this short chapter cannot possibly do
justice to the state of civil society in all the countries of Asia. It is simply a modest
attempt to outline a framework and to cite country-specific examples where appropriate.
The concept of civil society is not a new one, and attempts made by some analysts
to pinpoint the “beginning” of civil society should be resisted. Throughout history,
great civilisations and civil societies with differing value systems have existed in Asia
and other parts of the world. Imperial China, the kingdoms of India, the Aztec and Inca
civilisations of South America, pharaonic Egypt, the Ottoman, Greek and Roman
empires — all these civilisations had vibrant societies based on value systems
different from those which prevail today. What is important, therefore, is not so much
the issue of when civil society began, but the evolutionary process of civil society, that
is, how civil societies with different features, characteristics and value systems evolve
over time.
This chapter is primarily concerned with a particular “civil society”, the values
of which are entrenched in justice, equity and pluralist democracy. The working
definition adopted here, though limited, is a society in which “...the people are aware
of the responsibility to be involved in public issues and are able to actively participate

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 in the promotion of the public good. More recently, it has become common for writers
to use the term in conjunction with the promotion, on a worldwide basis, of the non-
governmental, non-profit sector. In this sense civil society is a general term for
organisations and individuals who work to promote a public good from a civilian
(i.e., civil) standpoint” (Yamamoto, 1995b, p. 41). Hence the actors examined here
— all of them prevalent in Asia — are private organisations (non-governmental or
non-profit organisations), policy research institutes and philanthropic institutions
(private and corporate foundations) that contribute to the public good.
This working definition will allow us to proceed with the analysis, but the
author is aware of its limitations. Indeed, the author would argue that “civil society”
also exists in countries like Burma, the author’s country of origin, even though it does
not quite fit into the categories mentioned above. In Burma, indigenous non-
governmental organisations (NGOs) do not exist, and all research institutes are
controlled by government. The youth groups, associations and movements (e.g. the
farmers’ and workers’ movements) which do exist were created by the state in its
attempt to manage society. The “unmanaged” groups which contribute to the public
good are loose and informal. They revolve around the monastery, or loose groups of
people with or without great wealth who contribute to the public good or the good of
their communities, for example by digging wells in villages or building “rest-houses”
in the countryside where travellers can rest. These informal groups do not engage in
direct advocacy or speak against the policies of the regime.

Civil Society: Is the Concept Relevant for Asia?

In the light of what has been said above, the short and sharp answer to this
question is yes. The concept of civil society is and has been relevant for Asia, although
the heightened activity and the specific attention paid to the concept recently have
largely been due to the global interest in civil society, and in particular to the influence
of the United States in the region.
A central question in the debate on civil society, and one related to Asia, is
whether non-western cultures can generate the institutions of civil society. Let us take
the example of the Chinese Confucianist culture, a major non-western culture which
is dominant in the region. Western analysts have often argued that Chinese culture
has been an obstacle to the development of viable civil society institutions and of
balanced state-society power relationships. According to this argument, Chinese
culture is dominated by the Confucian tradition, which places strong emphasis on
hierarchical order, top-down control and paternalism, and provides little recognition
of individual autonomy, liberty, privacy, due process of law, human rights and
sustainable mechanisms against excessive state power. The Confucian tradition is
thus considered to have impeded the development of an autonomous civil society and
public sphere. However, even by the modern definition of civil society — one whose
values are entrenched in justice, equity and pluralist democracy — civil society not
only exists in Chinese societies but has been the main driving force towards
liberalisation and pluralist democracy. Hsiao (Hsiao, 1995) argues that “...the recent
political economic transformation in the three modern Chinese societies of Taiwan,
Hong Kong, and mainland China since the 1980s has been an encouraging sign that
‘civil society’ can in fact be developed under Chinese cultures” (pp. 1-2).
Hsiao points out that “the most striking societal transformation in Taiwan since
the 1980s has been the rise of many self-initiated, self-supported, grassroots social
movement organisations within the realm of civil society. The Taiwanese civil society
across class, religion and ethnic lines began to make demands on the state as
manifested by twenty types of social movements” (p. 6). In view of the growth of the
consumer movement, anti-pollution movement, women’s movement, students’
movement, labour movement and many other movements representing a plethora of

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interests in society, Hsiao called the 1980s the “golden decade of social movements”
for Chinese Taipei. The resurrection of civil society has become one of the driving
forces behind liberalisation and democratisation in Chinese Taipei.
In his discussion of Hong Kong, Hsiao argues that although “civil society”
existed under the British rule, it was never organised in a clear attempt to compete with
and challenge the colonial state. “However, the 1997 shock awakened the Hong Kong
civil society, especially the middle class. The political market was created and many
active civil-political groups were organised for the first time” (p. 9). Anxiety over the
return of the colony to Chinese sovereignty aroused civil society, which began to
mobilise itself into groups for political commentary and political participation.
As for mainland China, the economic reforms since the late 1970s have
contributed to the rise of a nascent civil society, as manifested in the large pro-
democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen square in 1989. The pro-democracy
movement of 1989 was an attempt to establish a “public sphere” or a realm of political
discourse outside the control of the communist state, and its failure was a tremendous
setback for the further development of civil society. Hsiao argues that “the political
influence of the various civil society groups along economic, professional, social and
regional ties is still limited in facing the communist state” (p. 14). This is not due,
however, to the inhibitory effect of Confucian culture on civil society, since we have
seen a strong civil society in the cases of Chinese Taipei and Hong Kong, where the
Confucian traditions are equally strong. Rather, it is due to the authoritarian nature
of the state — a situation found in other countries around the world. Civil society in
mainland China is very weak and even fragile, and its future development is still
heavily dependent on the tolerance of the state.

The Growing Civil Society in Asia: The Status Quo

One of the most important recent initiatives in the area of Asian civil society is
the comprehensive survey on “Non-governmental Underpinning of the Emerging
Asia Pacific Regional Community” undertaken by the Japan Centre for International
Exchange (JCIE) and the Institute of South-east Asian Studies. The survey assessed
the state of civil society in each nation in Asia and the Pacific, as well as the regional
networks. The resulting publication, Emerging Civil Society in the Asia Pacific Community
(Yamamoto, 1995a), gives by far the most comprehensive overview of the growing
NGO sector in the region. The country surveys in this publication provide the basis
for the following overview of civil society institutions in Asia.

NGOs and NGO Networks

In many countries of South-east Asia, including Indonesia, Thailand and the

Philippines, the NGO sector has experienced phenomenal growth since the 1950s. In
Indonesia, for example, despite the relatively hostile political environment, estimates
of the number of independent organisations currently working on development
issues range from 4 000 to 6 000. In Thailand, the number of registered associations
and foundations has been increasing constantly since the early 1940s; in 1989 there
were over 8 000 non-profit organisations (NPOs), and approximately 3 000 foundations
were registered with the National Cultural Commission. In the Philippines, NGOs
began to flourish under the Aquino government from 1986; today, the database of local
government shows a total of 14 398 NGOs and people’s organisations
(Yamamoto, 1995a, pp. 5-6).
In Korea, the end of the authoritarian regime in June 1987 marked the emergence
of increasingly effective and sophisticated civic groups led by the younger generation.
One of the most active and impressive of these is the Citizen’s Coalition for Economic

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 Justice, whose activities cover the advocacy of economic reform (an independent
central bank, financial reforms), the environment, development and the issue of
Korean reunification. In Japan, again despite the hostile political and bureaucratic
circumstances that hamper civilian groups from gaining legal status, there has been
a gradual increase in the number of NGOs since the end of World War II. This tendency
has received a significant boost since the Kobe earthquake of 1995, and NGOs are
rapidly increasing in number and gaining recognition. In India, which enjoys strong
democratic structures and traditions, civil society institutions have flourished since
the beginning of the 20th century, and there are countless international and domestic
NGOs working on a plethora of development-related issues. Even in China, 89 969
shetuan — social voluntary organisations which are more or less comparable to
international development NGOs — were registered in 1992.
This growth is not merely a matter of numbers. It is also evident that civil society
institutions in the region are addressing a widening scope of issues. Increasingly,
they have evolved from a narrow domestic focus to a more international outlook,
embracing global issues and working in solidarity with regional and international
movements in the struggle for human rights, sustainable development and
environmental protection whilst continuing important social welfare and development
work on the domestic front. There has also been an evolution in the practices of NGOs,
from the traditional “dole-out” approaches of religious organisations, which created
a dependency culture, to self-help and development projects which foster
independence, self-respect and sustainability.
Asian NGOs have been increasingly active at various UN and international
conferences, and they have also hosted important international conferences, such as
the Asia-Pacific regional NGO symposium held in Manila in November 1993, and
Asia-Pacific NGO symposium on social development held in Bangkok in July 1994.
Moreover, just as NGO fora at UN summits have become common, people’s fora at
various inter-governmental meetings in the region are also on the increase, as civil
society institutions are defining their priorities and articulating their positions with
respect to major regional issues concerning peace and security, economic development
and integration. For example, an NGO forum preceded the first-ever Asia-Europe
(ASEM) summit in March 1996, while the Manila People’s Forum on the Asia-Pacific
Economic Co-operation forum (APEC) preceded the APEC summit in November 1996.
Recently, an impressive gathering of representatives from research institutes and
NGOs met in Bangkok to work on various dimensions of peace and security, to define
“alternative security systems for Asia and the Pacific”, a security system that moves
away from the traditional “arms-race” approach of state security to one which serves
the interests and real security of the people.
The other important trend is the growing number of networks and collaborative
arrangements, as NGOs develop regional ties with their counterparts in other
countries. These joint efforts and closer communication with their regional counterparts
are helping to strengthen their efforts. The Asian NGO Coalition (ANGOC), one of the
more dynamic networks in the region, is a regional association of 23 development
NGOs and networks from eight countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines and Thailand. ANGOC aims to facilitate people-centred development in
the region by promoting South-South and North-South dialogue and by enhancing
human resource development and capacity building of NGOs through research and
publications, seminars and workshops, development education and training. The
South-east Asian NGO consortium for Sustainable Development (SEACON), founded
as a consortium of South-east Asian NGOs in 1989, is comprised of three regional
networking organisations: ANGOC, the Asian Culture Forum for Development
(ACFOD) and Approtech Asia; its aim is to promote region-wide participation and
social reform in ensuring sustainable development approaches. South-east Asia
Development of Human Resources and Rural Areas Reform (SEADHRRA) has
various national chapters including the Yayasan Bina in Indonesia, PhilDHRRA for
the Philippines and ThaiDHRRA for Thailand.

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 Research Institutes

Policy research institutes, the second category of actors in our definition of civil
society, have increased their networking and co-operation in recent years. The most
significant development is the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Asia and
the Pacific (CSCAP). This initiative is designed to create a more structured regional
process of non-governmental dialogue and research on security issues, open to all the
countries and regions in the Asia and Pacific region and based on several existing
channels for non-governmental dialogue. CSCAP is regarded as the intellectual
underpinning of the recently established ASEAN regional forum that deals with
security issues of the ASEAN countries. CSCAP is largely a talk shop, but it has
produced a significant amount of academic writing, research and conference activity,
especially since 1990. The most important arena for dialogue is the ASEAN Institute
for Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS), a network established in 1988
and comprising five institutes from ASEAN countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia,
Singapore and the Philippines.
Many of the research institutes mentioned here are closely related to governments.
In a region where some governments are still sceptical of views expressed by NGOs
or the population at large on issues like security, which they deem to be complex
beyond the comprehension of civilians, the research institutes are good intermediaries
between government and civil society. Moreover, the informality of dialogues organised
by research institutes also facilitates a freer flow of ideas and information,
circumventing the inhibitions induced by direct involvement government. Such dual-
track efforts are likely to gain momentum in the coming years.

Philanthropic Institutions

Many countries have witnessed tremendous growth in philanthropic activities,

particularly in the corporate sector. Japan’s involvement in particular has been
growing significantly since the late 1970s. Approximately 300 grant-making
foundations have been set up, half of them between 1980 and 1992. There have also
been important philanthropic developments in newly industrialised economies like
Korea, Chinese Taipei and Hong Kong. In Korea, for example, the directory of
company-sponsored foundations of the Federation of Korean Industries now lists
81 corporate foundations where only nine existed before 1970. In Chinese Taipei, the
number of foundations quadrupled between 1981 and 1990, from 80 to 309. Again,
there has been significant growth of philanthropic activities in the ASEAN countries.
In the Philippines, new patterns of corporate philanthropy have been developing
under the strong leadership of Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP): in
1992, 249 companies donated a total of 295 million pesos ($11.8 million); while in
1993, 204 companies gave a total of 306 million pesos ($12.24 million) — a rise of
4 per cent in just 12 months (Yamamoto, 1995a, p. 11).

