Democracy,civil society and the media in Africa in the Nineties. a discussion of the emergence and relevance of some analytical concepts for the understanding of the situation in Africa

The article argues that the relationship between state and civil society in an African context constitute a dialiectic between a weak state and a weak civil society. The question of the seperation between state and civil society in Africa cannot be understood apart from recent changes in Eastern Europe, with the demise of communism on the one hand, and the rise of neo‐liberalism on the other. Also, the state/society problematic in Africa is linked to the inheritance from the European experience of the nineteenth century, and to the economic restructuring programmes of the 1980s and the 1990s. Civil society in Africa is seen as constituted by a variety of social movements which through their forms of communication tap in on and recreate existing and new collective identities. The article gives special attention to the case in Zimbabwe and the role of the media and civil society there.     

Characterising civil society and its challenges in post-apartheid South Africa

Since South Africa’s transition to democracy, civil society has been considered a critical component of new inclusive “democratic” societies, acting to ensure human rights for all. Government and donor agencies require the incorporation of this sector within project documents and programmes. However, is civil society merely a loosely defined term used to satisfy the requirements of project proposals and interests of the state, donors and big business, while not directly addressing the concerns of citizens subjected to macroeconomic risks (e.g. industrial pollution, unemployment and service delivery)? Since the transition, it is mainly established civil society organisations that have become well resourced and who have developed collaborative relationships with the state and industry, which has eroded their accountability to and support from the marginalised communities they claim to serve. Can such organisations then claim to be part of an “authentic” civil society striving for inclusive development? By reviewing contemporary and historical literature on civil society, and through empirical work, this paper argues that there has been a shift in the conception of civil society since the transition, with established forms of support for the grassroots remaining doubtful. Civil society has not effectively engaged with the grassroots to project their concerns about macroeconomic risks, largely due to integration into government/donor institutions. Fragmentation within the grassroots arena has also limited coherent actions against dominant groups. Although civil society can support the grassroots to address their concerns through formal activities, for example, by employing legal strategies, there is no guarantee of success. Connections between an “authentic” civil society and coherent grassroots actions engaging in a combination of strategies (formal and informal) will be required to achieve true democracy.     

The World Bank,INGOs, and Civil Society: Converging Agendas? The Case of Universal Basic Education in Niger

This paper explores, through a case study of the World Bank's pursuit of universal basic education, the gulf between the Bank's dialogue with international civil society elites and its treatment of grassroots civil society in its development practice. It argues that the World Bank is pursuing a conscious program to build a global elite governance system similar to Bank vice-president J. F. Rischard's concept of global issues networks, in which experts from business, government, and civil society will set globally binding social and economic policies. There is a risk of co-optation of international NGOs into this autocratic global managerial system.     

Governing Through Critique: Post-Conditionality and Bottom-Up Governance in the Merida Initiative

This article is about how the governmentality critique of top-down governance feeds into current interventionary policy thinking. Drawing on the Merida Initiative, a US–Mexican security cooperation agreement signed in 2007, the article brings out how neo-liberal civil society discourse continuously deconstructs the normative and analytical assumptions, categories, and concepts of modern liberal-universalism. In the Merida Initiative, civil society representatives were repeatedly delegitimized for being part of a detached internationalized NGO bubble. The goal was to enable idiosyncratic local knowledge-power to unfold its creative governing potential unencumbered by the oppressive and counterproductive reductions and exclusions of liberal-universal episteme. In this way, policy thinking actually coincides with the governmentality critique of standardized knowledge and top-down imposition. One of the negative implications is that international policy-makers lose their ability to arbitrate according to fixed normative standards.     

Civil Society Organizations in the Informal Settlements of Buenos Aires: Service Providers and Forces for Change

The objective of this paper is to analyze the historical roots and contribution to human development of civil society organizations in marginalized communities based on fieldwork undertaken in seven informal settlements of the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The paper provides evidence of a dense network of organizations whose principal function is the provision of social services, especially food