Reasons for the Growth of Civil Society

The principal explanation for the rise of civil society in Asia has economic roots.
The past three decades have seen tremendous economic growth in the newly
industrialised Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Korea and Japan, as well as rapid growth
in China and India. This economic growth has generated both positive and negative
effects that have accelerated the growth of civil society in the region.
The rise of the non-profit sector in Asia is related to the negative consequences
of rapid economic development in these countries, which has led to serious economic
disparity. The benefits of new wealth in urban areas attract people from rural areas,
but the immediate benefits are limited, and these domestic migrants end up as

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 squatters once the available jobs and housing are gone. At the same time, the loss of
agricultural workers in rural areas can circumscribe food production, a situation that
can provoke nation-wide hunger and rural poverty. In addition, rapid economic
growth can destroy the natural environment and the communities that subsist on it.
The accelerated pace of change and the growing diversity of needs expose the state’s
limited ability to solve the growing problems, thus opening a space for NGOs to move
in and grapple with these complex issues. As few government reforms are intended
to benefit poor people, it has become necessary to train the poor to make themselves
heard by policy makers and thinkers. It has become important for NGOs to advocate
the improvement of social and economic conditions in the affected communities.
According to Ponsapich (1995), “Asian governments have not been able to bring
about equitable economic development... The NGOs have struggled for alternative
development policies and strategies leading towards sustainable development... The
ways in which government agencies work in tackling problems may not provide the
solutions sought...and NGOs may be able to provide alternative means to tackle
development problems” (pp. 247ff). This view was confirmed by the experience of
Indonesia, where “...many activists perceive the national development programme as
favouring the growth of large industries and as programmes mortgaging the welfare
of future generations for the benefit of a few today” (Corrothers and Suryatna, 1995,
p. 126).
A second reason for the growth of civil society institutions is the growth of the
middle class, which is itself the result of rapid economic growth. As Salamon (1994)
observes, “The global economic growth that occurred during the 1960s and early
1970s helped create in Latin America, Asia and Africa a sizeable urban middle class
whose leadership was critical to the emergence of private non-profit organisations”
(p. 118). To some extent, Salamon’s observation has been confirmed by various
experiences in Asia. For example, in Thailand “... the most public-spirited
developmental non-profit organisations established (in the latter part of the 1980s)
were middle class organisations” (Ponsapich, 1995, p. 247). In the case of Indonesia,
“NGOs have been able to reflect on and articulate more general concerns for the
environment, human rights and democratisation now emerging most obviously but
by no means exclusively among the middle class” (Corrothers and Suryatna, 1995,
p. 125).
The third reason for the rise of civil society is increased government recognition
of the roles of non-profit and civil society institutions, that is, government leaders’
explicit or at least tacit acknowledgement that such organisations can perform useful
functions in society. The government-civil society dynamic is an important factor in
both the development of civil society and the limits to its growth in the region.
In Malaysia, for example, “...the government is moving towards greater
recognition of the role of developmental NGOs and is willing to work with them to
promote development” (Ghee, 1995, p. 168). The government invited “moderate”
NGOs, such as the Federation of Malaysian Consumer’s Association (FOMCA) and
the National Council of Women’s Organisations (NCWO), to participate in the
national Economic Consultation Council to decide on the national economic policy
after 1990. President Ramos’ vision of the Philippines in the year 2000 involves
seeking the active participation of NGOs. A private-sector coalition called the
People’s 2000 has been organised to support implementation of the Medium-term
Philippines Development Plan.
In Thailand, “the collaboration between NGOs and government is no longer a
dream but a reality” (Yamamoto, 1995b, p. 47). The NGO-CORD actively participated
in the formulation of the sixth and seventh National Development Plans (1986-90 and
1991-95), and served as a member of several working groups and sub-committees on
various development issues. A significant event in 1997, and one which clearly
demonstrates the strength of civil society in Thailand, is what has come to be known
as the “Forum of the Poor” in Bangkok. Over 10 000 “poor” farmers, labourers from

104
all over Thailand, have set up a semi-permanent camp outside the Thai parliament
to demonstrate against government policies in areas such as land and agriculture,
and the harsh effects they are having on the poor. The physical presence of this camp
outside the seat of government is not easy to ignore, and government officials are
dealing with the mounting complaints lodged by the demonstrators.
In Japan, although the government has granted some degree of recognition to
NGOs — as illustrated by the establishment of the “grassroots assistance project”
budget line, the strengthening of the NGO Assistance Division at the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, and the Postal and Telecommunications Bond initiated by the
Ministry for Postal and Telecommunications — it is lagging behind in providing legal
recognition, thus crippling the capacity of NGOs to raise funds and undertake
projects. Of the 189 international NGOs registered in the JANIC directory, only
28 have legal status.
Regional developments have also contributed to the accelerated growth of the
civil society sector. The concept of an Asia-Pacific regional community has been
attracting renewed and more serious interest in recent years. The Asia-Pacific region
has become a centre of dynamic economic growth with an increasingly high degree
of economic interdependence among nations. Economic interdependence is not a
sufficient basis for a regional community, however: it is difficult to bring about such
a community without some viable shared values or interests, or without more stable
human and institutional interactions among the nations in the region. For example,
European integration could not have been carried out solely through governmental
negotiations. In the case of Asia, it is through civil society institutions and non-
governmental interactions that a sense of a regional community with common
concerns and shared values has been generated, and this in turn has enhanced
regional economic integration (Yamamoto, 1995a, p. xii).
In all of these developments, it is clear that civil society institutions are, in a pro-
active manner, setting “people-centred” agendas for regional economic development
and security.
In parallel with the growing interest in civil society, the role to be played by “non-
state actors” in foreign relations has been increasingly discussed. Terms such as
“informal diplomacy”, “citizen diplomacy”, “people-to-people diplomacy” and
“grassroots diplomacy” have gained much currency. These non-governmental
activities have become deeply enmeshed in the maintenance and furthering of foreign
relations. During the cold war, there was a domestic consensus that authority needed
to be concentrated at the centre, in order to combat the Soviet threat with military might
and to develop the economic muscle needed to exert free-world hegemony. In the post-
Cold War era, foreign policy processes have become open to the influence of a wide
variety of domestic interest groups. Furthermore, advances in telecommunications
technology have weakened the comparative advantage that diplomats and bureaucrats
used to enjoy in the area of information access, thus widening the role of civilians and
their comparative advantage over the bureaucrats. This has, among other things,
encouraged the presence of Asian NGOs at international conferences.

Factors Constraining Further Growth of Civil Society

Despite these favourable conditions for the growth of civil society institutions
in Asia, there are serious constraints that could hamper this trend in the future. The
first of these constraints is the overall attitude of governments towards NGOs. The
government-civil society dynamic is important in a region which includes states
dominated by bureaucracy, such as Japan, or authoritarian states such as China,
Indonesia, Burma and, to a lesser extent, Singapore and Malaysia. Ironically, further

105
 development of the NGO sector in the region depends on greater state “tolerance”
towards civil society institutions and on the ability to adjust the relationship between
these institutions and governments.
Some Asian governments, such as those of the Philippines and Thailand, have
begun to take a more positive approach towards NGOs. In Japan, however, the
government and bureaucrats seem unshakeably convinced that they are the most
knowledgeable and skilful in resource allocation. Expectations for the development
and institutional strengthening of the Japanese NGO sector rose after the introduction
of the Postal and Telecommunication Bond in 1992 and the heightened reputation of
NGOs following their contribution to sustaining the victims of the 1995 Kobe
earthquake, but two years later these aspirations are far from being realised. NGOs
in Japan remain enfeebled by two major constraints: lack of legal status and lack of
financial resources. In the current debate on favourable legislation for NGOs, the
government is still looking to exercise strong control over them and to have a say in
which ones receive legal recognition.
Strong government control of NGOs is also seen in other Asian countries. In
Malaysia, the Registrar of Societies has absolute power to de-register “undesirable
societies” at will. In China, although the leaders grant some weight to NGOs, the
government continues to emphasise political and social stability out of concern that
any loosening of control over NGOs might foster dissenting political forces.
The other two constraints, which are closely related, are the lack of professional
staff and the limited financial base of civil society institutions. Owing to their small
financial base, many such institutions, particularly NGOs, rely on volunteer staff
with greater commitment and dedication for the cause than professional expertise.
Organisations with highly professional staff do exist, but they are rare. Given the
nature of civil society organisations, it seems likely that the voluntary element will
remain very strong, but it is important that their personnel develop stronger inter-
personal and professional skills in order to carry out their various tasks with
competence as well as enthusiasm.
The other major constraint is the lack of financial resources. Many Asian NGOs
are one- or two-project NGOs with little, but growing, expertise in the areas of
advocacy, policy reform and coalition building. They operate from a tiny financial
base. In Japan, for example, most NGOs listed in the JANIC directory operate on
budgets of less than 5 million yen ($45 000). It is particularly ironic that NGOs from
outside Japan have been far more successful than Japanese NGOs at raising funds
from both the Japanese government and Japanese foundations. Clearly, the financial
and personnel constraints are mutually reinforcing: NGOs in these countries cannot
recruit professional staff without expanding their financial bases, and they cannot
expand their financial bases without professional staff.
On a more positive note, the growth of philanthropic institutions throughout
the region, feeding on its economic development, means that NGOs can approach a
wider pool of donors and lenders. In this respect, Asian NGOs may have better
prospects than their counterparts in Africa or Latin America, where regional
philanthropic institutions are neither as numerous nor as wealthy as those in Asia.

Proposals for Action

Further development of a vibrant and dynamic civil society in Asia will require
creative and concrete programmes aimed at two main areas: finding ways of adjusting
the relations between civil society institutions and governments, and capacity
building for NGOs.

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 Improving Relations between Government and Civil Society

There are a number of ways in which government-civil society relations could

be improved.
– Regional and international exchange programmes or study tours could be
organised for government officials responsible for NGO relations in countries
such as Japan, where government officials still view NGOs with great scepticism.
Officials could be taken to countries in the region, such as the Philippines or
Thailand, or outside the region, such as Norway, where government-NGO
relations are exemplary.
– Publications of the type “Examples of Good Practices in NGO-Government
Relations” could be commissioned, taking examples from countries which
enjoy good government-NGO relations and have sufficient positive results to
inspire emulation.
– An international conference on “Responding to Civil Society” could be organised,
where government officials responsible for NGOs could exchange ideas with
their counterparts on improving relations and communication with civil society.
The recommendations of such a conference could include the two proposals
outlined above, and the conference could take place in the context of the OECD.

Capacity Building for Civil Society Institutions

It is widely recognised that there is a need for local actors to have a sense of
ownership over development initiatives and the capacity to advance them, to promote
human rights, and to appropriate and carry on peace processes. In many international
conferences and seminars relating to development, human rights and peace, the need
to develop local capacity has consistently emerged as a priority area for action.
Moreover, the OECD Development Assistance Committee’s “Final Report of the Ad
Hoc Working Group on Participatory Development and Good Governance” (see
Annex 2) emphasises the need for capacity building at the local level. In practice,
however, efforts to strengthen the capacity of civil society institutions are not
commensurate with the lip service paid to the importance of this task.
A number of ideas can be explored:

1) Establishment of an “NGO Advisory and Service Centre: Asia”

The problem for many NGOs — and not only in Asia — is the absence of
organisations whose mandate is capacity building, that is, to advise and serve the
NGOs. Some small but meritorious initiatives have been taken, but the international
community has made no concerted effort to address this priority issue. The creation
of an advisory and service centre for Asia, as well as for Africa and Latin America,
would fill this vacuum and play a crucial role in strengthening civil society throughout
the world.
The proposed service centre should be of regional scope and should have two
primary databases.
– “Donors” whom NGOs can approach. This database should be reasonably
sophisticated, with categories of issue areas, geographical interest areas
and information on the funding cycles of foundations. Donors should
include both regional and international foundations. The idea for such a
database has already received some attention and is being developed at
the level of individual countries. An example is the Philanthropy/Fund-
raising Resource and Advisory Unit (P/FRAU), which focuses on donors

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 in Hong Kong and is being developed by the Hong Kong America Centre.
This centre is beginning to collect printed materials, databases and
software on various aspects of philanthropy and fund-raising, as well as
to survey the range and type of grant-making organisations in Hong Kong.
A similar initiative exists in Japan, in the form of the Japan Foundation
Centre. The other building block could be the recently established Asia/
Pacific Philanthropy Consortium. The existing initiatives should form the
foundation for the database proposed here.
– Training courses and a calendar of major events relating to civil society
in the region and the world.
Such a centre should have the following mandate:
– to advise NGOs on available funding sources and point them in the right
direction, as well as to assist them with their funding applications, acting
as an intermediary as much as possible;
– to provide advice on the training courses available and, where appropriate,
to organise such courses.
The idea of an advisory and service centre aimed solely at capacity building
should be elaborated further, as such institutions will be crucial to the future
development of civil society in Asia and other regions of the world.

2) Organisation of training programmes

Programmes of various types (advocacy, fund-raising, language, communication
and media, project conceptualisation and implementation) and at different levels
(local, national, regional) could be organised to provide professional training to NGO
staff. An audit of existing training programmes and an assessment of needs should
be carried out, in order to ensure coherence, avoid duplication and maximise the
effectiveness of such training programmes.

3) Exploration of new partnerships and ways of strengthening NGOs

A major area for such exploration is that of facilitating contact with the business
sector, which could play a strategic role in strengthening NGO capacity by providing
equipment. For example, a project idea might persuade a computer manufacturer to
donate 50 computers, 50 printers and 50 modems to equip the NGOs involved. This
is not a huge sacrifice for firms, and they would receive much good publicity in return
if NGOs’ publicity materials duly acknowledged this assistance. This can be taken
a step further if computer or electronic firms like NEC, which already operate an
Internet service advertising vacancies for internships and volunteers, were to provide
technical training on the use of e-mail and the World Wide Web, or even help to NGOs
in establishing their own web sites. There is tremendous potential in linking civil
society and the business sector in this way.
The concept of civil society is and has been relevant for Asia. The further growth
and strengthening of civil society — with the characteristics described above and
with values entrenched in justice, equality and pluralist democracy — is an irreversible
trend. The only question is the speed of this process. The proposals outlined here
address the constraints faced by the institutions of Asian civil society. Elaboration
and implementation of these proposals could help to improve the work of these
institutions, in both quality and scope, and could accelerate the development of a
vibrant and dynamic civil society in Asia.

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 Bibliography
CORROTHERS, A.L. and E.W. SURYATNA (1995), “Review of the NGO Sector in Indonesia and
Evolution of the Asia Pacific Regional Community among Indonesian NGOs”, in
YAMOMOTO (1995a).

GHEE, L.T. (1995), “Nongovernmental Organisations in Malaysia and Regional Networking”,

in YAMOMOTO (1995a).

HSIAO, H.H.M. (1995), “The ‘Civil Society’ in Three Chinese Societies: Taiwan, Hong Kong,
and Mainland China since the 1980s”, paper prepared for the International Conference
on “Transition of Values in Civil Society” at the Bertelsmann Foundation and the
Club of Rome, Berlin, September.

PONSAPICH, A. (1995), “Nongovernmental Organisations in Thailand”, in YAMAMOTO (1995a).

SALAMON, L.M. (1994), “The Rise of the Non-profit Sector”, Foreign Affairs, July/August.

YAMAMOTO, T. (ed.) (1995a), Emerging Civil Society in the Asia Pacific Community, Japan Centre
for International Exchange.

YAMAMOTO, T. (1995b), “The Growing Role of Non-state Actors in International Affairs”, in

T. YAMAMOTO and Y. FUNABASHI (eds.), The Role of Non-state Actors in International Affairs:
A Japanese Perspective, Japan Centre for International Exchange.

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110
 Civil Society in Sub-Saharan Africa:
How Can Western Countries Help Civil Society
in Africa?
Paténéma François Sedogo

Introduction

We will not attempt to hide our embarrassment, and indeed our confusion,
when confronted with the subject we intend to address, that of “civil society in sub-
Saharan Africa”.
Can we address the notion of civil society in Africa without falling into aporia?
As soon as we mention African social reality or politics, can we even use commonly
accepted logical categories? Some have not hesitated to speak of Africa as ambiguous,
as an Africa that does not easily lend itself to intelligibility, an Africa which puts to
the test all rational models of reading. In short, it seems that although the reason may
easily travel to Africa, it may encounter problems during its stay.
We must nevertheless speak of precisely this Africa which, having suffered the
repeated assaults of the slave trade and of Western colonisation, can no longer be
content to exist in a state of nostalgic torpor, and can no longer close itself off from the
rest of the world. We must speak of this Africa which continues to solicit international
aid when it is not, quite simply, presenting a spectacle of desolation and terror.
Dialogue between the rest of the world and Africa has become a rather pressing
obligation. The term “dialogue” implies the possibility of misunderstanding, because
language is never neutral; yet if words in their plural meanings lend themselves to
equivocation and polemic, we maintain that such a polemic, paradoxically, can play
an eminently positive role. In the end, speech and dialogue are ways of delaying,
indeed, of averting violence and the negation of the Other. We will therefore undertake
to exorcise certain words by extracting them from their habitual blandness and their
appearance of neutrality. To this end, we pose the following question: what becomes
of civil society in the specific context of Africa?

Does It Make Sense to Speak of “Civil Society” in Africa?

Historical Origins of the Concept of Civil Society

Does it make sense to speak of “civil society” in Africa? To respond to this

question, we must first define what we mean by civil society. The term is not without
its attendant difficulties. From an etymological standpoint, the substantive “society”
comes from the Latin societas which is derived from socius, meaning companion.
Accordingly, society is company, or the association of many individuals. We must,

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 however, distinguish animal society from human society. In the former, the individual
is governed exclusively from within, by instinct, whereas in human society the
individual can choose modes of behaviour which come from outside. In other words,
human life takes on meaning from institutions.
The adjective “civil” adds another dimension by designating human society as
such. “Civil” comes from the Latin civilis, derived from civis, which evokes all that is
related to the citizen. Citizenship is the stamp of belonging to a given society. From
this point on, civil society attains its full significance only in the political sphere,
politics being understood as the management of city affairs. Contrary to expectations,
however, the history of civil society did not encounter that of political theory until
much later, when the modern state emerged in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages.
The term “civil society” was unknown to the ancients, even if they did conceive of
politics as fundamental component of human nature. For this reason, Aristotle asserts
that, excepting brutes and deities, “man is a political animal”1. Man is constituted in
society.
According to this Aristotelian view, one could claim that there is a primacy of
the whole over the part, of the general over the particular. In other words, the truth
about individuality is that it is defined by the totality. At the same time, the community
is raised above all suspicion: evil results when the particular attempts to assert itself
and especially when the particular is posited as an absolute. With the moderns, in
contrast, we witness a kind of Copernican revolution: evil is now situated at the level
of the city-state and is eminently political. This modern view expresses a certain
degree of realism: the political arena becomes a locus for the expression of human
passions. This amounts to recognising that politics constitutes the ultimate
endorsement of appearances and intrigue, that it is the battlefield for the ruthless clash
of individual interests. Indeed, for the Moderns the state is not a work of nature but
an artefact. Citizenship is the opposite of the state of nature. Through statehood,
humanity attempts to fit its actions into a historical continuum and to artificially instil
into human society what exists naturally within animal societies, namely, equilibrium,
stability and autonomy.

The Hegelian Conception of Civil Society

Appropriating for himself the conclusion we have just reached, Hegel in The
Philosophy of Right tries to analyse the process which leads to the emergence of the
modern state. He suggests another interpretation of civil society, which, far from being
the most perfect aspect of human society, is but an intermediary stage. Indeed, for
Hegel, what characterises human society is not stability but rather movement, rupture
and the ability to transform oneself. These fluctuations already appear within the
family, the original social unit, which really begins to play its role only when it
renounces its status as a closed, static system: when children are born, of course, but
above all, when children leave the family to face the outside world. Consequently,
every family, owing to its own contradictions (the fact that the family carries otherness
within itself), is destined to dissolve. Yet this dissolution does not lead to nothingness,
but instead yields civil society. How does this happen?
Children, when they break the natural bonds that link them to the family, are
called upon to form artificial bonds with other individuals, born of other families. This
new form of social life is defined by external relations whereby each individual, acting
on his own behalf, cannot help but come into conflict with other individuals. Where
individual interest is perceived as the ultimate end, the community becomes a pretext
for confrontation. According to Hegel, therefore, civil society — which Hegel calls
“bourgeois society” (bürgerliche Gesellschaft) — remains the sphere of selfishness and
illusion. In opposition to this bourgeois outlook, Hegel posits that of the citizen, which

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is more carefully thought out and more apt to serve the common interest. With the
advent of the state, the individual becomes truly free and fully inclined to serve
universal principles.
This line of thought, although very rigorous, is nonetheless astonishing. By
placing the state at the apex of the social hierarchy, even elevating it to divine status,
Hegel seems to have overlooked an evident truth: the natural inclination of authorities
to abuse power. It is not easy to be strong and fair at the same time. The logical
conclusion of Hegel’s approach is that once he has exculpated authority, or rendered
it absolute, he finds himself unable to conceive of the emergence of an opposition force.
Thus, Hegel could not attribute any positive dimension to civil society. It would seem,
then, that our current notion of civil society has broken, at least to some degree, with
the Hegelian tradition.
Before we reach this conclusion, however, we should underscore that what
shocks us most about Hegel is the unenviable fate he reserves for Africans, whom he
regards as the rejects of humanity. At the same time, Hegel takes pains to glorify the
genius of humanity, or more precisely, European genius, which after great effort has
succeeded in severing the natural bonds of the family and raising itself to the sphere
of citizenship.

The Birth of Prejudice: “Africa Has No History”

Along with Hegel, we face the prejudice that Africa is without history. We can
read about this in his work Reason in History. Of course, this work was not published
during Hegel’s lifetime and is mainly a compilation of notes taken by his students,
but we have no reason to believe that these students would have knowingly attributed
malevolent remarks to their master. Here is what Hegel has to say: “He who would
like to be acquainted with the horrible manifestations of human nature can find them
in Africa. The oldest information that we have on this part of the world tells us the same
thing. Properly speaking, Africa has no history. On this note we leave Africa without
further mention... In sum, what the name ‘Africa’ signifies is an ahistorical and
underdeveloped world, entirely enslaved to the natural mind, and situated at the
threshold of universal history”2.
In short, for Hegel, the only legitimate history is Western history or, better still,
European history. At best, the Orient, where historical consciousness is just barely
beginning to emerge, earns a brief mention. We almost want to smile when we read
this passage. To excuse his attitude, some will evoke the socio-cultural context of the
period. Most of all, however, defenders of Hegel will not hesitate to remind us, as if
to exculpate the present and thereby reassure us, that things have fortunately evolved
a great deal. We do not deny this, but a small doubt lingers in our mind. Without
overstatement or undue emotion, we are tempted to believe that certain prejudices
continue to haunt us and persist in our minds in spite of our best intentions to fight
against them. Marx’s celebrated words remain relevant to the present situation: “Men
create their own history, but they do not do so arbitrarily, under conditions of their
own choosing, they do so under conditions directly handed down from the past. The
tradition of past generations weighs heavily upon the minds of the living”3.
We therefore observe, along with Pierre Clastres4, that although diplomatic
courtesy forbids us henceforth to refer to African peoples through exclusively negative
terminology (“ahistorical”, “uncivilised”, “without writing”, “without an economy”,
“faithless”, “lawless”, etc.), the terms that we use to replace these are equally dubious:
we speak of “budding democracies”, “developing countries” and “subsistence
economies”. All this comes down to imposing a Western vision of the world as the only
possible end result. It is only when we renounce this hegemonic ambition that we can
succeed in penetrating the mystery of African society. At the same time, we can
discover the reality of African power structures which, like all forms of authority,

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 command respect but also arouse legitimate fears and are in some cases completely
rejected. Is this not precisely the role of civil society? In response to our initial question,
“Does it make sense to speak of civil society in Africa?”, we therefore reply affirmatively:
civil society does exist in Africa. In order to apprehend it better, let us first examine
the nature of African power structures.

Politics at the Heart of African Society

When we speak of Africa, the most common error consists in portraying Africa
as a unified entity and thereby masking the diversity of African peoples and culture.
We will therefore stress from the start the plurality of Africa. We must also dispense
with the type of faulty reasoning which qualifies certain African societies as “societies
without political power”, “acephalic societies”, or “societies without government”.
Indeed, the fact that a given role is small does not signify that it is absent, any more
than appearances can translate the whole of a reality. Fortified with this insight, we
will not hesitate to situate politics at the very heart of African society. We will now
analyse the expression of political authority in an effort to determine whether it leaves
enough space to allow the emergence of a civil society.

Civil Society Faced with the Weight of Tradition

Common sense teaches us that things are generally defined by their antithesis.
Such is the relationship between sickness and health, between humanitarian action
and political action, and, we might add, between civil society and official rule. Should
we not acknowledge that beyond our perception of clear-cut oppositions, a secret
complementarity works to unite opposites? We should therefore emphasise that the
relationship between civil society and political authority is not that of two entities
foreign to each other, nor of two opposing entities, but rather of two complementary
determinations. Civil society redresses the abuses of established authority, or at least
compensates for its omissions.
Within traditional African society, we are witnessing a concentration of power
structures — political, religious and judiciary — even if these institutions are not in
the hands of one individual or specific social group. Authority of any kind assumes
a sacred dimension since it is always based upon traditions which are themselves
sacred. That which has resisted the ravages of time approaches perfection and must
be respected as such. Tradition is, in a sense, the living memory of the community. The
will of the individual can only be censured, because the individual is never more than
a means to an end, and that end is the community. Initiation rites are vehicles for
disciplining the individual and reinforcing the sacred character of the group to which
he belongs.
Although it prohibits dissension from within, the community remains lucid,
and there persists an awareness of the true nature of human beings who submit only
to a superior force: passionate emotions and the rejection of the established order are
never far from the surface. Consequently, celebrations and initiation rites function as
outlets which enable the traditional society to resolve its own contradictions. In both
cases, interdictions are lifted, and society thus recognises the limits of the authorities
which govern it. In other words, the power structure regulates itself. Despite these
precautionary measures, African society, like all societies, finds itself obliged to
accept some degree of hypocrisy in its mode of functioning. Thus, it is not unusual for
a group of individuals of the same age group to associate and to protect each other in
order to take part in activities that are officially forbidden. We can see this occurring
for instance in the yoobo (a kind of flirtation) practised by the Mossis of Burkina Faso.
In any case, the idea of an unchanging African society, where the individual would

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be entirely subject to the law of the community, is only a myth, especially when
individuals come into contact with other socio-cultural practices from “outside”,
such as those of Islam and of Christianity.
In point of fact, the arrival of the Missionaries of Africa (“the great white
Fathers”), an order founded by the Cardinal Lavigerie in 1868, changed a great many
things in several regions of Africa. Today, as in the past, the centres opened by the
missionaries constitute authentic civil societies where many young women, promised
in marriage against their will, can find shelter and emancipation. Although the
condition of women has made extraordinary progress, the excision of young girls
remains a sensitive issue. This painful problem can be resolved only through mass
education, a topic we will address below.

Civil Society and Modern Government

African politics today is a mix of tradition and modernity. Despite this sagacious
formula dispensed by the ruling élites, the latter are obliged to acknowledge that
institutions are at times out of touch with the actual behaviour of populations. Marx
was therefore right to say that facts are hard-headed. Models inevitably have limits.
What exactly are the facts? The fall in the price of raw materials, the lack of productivity
and the lack of competitive products — the immediate consequences of which entail
drops in purchasing power, malnutrition and famine — have led the rulers of African
countries to promote new agricultural methods such as the use of machinery and
fertilisers. While this course of action can be praised in many respects, it can lead to
unforeseen consequences. Sometimes new methods are not well adapted to the
environment: for instance, the soil, which is often shallow, cannot tolerate deep
ploughing by machines. Consequently, the population more often than not rejects
them. Here we observe a certain resistance to the will of the government. As for
fertilisers, suffice it to say that their excessive use not only damages the soil (through
acidification) but constitutes a serious menace to the environment. As in the case of
machinery, which is often inappropriate to the context, farmers seem unconvinced of
the necessity of using fertilisers.
We would do well to stress that, contrary to the received ideas on this issue, if
Africa suffers from economic backwardness, it is not necessarily due to a lack of
technological capabilities, but rather to a deliberate choice. Should we not then,
subscribe to the thesis of Marcel Mauss which asserts that “the social condition is a
total condition”? For instance, let us take the behaviour of the Bwa of Burkina Faso:
when their cotton fields yield a bountiful harvest, they destroy a part of the crop
because, according to legend, he who produces too much cotton will die the following
season. The explanation is simple. This population seeks to avoid surplus wealth,
which can only lead to social inequality and hence to a lack of cohesion in the
community. Wealth is valued only insofar as it serves the community and is always
suspect in the hands of one individual.
From this standpoint, political action taken by the rulers of Africa today is
located at the point where the concerns of several special-interest groups intersect.
The rulers must not only take into account the exigencies of the global economy (the
external debt which continues to grow, the downward trend in the price of raw
materials, etc.) but must also respond to the expectations of a population that is
increasingly poor, but still distrustful of new technologies. Given the urgency of the
situation, we can understand why governments are choosing radical solutions, and
indeed we are witnessing a proliferation of military regimes or take-overs by parties
with dictatorial tendencies. When this happens, governments abandon any
participatory approaches, i.e. the people are not involved in the development process,
and even less in the establishment of institutions. Such governments thus consider
civil society as a kind of enemy and not a true partner. Civil society is distrusted and,

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 in particular, criticised for its unrealistic outlook, as if the claims of civil society were
aimed at obtaining luxury while politicians attend to the general interest. It remains
to be seen whether such accusations are justified.

Civil Society: Dawn or Dread?

Up to this point, we have defined civil society as a regulating authority within

the power structure, based on the principle that all authority is naturally inclined to
rule over individuals, when indeed it does not give itself over to abusing them. Yet as
the French proverb warns, “the best is the enemy of the good”. If we are not careful,
civil society can constitute a serious threat for young African states, no matter what
form it assumes — religious institutions, foundations, non-profit organisations, non-
governmental organisations, etc. Since nearly all of these states were created artificially,
the claims of civil society can serve as a pretext for reviving old ethnic quarrels: the
opposition of ideas then becomes an opposition of persons, and ultimately of groups.
Our point is not to represent the “good of the state” as sacrosanct, since this notion
is often invoked arbitrarily and used to serve the private interests of a tiny minority.
Nor do we mean to praise military regimes which tend to substitute themselves for the
rule of law. We are arguing, in the specific case of Africa, for the concept of a nation-
state which enjoys enough authority to protect its citizens, but leaves room for
individual initiative — the condition sine qua non for the emergence of civil society.
Civil society cannot and must not replace the state. Indeed, the confusion of roles can
only do a disservice to democracy. While the power of decision making is incumbent
upon the political rulers, the role of actors in civil society is continually to remind the
rulers of the acceptable limits to the institutions they control. In this respect, civil
society acts as a kind of moral conscience which places “might” in the service of
“right” and progress (scientific, technological and economic) in the service of humanity.
By emphasising the importance of institutions and making respect for them a
fundamental principle of democracy and of civil society, we adhere to the classic (and
anti-Marxian) thesis that the political superstructure determines the economic
infrastructure. This position must be qualified, however, if we do not want to lose sight
of the real situation in Africa. We must therefore link civil society to the economic
infrastructure. To take any other course would perhaps be merely to dream or to hide
one’s head in the sand, instead of recognising that any policy worthy of the name must
show concern for the material existence of people. Should we not therefore acknowledge
that the extreme poverty which plagues Africa can give people a distorted impression
of what we call “civil society”? Consequently, we could say that the authorities’ lack
of pragmatism can predispose populations to listen to extremist discourse. The
absence of a genuine government and of a genuine civil society could signify the rise
of sects: miracles replace effort and dreams are substituted for practical measures. In
order to fortify Africa against this danger, we must assist with its economic development,
but above all, we must assist in establishing a genuine policy for building school
enrolments.

School as the Birthplace of Civil Society

School as a Resource for Acquisition of Knowledge and Skills

The reciprocal relationship between the political superstructure and the

economic infrastructure reveals to us the fundamental truth that knowledge is
freedom. When one is armed with knowledge, that which seemed inevitable can be
experienced as an injustice to be fought, and blind belief gives way to a desire for
understanding. Society is no longer experienced as a weight to be borne but rather a
community to which one can adhere freely, thus conferring the right to criticise the
shortcomings of the community and to direct its choices towards an end in which each

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person has a share. It would seem therefore that genuine development assistance
would be that which gives access to knowledge. After all, as the old Mossi proverb
states: “he who sleeps on a borrowed mat in fact sleeps on the ground” (Ned sâ guêê
a to pîirê a guêê tênga). The mat can be taken away at any point. Only true autonomy
can shelter us from humiliation.
We will now attempt to address the subsidiary question framed along with the
central question of our discussion: what can Western countries do to help civil society
in Africa? We might respond to such a question by modifying it. The question then
becomes: what do African countries expect from the West? Or alternatively: What
attitude should Western countries adopt in order to respond appropriately to — in
the felicitous expression of Senghor — “the rendez-vous of giving and receiving”?
To the logic of passive giving, we would substitute that of a dynamic exchange,
respectful of all participating parties. Only the recognition of equality between
peoples can lead to a true partnership. This remark may make some readers smile, but
can it be otherwise if the word “co-operation” is to have any meaning? There can be
true partnership only when each party respects the values of the other.
We must therefore find our way to the limit; we must reflect upon what it means
to provide a “degree zero” of assistance to the countries called “developing countries”
— not to give nothing, but to give them all for nothing. Conditional aid is a questionable
practice since it tends to reduce the recipient to the status of a child. By offering the
possibility of true autonomy, we force our recipients to take responsibility. Indeed, any
other measure will only incite hypocrisy, and eventually the rejection of all that has
been artificially imposed. Let there be no misunderstanding, however: this
recommendation does not exclude political sanctions whenever arbitrariness takes
over and the population is threatened.
Above all, aid to African civil society must begin at the grassroots; in other
words, action should be aimed at the younger generations. Without surrendering to
pessimism, it is worth mentioning a few figures that reveal the low rates of school
attendance in most of the sub-Saharan African countries: Niger, 18 per cent; Mali,
20 per cent; Burkina Faso, 25 per cent. We also note a few exceptions which allow us
to hope: Togo, 64 per cent; Cape Verde, 83 per cent; Swaziland, 95 per cent5. We can
only hope that one day the discrepancies between countries will decrease, thus
enabling them to speak with a more unified voice before the international community.
International co-operation has everything to gain from this improvement.

School as a Resource for Educating Citizens and a Link to Universal Values

Lack of education stops a great majority of Africans from being citizens in their
own right. Confronted with development programmes which they do not understand,
they have a difficult choice between a veiled rejection of authority and blind submission.
In view of this difficulty, it would seem necessary to specify that aid to African civil
society should give priority to schooling. School will play its crucial role all the better
by awakening and sharpening critical intelligence and by allowing individuals to
move beyond fear, introversion and ethnocentrism, which are the secret temptations
of all societies. It is only at this point that civil society takes on its full significance, for
civil society is not possible where citizens are not free and responsible, and where
there is no education in the true sense of the word. Concerning the regrettable practice
of the female excision, we could say that women play the roles of both victim and
accomplice. The weight of tradition and beliefs is such that women themselves come
to desire the perpetuation of this tradition. They believe in all the justifications for the
practice of excision, even the most irrational ones: they want to “cleanse themselves”,
“to be able to have children”, and so on. On this point we need only to invoke
Rousseau’s remark: “Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire to be free
of them”6.

117
 These types of infringements on human rights are numerous. School is the best
way to avoid them, because it teaches universal values, including tolerance. Even so,
school must be adapted to the realities of the milieu. Opening up to universal values
also has its costs, as the chief of the Diallobé tells Maître Thierno in Cheikh Hamidou
Kane’s L’aventure ambiguë: “If I tell them to go to the new school, they will go ‘en masse’.
There they will learn all the ways to bind wood to wood that we don’t know. But in
learning, they will also forget. And will what they learn be worth more than what they
forget?”7. Such is the dilemma that Africa faces today. Like all societies, Africa must
look to the future while preserving its roots, without which its place in history will
remain problematic.

Conclusion

Faced with the often irrational behaviour of peoples, there is fortunately a burst
of humanity that emanates from individual consciences, which organise themselves,
fraternise and enter into resistance. This is the role played by civil society. How many
Germans helped to save the Jews during World War II? There were some, but we will
never know the exact numbers. In the conflict of ex-Yugoslavia, how many Serbs saved
Croats and vice versa? There were some, but we will never know the exact numbers.
Finally, in the conflict of the Great Lakes region of Africa, notably in Rwanda, how
many Tutsis saved Hutus and vice versa? There were some, but we will never know
the exact numbers. We are therefore tempted to believe that, thanks to civil society,
barbarism and cruelty will never have the last word, and we salute all those silent
heroes who, here and elsewhere, constitute tangible evidence of the existence of civil
society, which — despite some imperfections that we have noted here and there —
may be the future of humanity. For this reason, like the German poet Hölderlin, we
would like to conclude by saying: “There where danger grows, also grows that which
saves”8.

Notes and
References
1. Aristotle, Politics, I.2.

2. W.F. Hegel, La Raison dans l’Histoire, trans. Kostas Papaioannou, Plon, Paris, 1965,
p. 269.

3. K. Marx, Le 18 Brumaire de Louis Bonaparte (I, 2), in K. Marx and F. Engels, Oeuvres
choisies, tome 1, Ed. du Progrès, 1976, p. 414.

4. P. Clastres, La Société contre l’État, Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1974, p. 162.

5. United Nations, Basic Social Services for All, 1997.

6. J.J. Rousseau, Du Contrat social, Livre 1, chapitre 2.

7. Cheikh Hamidou Kane, L’Aventure ambiguë, Julliard, Paris, 1961, p. 44.

8. F. Hölderlin, Patmos, IV, 190.

118
 On this topic, the following works can be useful: Bibliography
BADIE, B. (1992), L’État importé : L’occidentalisation de l’ordre politique, Fayard, Paris.

DAHRENDORF, R. (1996), “Economic Opportunity, Civil Society and Political Liberty”,

Development and Change, Vol. 27 No. 2, April.

FATTON, R., Jr. (1995), “Africa in the Age of Democratization: The Civic Limitations of Civil
Society”, African Studies Review, Vol 38, No. 2, July.

HYDEN, G. (1983), No Shortcuts to Progress: African Development Management in Perspective,

Heineman, London.

MAUSS, M. (1923-1924), “Essai sur le don, forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés
archaïques”, in L'Année sociologique, seconde série, t. 1.

WHAITES, A. (1996), “Let’s Get Civil Society Straight: NGOs and Political Theory”, Development
in Practice, Vol. 6, No. 3, August.

WOODS, D. (1992), “Civil Society in Europe and Africa: Limiting State Power through a Public
Sphere”, African Studies Review, Vol. 35, No. 2, September.

UNITED NATIONS (1997), Basic Social Services for All, New York.

119
120
 Networking Civil Society in Latin America
Mónica Allmand

This chapter examines the participation of civil society in the process of Latin
American democratisation. Networks among people at various levels — academic
networks, information networks and action-oriented/grassroots networks — have
strengthened this process. International co-operation should play an important role
in the transition towards sustainable democracies.

The Importance of Civil Society

The 1980s and 1990s have been a transitional period for Latin American
countries. These societies suffered a deep economic crisis, as well as the need to
redefine their transition towards sustainable democratic systems with wide
participation of civil society.
The United Nations Development Programme defines civil society as:
… together with the state and market, one of the three “spheres” that
interface in the making of democratic societies. Civil society is the sphere
in which social movements become organised. The organisations of civil
society, which represent many diverse and sometimes contradictory
social interests, are shaped to fit their social base, constituency, thematic
orientations (e.g. environment, gender, human rights) and types of activity.
They include church-related groups, trade unions, co-operatives, service
organisations, community groups and youth organisations, as well as
academic institutions and others.
The lack of democratic governments in Latin America mobilised local
communities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to find grassroots
solutions to economic and social problems. Interest groups, action-oriented groups
and academic groups collaborated to make collective demands on local, regional and
national governments. In the new political relationship between the state and civil
society, the state’s capacity also becomes an issue. A capable state is one which can
establish and maintain effective institutional, technical, administrative and political
functions. In theory, states having these characteristics should be well equipped to
manage the tasks essential to economic and political development, including
collaboration with civil society (Grindle, 1996).
When authoritarian governments are replaced by democratic ones, civil society
plays a strong role in the process of change. In the period of transition, two overlapping
stages can be identified: a period of “liberalisation”, i.e. restoration and/or extension
of individual and group rights; and a period of democratisation with the participation
of civil society. This process is dependent on resurrecting a civil society which was
previously persecuted and therefore deprived of essential resources. A network of
groups and associations — including families, action-oriented groups, interest groups,
and movements — mediates between individuals and the state (Cohen, 1994).
121
 The Power of Networking

Some researchers refer to the “decay” of the state and to the emergence of a civil
society which must now support the state. This trend is not a positive “scaling up”
of the grassroots to replace redundancy in the state but rather a symptom of
“misdevelopment”. In Latin America, governments had certainly decayed during the
authoritarian period, but since the widening of democracy in the region, local or
municipal institutions are once again taking responsibility for their role in providing
services to the community, often in concert with groups or individuals in civil society.
Other researchers indicate that there is substantial risk in the transfer of public
responsibilities to civil society. The key problem is the capacity of civil society to
ensure the accountability of public policies: when civil society offers services to the
state, it loses a part of its autonomy and its role of securing good governance
(Cunill, 1996).
Primavera notes that few popular movements were active in Brazil during that
country’s slow transition to democracy. According to her, it was “as if the popular
movement were not longer in fashion”. All parts of civil society need to be active if civil
society is to serve as a control, especially over corruption in public institutions. In
1991, a group of researchers from different areas of Brazil, supported by representatives
of academic, artistic and cultural institutions, created a Movement for Ethics in
Politics. Their activities helped to bring about the end of Collor’s presidency. A second
step was taken in 1992 with the creation of an Action Group of Civil Society against
Misery and Hunger. One objective of these movements was to disseminate the idea
that it is not the state that organises and controls society, but the citizens who establish
a democratic state (Primavera, 1996).
The major topic discussed at present in various Latin American fora is the
relationship between the state and civil society, including issues such as governance,
civil participation in the design and management of social policies, gender equality
in the formation of social policies and strategies to strengthen state-society relations.
Research institutes specialising in Latin America have attempted to identify the
processes of transition and to define the nature of these efforts to establish new
political relationships.
Despite the difficulties encountered during the authoritarian period, civil
society in Latin America continued — when possible — to pursue activities ranging
from academic research and lobby groups to action-oriented groups such as women’s,
environmental and community groups. Some actors of this period went on to play an
official role in the transition to democratic systems, both in NGOs or grassroots
organisations and as newly installed government officials. In several cases, senior
researchers from non-governmental academic institutions have taken on government
duties, and action-oriented groups are supporting activities in co-operation with
local authorities.

The Role of Information and Communication Technologies

The process of democratic transition in Latin America has not been limited to
one specific country. International and regional networking has helped to create and
sustain co-operative activities at the regional level. Communication among diverse
interest groups has, in many cases, been facilitated by the use of electronic technology.
It is said that information and communication technologies (ICT) have opened up
opportunities for action, creating bridges among people, from informal discussions
of popular sectors to the exchange of research ideas and products (Hurtado
Galván, 1995).
We will examine three types of networks: academic networks, general
development information networks and action-oriented/grassroots networks.

122
 Academic networks

The Latin American Council for Social Sciences (CLACSO) is an example of a

network which uses electronic communication to facilitate global and regional
exchange among social and economic researchers. It is a non-governmental, non-
profit organisation which aims to promote research, discussion and academic
awareness in the social sciences. The affiliation of 90 institutional members, covering
approximately 5 000 full-time researchers in Latin America and the Caribbean, makes
it possible to develop various projects and programmes, organised into various
working groups. Some of these working groups cover the following fields: social
actors (such as women, youth, civil participation), communication and culture,
development and social policies, economy and development, integration and
globalisation, politics and the state, and population.
Substantial exchange of ideas is made possible by the use of electronic
communication. This integrated academic network facilitates exchange among
researchers and offers access to the information that supports research: bibliographical
information, lists of ongoing research and contacts, individuals and institutions
related to each field of interest. CLACSO also offers a site on the World Wide Web to
facilitate the exchange of information, and provides training for users of the technology.
A major challenge for CLACSO is coping with the impact which economic
adjustment, globalisation and the reduction of international assistance will have on
its ability to fund activities. Recognising this challenge, CLACSO is trying to survive
by earning income through short-term consultancy contracts.
At the same time, CLACSO is trying to maintain its lobbying for change. In
collaboration with Fundación Inter-Americana sobre Fondos de Inversión Social, and
with the support of UNESCO, CLACSO conducted a seminar on the articulation of
new relations between state and civil society. The meeting, which was attended by
academics, government, international organisations, NGOs and grassroots leaders,
focused on discussing comparative regional studies which could help in rethinking
and rebuilding the relations between the state and civil society.
The seminar pointed out the need for deep changes in the economic and social
policies of Latin American and Caribbean countries. Policies which will sustain
demands for equity and relate them to reform of the state are difficult to formulate and
implement. Stronger democracies, progressive strengthening of civil society and the
creation of a culture that respects equity must have the backing of good policy and the
means of implementing them. Some of the remaining questions are: What must be
decentralised? Which functions can be fulfilled by community organisations? What
are the respective roles of the state and civil society in changing policy?
Efforts are being made to facilitate the process of policy change and to establish
fora for discussion of public policies and civil society participation. The Fundación
Poder Ciudadano (Citizens’ Power Foundation) of Argentina is organising activities
to take account of gender equity in the participatory process. At a seminar organised
in March 1997, one of the discussion panels specifically addressed gender and
economic globalisation. Marcia Rivera, executive secretary of CLACSO, was co-
ordinator of the discussion panel.
Today, academic networks — mainly those like CLACSO, functioning as non-
governmental, non-profit organisations — are experiencing difficulties in maintaining
their research activities, and are receiving tremendous demands from the rest of civil
society to mediate in its relations with the state. International co-operation continues
to support some of these efforts, but provides less help than in the past. If institutions
such as CLACSO, which have already helped in the transition to democracy, could
be strengthened, there would be a greater chance of achieving sustainable democracies.
Democracies will not be sustainable without observers and critics of state activities
and support to civil society.

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 General Development Information Networks

Civil society has long suffered from lack of easy access to information, which
limited its expansion and development. More recently, new methods of communication
have facilitated the participation of civil society in areas that were previously
available only to privileged and powerful individuals and organisations. Many free
information and news services now exist in Latin America. One example is a free
channel of information about government, trade and economic policies, provided by
Mercosur and accessible via the Internet. Economic regionalisation is presenting a
challenge to both national governments and civil society. The latter now has both easy
access to sources of information, which encourages transparency in the democratic
process, and more powerful means of documenting that process.
A Latin American initiative aimed at pooling the available resources of various
information networks, through the use of ICT networks, has been supported by the
International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada. In a “network of
networks”, 18 co-operative information networks exchange information on social
and economic research, public administration reform, foreign trade, health, population,
minorities, migration, development planning, regional economic integration, agro-
industry, agriculture, water and education. These networks use the communication
facilities of IBASE/ALTERNEX, an NGO based in Brazil (Saugy, 1996). ALTERNEX
is one node of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), an NGO
network which facilitates electronic communication in developing countries. The
objectives of the network of networks are to reduce duplication of effort, share
experiences and design a common project that could attract support from international
donors. This project is currently in a period of revision. At the time of writing, the
institutions which co-ordinate these networks were planning to meet in the near
future to discuss means of maintaining this initiative.
Most of the effort dedicated to strengthening these information networks is and
has been voluntary; the interest and dedication displayed by individuals were
sometimes greater than the income obtained. Unfortunately, owing to change in
economic structures and the cost of the human resources dedicated to these services,
civil society institutions need to find other sources of income, which will probably
prove to be the state or the private sector. This will limit the participation of the
institutions in volunteer efforts, which, in turn, will have a negative impact on the
strengthening of development information networks.

Action-oriented/Grassroots Networks

Many action-oriented and grassroots organisations make use of information

networks. For example, women’s networks have been formed for the discussion of
gender issues. The role and opportunities of these networks have grown substantially
since ICT became available in Latin America. In preparation for participation at the
Beijing conference on women, women’s groups held extensive discussions via ICT.
Women from Caribbean countries could easily exchange their views with women in
the Southern Cone of Latin America to arrive at a regional position. In Mexico, a group
of women’s NGOs came together in a communications project called “Modemmujer”,
which worked before, during and after the Beijing conference to diffuse information
from alternative sources for transmission by main international news agencies.
Modemmujer also channeled the proposals, criticisms and ideas of women and
women's groups to the delegates in Beijing. Delegates knew that the meeting was being
followed on a daily basis and that they could get feedback from the women's
movement in their home countries.

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 Grassroots networking among women can be considered as one of the most
successful examples of co-operative efforts towards development. Rivera (1995) refers
to the active presence of women in the areas of health, family welfare and community
issues. Women have come up with their own solutions to basic problems, and in doing
so they have claimed their space in civil society.
The example of women’s group networking has been followed by other
organisations, including the indigenous peoples’ movements in Latin America. The
Peruvian Scientific Network, a new programme, is facilitating access to the Internet
for a community of indigenous Ashaninka. The network will help this community to
communicate with other indigenous peoples in Latin America and all over the world,
to exchange information on different regional issues and to share alternative solutions
to their common problems.
The environmental movement has also made good use of ICT, ensuring the
participation and consultation of environmental groups in the design of policies and
legislation as well as sharing information across Latin America. In the area of forestry,
the SIFOCOM (Information and Communication System on Natural Resources) is
participating in a process of consultation and harmonisation of interests in the field
of sustainable forestry development. Through the organisation of an electronic
conference and the support of various national institutions, civil society can contribute
in a direct and participatory mode to the development of policies and legislation for
this objective.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Academic networks such as CLACSO need strong co-operative information

networks to facilitate the exchange of ideas and products among researchers. CLACSO
— together with similar organisations in Africa (CODESRIA), Arab countries
(AICARDES), Asia (ADIPA) and Europe (EADI), with the support of the OECD
Development Centre and IDRC — could build up a co-operative information network.
The International Development Information Network (IDIN) has contributed by
providing the research community with information on researchers, institutions and
current research projects, and by enlisting highly skilled researchers in various areas:
democratisation, adjustment and governance in crisis, ethnicity, cultural identity,
integration processes, nationalism and tensions due to ethnic and racial conflict. At
present, these organisations must continue to provide services through their own
efforts. Some of them have tried to move from the building up of decentralised
databases to a system in which ICT plays a stronger role. CLACSO is trying to provide
the network of researchers with a “mega-structure”; in fact, its Internet site is called
the “Megasite of Social Sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean”. This site
provides access to all the relevant information available: recent research papers; the
databases of ongoing projects; researchers’ activities, interests and electronic
addresses; information on institutions, with e-mail addresses. The tool used to create
the research network, with all the necessary information, still exists, but it cannot do
the work of the staff responsible for keeping this information up to date.
International co-operation can play an important role in strengthening these
institutional efforts, especially in the context of specific projects. For example, it could
support projects that facilitate communication among interest groups concerned with
the involvement of women in community activities. These projects should have clear
objectives and a realistic time schedule, and they should be monitored and evaluated
to determine the value of the external intervention.

125
 The present author would make the following recommendations.
– The process of transition from non-democratic government to still weak
democracies can only improve if there is strong participation by civil society at
different levels. Economic globalisation demands a new understanding of the
role of individual countries (both government and civil society) in facilitating
social and economic development.
– Academic groups, action-oriented groups, grassroots activities and other efforts
coming from civil society should continue their work, and the donor community
should take into account that most of these movements help to maintain
sustainable democracies in Latin America. International co-operation has
supported these efforts, but more so in the past than in the period of transition
towards self-sustainable democratic systems. Specific projects, particularly
those concerned with methods of assessment, can be of great importance.
– Research and information networks, other special-interest or action-oriented
networks and the use of ICT for networking are important factors in sustaining
efforts at different levels. They should be considered as the backbone of the
development process. International co-operation could play a stronger role in
supporting their development and sustainability.
Civil societies have a fundamental role to play in the transition to sustainable
development. Various interest groups have demonstrated the importance of their role.
In Latin America, donors supported many projects during the non-democratic period,
and are presently reducing their efforts. These new democracies need further
understanding and international co-operation if sustainable democratic systems are
to be expected.

Bibliography
COHEN, J.L. and A. ARATO (1994), Civil Society and Political Theory, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

CUNILL, N. (1996), “Panel: Participación ciudadana en el diseno y gestión de políticas

sociales: experiencias de la región”, in “Seminario: La difícil reforma pendiente:
Rearticulación de las relaciones entre Estado y sociedad civil”, CLACSO, Buenos
Aires, Argentina, 4-6 June.

GRINDLE, M.S. (1996), Challenging the State: Crisis and Innovation in Latin America, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.

HURTADO GALVÁN, L. (1995), Desarrollo desde arriba y desde abajo: Información, documentación y
comunicación en las ONGs de América Latina, Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos
“Bartolomé de las Casas” CBS.

PRIMAVERA, H. (1996), “Construir la ciudadanía: Cuando el ejemplo viene de Brasil”, in Carta

de Clacso, No. 105, October-December.

RIVERA, M. (1995), “Hacia nuevas articulaciones en la relacion estado-sociedad en materia

de políticas sociales”, ponencia presentada en la Reunión “Técnica sobre el Monitoreo
de las Metas en Favor de la Infancia del Compromiso de Nariño”, Antigua,
Guatemala, 16-18 August.

SAUGY, C. (1996), “Overview of Social Sciences Information and Electronic Communication

Networks in Latin America as Seen from the South”, FID News Bulletin, special issue
on Latin America, Vol. 46, No. 3.

126
 Civil Society in the Euro-Mediterranean Arena
Fifi Benaboud

If there is a single socio-political notion which has enjoyed widespread

popularity, it is undoubtedly that of civil society. Paradoxically, however, the frequent
use of this term does not always correspond to a precise idea of its meaning. One
certitude alone seems to prevail: the flexibility of its definition, if indeed it can be said
to have a definition. We can agree that civil society represents what is outside politics
and the state, that civil society mediates between the political centre and the society
which it serves; but these definitions are above all descriptive, and cannot reveal the
rich and complex nature of the concept. In point of fact, civil society has a definite
composition, a complex and heterogeneous structure, and a distinct function and,
above all, there are certain conditions which allow it to emerge.
How should we orient our reflections on civil society? Is it possible to define civil
society in such a way as to grant it the status of a concept and hence that of a scientific
analytical instrument? Or is it rather a notion inextricably linked to systems of
political organisation (in which case there would be several models of civil society)?
In this chapter, we will subscribe to the latter position in order to give an overview of
civil society in countries located on the south shore of the Mediterranean. In doing so,
we hope to define its role in the construction of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership
consecrated by the Barcelona conference in November 1995.
The topic of civil society in the Mediterranean countries is complex, so it is
necessary to define the players clearly in order to promote objectives other than those
pursued by commercial companies. We must first decide whether we want to adopt
a broad or a restricted definition of civil society. In the broader sense, civil society
includes political parties, co-operatives, unions, formal and informal associations,
etc. In the restricted sense, the principal players are associations, non-governmental
organisations and unions.
Faced with regimes in crisis, civil societies on the south shore of the Mediterranean
show a marked tendency to distinguish themselves from political society, especially
since the latter has a propensity to invade and permanently to occupy state institutions.
Civil societies on the north and south shores of the Mediterranean have four
characteristic elements in common:
– the emergence of the individual as the subject of the law;
– action that is freely organised on the basis of solidarities and existing affinities
within a complex and heterogeneous social fabric;
– the autonomy of this action with respect to the state;
– the state nonetheless remains the legal point of reference for the organised
actions of various groups in civil society.

127
 Civil society is thus characterised by a context either of dialogue or of
confrontation with state institutions.
For a number of years, the concept of civil society has been in great favour in
southern Mediterranean countries, but its new orientation frequently leads to erroneous
interpretations and consequently raises a number of questions.
– Should we make a radical distinction between civil society and the state?
– Should we think of civil society in terms of mediation between society as such
and the state?
– Should we necessarily think of civil society as in opposition to the state?
This chapter is principally devoted to the role of associations. The idea of
organisation and association is not foreign to traditional societies of the southern
Mediterranean. The existence of common law already offers examples of this type of
traditional community organisation.
At the end of the last century, Charles de Foucault observed that in the Maghreb
“each group governs itself apart, as they choose, by means of an assembly where each
family is represented”. In Arabic this assembly is called djemaa and in Berber anfaliz.
Before colonisation and even at the outset of colonisation, in both the towns and the
countryside, organised groups based on Muslim law and Berber common law were
typically used as a tool for collective action in areas such as agriculture and religious
education. Many traditions of this sort remain in effect today. These organisations
— which are called informal because they have no judicial status and, for the most
part, elude state jurisdiction — represent local efforts organised by a community of
believers to respond to the needs of its citizens.
The Muslim associative tradition is not fundamentally opposed to the state,
although it does maintain a certain degree of autonomy with respect to the state. This
tradition forms a community space for social and religious bonding, and it is based
on the interaction between faith and social life. Accordingly, in Arabic there is a
difference between al mujtama’ al ahli, or civil society, and al mujtama’ al madani, or civic
society. The first concept encompasses the whole of civil society, integrating
components of the traditional, tribal and confessional modes, while the second refers
to modern concepts such as citizenship, secularism and the relation of the individual
to the law.
As for international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates:
“All persons have the right to freedom of assembly and peaceful association. None
can be obliged to take part in an association.” In the southern Mediterranean region,
however, a number of limitations are placed on free assembly. As a result, we observe
setbacks in three areas: lack of legal recognition for associations, dissolution of
associations and the imposition of sanctions on their founders or their leaders. Today,
associative activities are in fact carried on in a context of restrictive legislation.
At the same time, the state and political parties maintain close relations with
associations which are active in “sensitive” areas. This close contact has the effect of
blocking action and discouraging the autonomy of these associations. Frequently
viewed as instrumental, they do not fully participate in the rules for developing the
democratic process. These groups often assume the guise of institutions acting on
behalf of the state; when they do, they meet with more tolerance, as long as their
avowed goals betray no intent significantly to alter political orientation and decision-
making in their spheres of action. In this case, associations mainly act as regulatory
mechanisms in the service of both the state and political parties, as a means of
supervising the population and recruiting new members while orienting associative
activities in a direction favourable to the party line.

128
 Despite legislative problems which limit their room for manoeuvre and their
effectiveness, and despite restrictive pressures which are often very strong, associations
have become highly visible on the political scene of southern Mediterranean countries
over the past several years. The principal areas in which civil society has been
organising and strengthening itself are cultural development, human rights, women’s
rights and environmental protection.
We should also stress the important role played by women’s organisations in
improving the judicial status of women. Previously, the condition of women was
viewed as a social question; today, owing to organised action by these associations,
it is perceived as a human rights issue. This is considered a great step forwards, in
view of the growing attention focused on human rights by both the state and civil
society. By demanding egalitarian treatment in ever-increasing numbers, women’s
organisations have placed the question of women’s rights at the centre of the political
debate, despite social resistance which holds on to patriarchal traditions dating back
thousands of years. This move is critical for making the transition to democracy, since
in Arab countries women play a pivotal role in society. The condition of women lies
at the core of debates concerning the establishment of a state of law and the principles
of democracy, equality and non-discrimination.
Since the 1980s, Arab societies have been undergoing change at several levels:
moral, cultural and ideological. In practice, this evolution amounts to raising the
collective consciousness on human rights, environmental protection and so on. In
theory, the evolution of civic awareness and of the collective consciousness in
Southern societies should necessarily lead to change, because the citizen is increasingly
attentive to the preservation of his or her rights and liberties.
Certain societies in the southern Mediterranean region are “frozen” owing to
a difficult social and institutional environment, which, in turn, is largely due to rigid
state monopolies. The state’s excessive intervention undermines the liberty and
autonomy of civil society, whereas a democratic process would imply not only the
openly expressed determination of its citizens to control the political, economic and
social system but also their full participation in all aspects of national life. These
countries are in the process of development, and their populations have for the past
20 years been undergoing social mutations in a political context where the ruling elite
has maintained power without offering any prospect of change. This dysfunction has
gradually given rise to socio-political fissures between the dominant elite and the rest
of society, and here the generational factor becomes an over-riding concern: the under-
30 age group, which constitutes two-thirds of the population, suffers the consequences
of a deficient educational system and social exclusion. All this has led to a new
dynamic of questioning established systems.
The inactivity of civil society is the main reason for these countries’ failure to
achieve democratic transitions. The fact is that the transformation from an authoritarian
regime to a democratic regime does not depend only upon the will of the “Prince”; it
also calls for the mobilisation of a civil society dedicated to the principles of liberty
and human rights, and committed to effective participation in elaborating rules and
implementing political, economic, social and cultural projects. We are witnessing the
development of increasingly powerful middle and professional classes, which aspire
to greater participation and real representation in politics. The crisis of legitimacy that
afflicts these states is unprecedented, but unfortunately civil society does not seem to
be capable at this point of demanding a political space and thereby counterbalancing
the state structure.
Our analysis must take into account the social evolution occurring in the
southern Mediterranean countries, the processes which have forged this society and
the contexts in which it has developed. On the one hand, there is indeed a primarily
middle-class sector of civil society, the members of which have had access to a good
education and professional integration. It is in this “modern urban” sector that
associations defending human rights, women’s rights, the environment and political
parties will be formed.
129
 On the other hand, economic restrictions, structural adjustment policies and the
infitah (the opening up to economic liberalism) have accentuated the exclusion and
marginalisation of a large portion of the population, composed largely of young
people. This segment of the population constitutes a considerable social force,
characterised by rejection of the educational system, very low purchasing power and
a virtually non-existent professional future. Moreover, it strongly rejects “modernity”
and the socio-political system from which it is excluded.
In this area, Islamic movements will provide both the cohesiveness and the
impetus needed by organisations promoting social solidarity in medicine, education,
training, etc. It should be noted that these Islamic organisations do successfully
compensate for deficiencies of the welfare state. It is not our intention to affirm that
they solicit only the underprivileged class of society — far from it. However, an
analysis of Islamic movements as an inescapable element of civil society in Arab
countries would stray too far from our subject and would require a long and complex
development which space does not permit.
We can stress, however, that the moderate Islamic movements today seem to
represent an undeniable social force capable of organising a strong civil society when
confronted with states in crisis which become daily more fragile, both politically and
economically, and which face increasingly sharp social opposition. These movements
constitute a genuine challenge for the future evolution of these societies. This dynamic
is linked, in large part, to the relationship between religion and modernity in the social
structure, to cultural values and to a sustained desire for legitimacy and political
participation.
The problem for these societies is that of locating the “middle ground” which
will enlist these new players in the transition to democracy. The solutions brought to
this problem will ultimately determine the geopolitical future of the region.
The Barcelona conference introduced a new development in this Euro-
Mediterranean arena. On the margins of the official conference, a series of civil fora
were held which attested to the need for, and demands of, civil society. The final
document signed by 27 governments assigns an important role to civil society and
stresses that its participation is indispensable if we are to establish a partnership in
the Euro-Mediterranean space. The declaration insists upon the “necessity of
facilitating exchanges between civil societies on both shores of the Mediterranean,
giving priority to culture, youth, education, training and the condition of migrants”.
It also affirms that the potential contribution of civil society is vital for trans-
Mediterranean interdependence and co-operation. For this reason, it was decided to
encourage decentralised co-operative programmes that support exchanges between
different components of civil society, such as cultural activity, universities, researchers,
media, associations, public and private enterprise, etc. The Barcelona declaration is
innovative with respect to civil society in that it goes beyond the simple framework
of predominantly economic partnership and underscores the need for political
reforms which could start up the process of democratisation, which, in turn, is likely
to ensure economic development and regional stability.
In this Euro-Mediterranean space one goal is essential: to re-assert the value of
the enormous human capital that the Mediterranean nations possess, especially on
the southern shores. No proposed partnership will promote any real political or
economic advancement if it is not accompanied by a plan to mobilise this human
potential. Without question, the civil societies of our countries, on both shores of the
Mediterranean, are destined to play a decisive role in ensuring the success of the Euro-
Mediterranean partnership and the effective integration of the North and South in this
space. Within this framework, civil society can make a vital economic contribution to
the entire region, but must above all create and reinforce the cultural basis of co-
operation. Civil society can lay the foundation for knowledge, understanding and
mutual confidence, which are vital for the construction and survival of a common
Euro-Mediterranean space in both the medium and the long terms. In this space,

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linkages and networks between civil societies of the north and south shores will serve
as a basis for economic, social and cultural development; there will be clear awareness
of what separates us but also of what unites us; and the Mediterranean will be
recognised as a great common resource with considerable potential.
Neither the state alone nor the market economy can create this common space.
All elements of civil society must participate by contributing all of their resources and
capacities. If the economies of the southern Mediterranean states are to take off and
regional instability to cease, the contract between the state and its citizens must be
renewed, for the existing contract is obsolete.
To conclude, we can affirm that civil society in the southern Mediterranean
countries exists within a historical perspective linked to the evolution of these
societies, including both the Arab-Muslim tradition and modern secular traditions.
The existing political systems place definite constraints on positive organised
action by the civil societies in these countries. Consequently, these civil societies are
not yet solid and productive social forces. We can be sure, however, that the transition
to democracy cannot come about through the efforts of civil society alone, especially
since civil society is weak and subject to pressure.
The transition to democracy cannot occur in opposition to the state but only in
co-operation with the state. Confrontation between civil society and the state will not
allow for the construction of viable social and political projects. Only by means of a
consensual pact between the components of civil society and the state will the
southern Mediterranean countries be able to build their future. A stronger civil society
is essential in order to ensure that this pact will be well balanced, and education is
the decisive element which will permit civil society to emerge.
The profound transformations occurring in these societies must take on an
institutional form if they are to result in solid social cohesion and a dynamic oriented
towards the future.
At the same time, there must be co-operation between Northern and Southern
civil societies, not in the form of “assistance” or the imposition of a universal Western
model, but as a real partnership enlisting the Southern civil societies in the decision-
making process and in the realisation of their projects, taking into account their
specificities and their values.

Bibliography
CAMAU, M. (1991), Changements politiques au Maghreb, Éditions CNRS.

GERM (1996), Annuaire de la Méditerranée, Publisud Éditions.

KODMANI-DARWISH, B. and M. CHARTOUNI-DUBARRY (1994), Perceptions de sécurité et stratégies

nationales au Moyen Orient, Éditions Masson.

OUANNES, M. (1997), Le Phénomène associatif au Maghreb, El Taller.

SALAME, G. (1994), Démocraties sans démocrates : politiques d’ouverture dans le monde arabe et
islamique, Fayard, Paris.

SHARABI, H. (1988), Neo Patriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in the Arab World, Oxford
University Press, Oxford.

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132
 Considerations for Donors

Theoretical Considerations

Democratic development is not sui generis in each country, and historical or

phenomenological approaches are not the sole means of understanding it. Fostering
democratic development is a programming art in which individual country
circumstances must be taken into account.
Civil society may be quite different at the macro and micro levels: a flourishing
civil society at the national level does not necessarily have its equivalent at the local
level. More sensitive and long-term approaches are called for on the part of national
governments and donors.

Organisational Considerations

Donors need to develop appropriate financing techniques and mechanisms for

strengthening civil society, such as special (possibly multi-donor) funds managed
within host countries with participation by representatives of civil society. Instead of
piecemeal financing of projects, core funding could be provided for reliable civil
society organisations capable of deciding by themselves which activities to finance,
within a mutually agreed range of objectives and principles. Insights may be drawn
from the experience of the European Commission, the Council of Europe and a number
of multilateral and bilateral donors. Additionally, donors need to:
– establish local sources of finance (such as foundations or earmarked funds) to
enable grassroots organisations to obtain funding directly, with local knowledge
replacing some of the more stringent accountability requirements needed when
donor and recipient are a great distance apart;
– ensure that grassroots organisations develop independence in learning and in
direction by encouraging community-to-community links, using both informal
mechanisms (e.g. local exchange programmes) and formal mechanisms (e.g. the
establishment of federative structures);
– identify and support local initiatives for participatory development, and share
information on innovative individuals and initiatives, avoiding dogmatic
approaches and taking advantage of diversity.
Donors should start guiding civil society organisations (CSOs) to plan for
sustainability right from the beginning. As aid budgets come under pressure “donor
fatigue” in OECD countries and emergencies make heavier claims on aid resources,
the longevity of assistance to CSOs will shorten. Preparation for self-reliance, which
once could be reserved for the “consolidation phase” of democratic transitions, must
now begin much earlier in the sequence of phases.

133
 The deposition of an authoritative regime or the end of a civil war can bring
infusions of donor aid that encourage many ill-considered, poorly managed and
ultimately unviable CSOs to form. As money suddenly becomes available, CSOs will
immediately form to claim it, only to founder and collapse when funds begin to dry
up. More donor caution initially and assistance to fewer CSOs (along with greater
guidance to those that are supported) could help to produce more viable NGOs over
the longer term.
Civil society cannot be considered as inherently beneficial. Organisations in
civil society may not fulfil, or may even contradict, our expectation that they will
generate positive effects. Therefore, both the internal characteristics of individual
organisations and the external conditions that influence them must be taken into
account. Management must be both competent and accountable to its membership,
and organisations must be willing to co-operate with other actors in seeking systemic
reform.
Participants in civil society, being human, are prone to all the same inefficiencies,
difficulties and deviations that others face in government, without the strong deterrents
of legal or authoritarian structures. Constant criticism, evaluation and monitoring are
therefore needed, in order to redirect programmes and people when necessary. It is
important, however, that this be done within or between the groups themselves.

The Role of Gender

Women’s organisations play an important role in working towards the

improvement of women’s judicial status. Previously, the condition of women was
considered a social question; today, it is viewed as a human rights issue, and in view
of the growing attention focused on human rights both by the state and by civil society
it must be a consideration for donors. This issue is critical for making the transition
to democracy: the condition of women lies at the core of debates concerning the
establishment of a state of law dedicated to democratic principles, namely, equality
and non-discrimination.

The Role of the State

It is necessary:
– to encourage governments in partner countries to improve the enabling
environment for civil society by strengthening the rule of law and removing
obstacles to the creation and operations of associations and movements;
– to ascertain whether government, civil society and the law treat men and women
differently, and foster appropriate remedies where necessary;
– to foster positive features in the organisations they assist, such as an internal
structure that is democratic rather than hierarchical, and an approach which
incorporates women’s perspectives and needs, and encourages their
participation.
Donors should be ready to deploy considerable diplomatic leverage to support
civil society strategies when needed, particularly in the periods just before and after
the democratic passage. CSOs are generally not strong enough to carry the whole load
of reform and keep up the momentum towards democracy.

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 Annex 1

Civil Society and Development Co-operation

Introductory Note

The Final Report of the DAC Ad Hoc Working Group on Participatory Development
and Good Governance (1993-96) placed strong emphasis on support for civil society
in its own right and as a basis for transitions to democracy.

The relevant passages from the report are reproduced hereafter. They are derived from
Part I, which presents agreed conclusions and was endorsed by the 1997 DAC High
Level Meeting, and Part II, which was prepared under the responsibility of the
Secretariat and is composed of summaries of the workshops organised by the Working
Group.

The full report is available as a free publication from the Development Co-operation
Directorate of the OECD, and on the Internet at http://www.oecd.org/dac.

Final Report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Participatory Development and

Good Governance (extracts)

Part I

A. Conclusions and Action-oriented Outcomes

1. Key Conclusions [included the following]

Strengthen the Strategic The development-participation-governance linkages can

Role of Civil Society only be strengthened if civil society (in which women
should play a key role) and the private sector are able to
advocate for needed reforms in the political and economic
systems. Technocratic approaches to institutional change
and legal reform fail without effective local demand for
change, expressed through local constituencies and locally-
based skills for building grassroots and national
participation. Through policy dialogue and capacity
building, donors can effectively support the strategic role
of civil society.

B. Major Points Emerging from Topic Discussions

Civil Society and Democratisation

1. Civil society is central to democratisation, the rule of law and human rights.
Civil society denotes a public space between the state and individual citizens (women
and men) in which the latter can develop autonomous, organised and collective
activities of the most varied nature. Where there are no opportunities for citizens to

135
 participate in such activities, and through them to interact with the state, individuals
are isolated and vulnerable to arbitrary acts, while the state lacks the trust of the people
and real effectiveness.
2. An effective state and a vigorous civil society are mutually supportive. The state
has a critical role with respect to civil society first of all in providing a functioning and
accessible legal system and in ensuring the existence of a legally protected “public
sphere” where civil society can develop with no undue interference. Without a
vigorous civil society, the state is narrowly based and susceptible to capture by
political and economic opportunists.
3. In relation to democracy, civil society has both a pluralist function, through the
variety of its components, and an educational and advocacy function, as groups learn
to articulate their aspirations, design their projects, negotiate and bargain, and form
alliances. It is recognised that civil society is neither homogeneous nor necessarily
consensual.
4. For democratisation purposes, associations should be encouraged to establish
alliances based on compromise (“coalition building”) and to learn to negotiate with
the state and donors to promote the interests of their constituencies.
5. A useful distinction can be made between people’s organisations — which
represent and are in principle accountable to their members, that is groups of people
with common aspirations, ranging from peasants’ associations to women and youth
groups — and NGOs, which operate for, or on behalf of, the people they serve.
Experience suggests appropriate ways of supporting various kinds of groups and
NGOs in civil society. These are highlighted in Part II of the report. Modalities should
be flexible enough to support people’s groups pursuing their own objectives, with
focus on learning by doing, which also includes learning from mistakes. External
assistance would have a supportive role, accompanying rather than prescribing the
efforts of local actors.
6. Key objectives for donors should be:

– to encourage governments in partner countries to improve the enabling

environment for civil society, by strengthening the rule of law and removing
obstacles to the creation and operations of associations and movements;
– to understand whether government, civil society and the law treat men and
women differently, and foster appropriate remedies where necessary;
– to identify and support local initiatives for participatory development, and
share information on innovative individuals and initiatives, avoiding dogmatic
approaches and taking advantage of diversity;
– to foster positive features in the organisations they assist, such as:
. an internal structure that is democratic rather than hierarchical;
. an approach which includes women’s perspectives and needs and
encourages their participation;
. management that is both capable and accountable to its membership; and
. a willingness to co-operate with other actors for achieving systemic
reform;

136
· to develop appropriate financing techniques and mechanisms for
strengthening civil society, such as special (possibly multi-donor) funds
managed within host countries with participation by representatives of
civil society. Instead of piecemeal financing of projects, core funding
would be provided for reliable civil society organisations who could
decide by themselves which activities to finance within a mutually agreed
range of objectives and principles. Insights may be drawn from the
experience of the UNDP, the European Commission (EC) and a number of
bilateral donors.

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 Part II

Chapter 2

Civil Society and Democratisation

0.1 Civil society is central to discussions of democratisation, the rule of law, human
rights. While familiar in substance to aid operators for a long time, the notion of “civil
society” has acquired a new dimension in the context of governance and
democratisation.

0.2 A workshop on civil society and democracy was organised by the Department
of Government of Uppsala University on 12-13 June 1995. The workshop was
sponsored by the Nordic countries as a contribution to the work programme of the WG.
Participants came from DAC countries, multilateral organisations and a few developing
countries. The present chapter draws on the workshop and also refers to relevant
previous work on NGOs by the DAC and the Development Centre.

Civil Society and Democracy

0.3 Political scientists of the University of Uppsala provided this definition to the
WG: Civil society denotes a public space between the state and individual citizens
where the latter can develop autonomous, organised and collective activities of the
most varied nature. Where there are no opportunities to forge bonds of affinity or
co-operation, individuals and families are isolated. [Axel Hadenius and Fredrik
Uggla, Uppsala University, “Making Civil Society Work, Promoting Democratic
Development: What Can States and Donors Do?”, in World Development, Vol. 24,
No. 10 (1996), pp. 1621-1639.]

0.4 In relation to democracy, civil society has both a pluralist function, through the
variety of its components, and an educational function, as groups learn to articulate
their aspirations, design their projects, negotiate, form alliances. It is recognised that
civil society is neither homogeneous nor necessarily consensual.

0.5 A useful distinction can be made between:

– people’s organisations, that is, membership organisations, from the

grassroots level to apex unions, which pursue the goal of improved living
conditions for their own members (these are also known as “self-interest”
or “self-help” organisations); and,
– associations pursuing broader objectives for the “common good” such as
environmental and human rights groups (“civic” or “advocacy”
associations). Some of these may act as intermediaries between external
assistance and membership organisations.
0.6 Experience shows that it is easier for an organisation to develop where it
pursues the economic self-interest of its members. Likewise, advocacy associations
have a greater impact when they address specific needs of their members. Acquisition

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of democratic values is more marked when the internal life of associations is
democratically structured, their leadership is accountable to members, and fosters
tolerance and a feeling for the common interest.

0.7 Researchers and aid agencies sometimes differ as to what other activities to
include. Political parties and trade unions tend to be included, but not by everyone.
Business, on the other hand, tends to be excluded, again not by everyone. Business
associations, such as chambers of commerce, are usually included.

0.8 A strong state and a strong civil society are mutually supportive. The state has
a critical role with respect to civil society in providing a functioning and accessible
legal system and in ensuring the existence of a legally protected “public sphere”
where civil society can develop with no undue interference. Without a vigorous civil
society, the state is narrowly based and susceptible to capture by political and
economic interests.

0.9 For many researchers the growth of a viable and robust civil society is a
necessary but not sufficient condition for democracy. The importance of civil society
to democratic governance lies foremost in the legal distinction between state and
independent associations of a private and voluntary nature. A dense network of
associations can play a role in monitoring the boundaries of the public sphere so as
to prevent or challenge authoritarian rule. Thus civil society also represents a
countervailing force to government. As noted in an internal USAID seminar, this force
can engage positively with the government and the government will have to listen.
A Danish policy paper also notes the countervailing role of civil society: civil society
provides channels for popular participation in the political process, acts as a
mouthpiece for weak and marginalised groups, and builds bridges between various
groups in society, a function which is relevant to conflict prevention and resolution.

0.10 The role of a free press and media (including the radio which is cheaper and
easier to establish and operate than TV) which provides independent information
and channels for the expression of opinions, is crucial to the countervailing function
of civil society.

0.11 Self-help/membership groups can promote democratic development by

providing channels for groups to participate in decision-making on matters affecting
them. An example is provided by FONGS (Federation of NGOs in Senegal, an apex
federation of villagers’ groups) which now contributes to agricultural policy discussions
with the government. An effective role of this kind is the result of years, or decades,
of fostering and strengthening of local groups and encouraging them to create unions
and federations, with appropriate support from donors, lending greater impact to the
interests of their constituents.

Major Strategies for External Support

0.12 In many developing countries, civil society organisations are few and weak,
and often totally dependent on foreign money, with limited resources left for the
associations’ overhead costs since donors prefer to fund projects. The organisations
seldom co-operate with one another, may live under threat from the state, and suffer
from inadequate information and knowledge bases.

0.13 Donors have used two main types of support strategies:

– improving the environment for civil society, e.g., helping strengthen the
rule of law, removing obstacles to the creation of associations and
movements;

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 – providing direct financial/technical assistance to groups and
organisations.
0.14 Financial support should be adapted to the type of organisation that is being
helped. Insights are provided by long-standing donor experience with support to
developmental NGOs, reflected in DAC and Development Centre work [Bernard
Lecomte, Project Aid — Limitations and Alternatives, Development Centre Studies,
OECD, 1986; Voluntary Aid for Development, The Role of Non-governmental Organisations,
OECD, 1988; Non-governmental Organisations and Governments. Stakeholders for
Development, Ian Smillie and Henny Helmich (eds), Development Centre Studies,
1993; and Participatory Development, From Advocacy to Action, edited by Hartmut
Schneider with Marie-Hélène Libercier, OECD, 1995]. The analysis of projects suited
to aid procedures vs the development of local capacities through “learning by doing”
has recently been furthered by the Club du Sahel, in its appraisal of twenty years of
aid to the Sahel countries [Jean-David Naudet, “Finding problems to suit the solutions:
Introduction to a critical analysis of methods and instruments of aid to the Sahel”,
SAH/D(96)457, general distribution, OECD, 1996].

– For income-generating membership organisations, funds should not be

all earmarked in advance, so that members can decide on their priorities
and grasp opportunities, and they should be at least in part repayable into
locally managed funds for new activities. These approaches favour local
initiative and sustainability.
– For civic/advocacy associations, including experienced intermediary
NGOs which help popular groups get organised, external assistance
should fund programmes and operating costs rather than focusing on the
implementation of donor-driven projects. Most civic/advocacy
associations in developing countries find it impossible to function
exclusively on local resources. This is one more reason why donors should
envisage their support for such groups with an adequate time horizon,
much longer than is often done in practice.

Learning to Form Alliances

0.15 For democratisation purposes, associations should be encouraged to establish

alliances based on compromise among themselves (“coalition building”) and to learn
to negotiate with the state and donors to promote the interests of their constituencies.

Related Issues in Assisting Civil Society

0.16 Donors should avoid adopting overly normative attitudes. There is a need for
accurate analyses of specific situations, in particular in Africa, with more local voices
helping to deepen the analysis and adapt civil society support programmes to each
culture and society. For example, in many African countries, the state and its
institutions are weak, and one of the tasks is to strengthen the political community
as a whole. The role of ethnicity and the association of political parties with ethnic
groups also need to be understood.

0.17 “Bogus” intermediary associations also exist and are established with the
intent of mobilising aid to benefit their founders. Donor agencies, and NGOs’ field
co-ordination mechanisms where they exist, need to separate these from “bona fide”
groups to prevent misuse of scarce resources.

0.18 The issue of sustainability of local civic associations, and implicitly of donor
commitment to the long term, was taken up in a 1995 USAID evaluation of its support
for civil society in five developing countries: Bangladesh, Chile, El Salvador, Kenya
and Thailand. The study noted that in a number of cases donors terminate their

140
assistance at early stages of democratisation, as was the case in Thailand and
El Salvador, without having devoted sufficient attention to creating a favourable
enabling environment for the growth of civil society. The conclusions suggest that
donors should pay more attention to creating a supportive policy environment and
building bridges between public interest associations and in-country funding sources.
As noted at Uppsala, however, even in the longer term local resources may be
insufficient in the poorer countries to sustain the associations.

Examples of Support for Democracy through Aid for Civil Society

0.19 Over the years, donors have traditionally provided support to many types of
associations. More recent activities emphasise human rights and the explicit goal of
promoting more open and democratic governance. For example, Denmark now
includes civil society issues in its policy dialogue with governments for its twenty-odd
countries of concentration and includes persons from the civil society in the dialogue.
Danida has supported democratisation in Nepal since it began in 1991. A
comprehensive review of Danida’s democratisation assistance to Nepal, carried out
in 1994, concluded that support to human rights monitoring and advocacy addressing
specific needs of specific groups has had a positive impact, while general
awareness-raising activities and research-oriented work, have had a very limited
impact. The Nepal review recommended that a more strategic approach be worked
out gradually, to focus on priority areas, such as workers’ education, bonded labour,
child labour and trafficking in women. Swiss aid pays special attention to support
for grassroots organisations and the need for adequate financing procedures (flexible
funding, for example) and has taken a long-term approach to also assisting the
creation of unions and federations of such groups. A number of NGOs, such as the
Dutch NOVIB, have pioneered the switch to decentralisation of programming,
decision-making and management, giving greater autonomy and responsibility to
partner associations in developing countries.

Criteria for Donors

0.20 Key concerns for donors should be to identify local initiatives for participatory
development, and to share information on innovative individuals and initiatives,
avoiding dogmatic approaches and taking advantage of diversity.

0.21 Donors should seek to foster desirable features in the organisations they assist,
such as:

– an internal structure that is democratic rather than strictly hierarchical;

– management that is both capable and accountable to its membership;
– a willingness to co-operate with other actors, thus creating an enabling
environment and achieving systemic reform.
0.22 Special funds could be set up for strengthening civil society as a whole rather
than individual organisations. These (possibly multi-donor) funds would be managed
within host countries by representatives of civil society, designated by several
associations together. Insights may be drawn from experience of the UNDP and
bilaterals (e.g., a Danish fund for democratisation in Albania whose board includes
representatives of NGOs and government, and independent personalities; an
EC-supported fund for NGO empowerment in various East European countries;
CIDA’s funds managed in association with governments and civil society).

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 Keeping Abreast of Relevant Developments

0.23 A better understanding of the relevance of various components of civil society

for democracy and development, and of best practices for external assistance, can be
expected to continue emerging from further research and reviews of experience in
countries at various stages of economic and social development. For example, insights
were provided recently by: a) an important seminar held among researchers from
various countries engaged in research projects on civil society at the Institute of
Development Studies in Sussex in June 1996; and b) the publication NGOs Civil Society
and the State: Building Democracy in Transitional Countries, Andrew Clayton (ed.),
INTRAC, Oxford, 1996, and in particular the report by Lisa Vene Klasen, The Challenge
of Democracy-building: Practical Lessons on NGO Advocacy and Political Change. A new
study of support for civil society in Eastern Europe and developing countries (with
case studies on Kenya, Sri Lanka, Hungary and Peru) is co-ordinated by the Canadian
North-South Institute. An international seminar and a publication are slated for end-
1997.

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 Annex 2

Programme and List of Participants

International Co-operation and Civil Society
Paris, 4th - 5th July 1997

Programme

Friday, 4th July 1997

OECD Development Centre

Opening of Conference Henny Helmich and Jos Lemmers - co-organisers

Session I: Civil Society: A Working Definition?

Chair: Henny Helmich

Presentation: Percy B. Lehning

Session II: Civil Society in the South?

Chair: Jos Lemmers

Presentations: Asian Perspectives: Aye Aye Win

African Perspectives: François Sedogo
Latin American Perspectives: Mónica Allmand
Mediterranean Perspectives: Fifi Benaboud

Session III: Concluding Remarks

Lourdes Arizpe

Saturday, 5th July 1997

Council of Europe Office in Paris

Session IV: International Co-operation — Strengthening Civil Society?

Chair: Percy B. Lehning

Presentations: Through NGOs?: Diana Mitlin

Through Government Actors?: Harry Blair

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 Session V: Re-examining the Issue — What Could Be a Practical Approach?

Chair: Maria-Teresa de Borbon Parma

Presentation: Fredrik Uggla

Session VI: Formulation of Personal Conclusions

Session VII: Concluding Remarks

Ed van Thijn

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 List of Participants

Co-organisers and Chairs

H.R.H. Princess Maria-Teresa Professor of Islamic Studies

de BORBON PARMA Universidad Complutense
Co-chair de Políticas y Sociología
Madrid
Spain

Mr Henny HELMICH External Co-operation Division

Co-organiser and Co-chair OECD Development Centre
Paris
France

Mr Percy B. LEHNING Professor of Political Theory

Co-chair and Public Policy
Erasmus University
Rotterdam
The Netherlands

Mr Jos LEMMERS Executive Director

Co-organiser and Co-chair North-South Centre
Council of Europe
Lisbon
Portugal

Mr Ed. van THIJN Professor of Political Science

Rapporteur Department of Political Science
University of Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Ms Amanda BERNARD External Co-operation Division

Rapporteur and Conference Organiser OECD Development Centre
Paris
France

Authors

Ms Mónica ALLMAND ISNAR Library and Information Service

The Hague
The Netherlands

Ms Lourdes ARIZPE Assistant Director General

UNESCO
Paris
France

Ms Fifi BENABOUD Transmediterranean Program

Co-ordinator
North-South Centre
Council of Europe
Lisbon
Portugal

145
 Mr Harry BLAIR Professor of Political Science
Bucknell University
Lewisburg
United States

Mr Kees BREED Ministry of Interior

Zoetermeer
The Netherlands

Ms Diana MITLIN Research Associate

Human Settlement Programme
International Institute for
Environment and Development
London
United Kingdom

Mr Paténéma François SEDOGO External Co-operation Division

OECD Development Centre
Paris
France

Mr Fredrik UGGLA Uppsala University

Sweden

Ms Aye Aye WIN Consultant

Lisbon
Portugal

Participants

Ms Elena BORGHESE OECD

Development Co-operation Directorate
Paris
France

Ms Rosamaria DURAND Chief of the Co-ordination

Evaluation and New Technologies Unit
in the Sector for Culture
UNESCO
Paris
France

Mr Matthias FINGER Professor

Graduate Institute
of Public Administration
Chavannes-près-Renens
Switzerland

Mr Giulio FOSSI Head

External Co-operation Division
OECD Development Centre
Paris
France

146
Mr Colm FOY Publications and Information Unit
OECD Development Centre
Paris
France

Mr Jyrki KÄKÖNEN Research Director

representing the Academy of Finland Tampere Peace Research Institute
Finland

Mr Krzysztof LEWANDOWSKI Advisor

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Department of Economic Relations
Warsaw
Poland

Mr Magnus LINDELL Swedish International Development

Co-operation Agency
Stockholm
Sweden

Mr Hartmut SCHNEIDER Principal Administrator

OECD Development Centre
Paris
France

Mr Mirko VAUPOTIC Deputy Director of Youth Program

Ministry of Education and Sport
Ljubljana
Slovenia

Ms Adéle WOODS External Co-operation Division

OECD Development Centre
Paris
France

147
OECD PUBLICATIONS, 2, rue André-Pascal, 75775 PARIS CEDEX 16
PRINTED IN FRANCE
(41 98 08 1 P) ISBN 92-64-16117-1 – No. 50225 1998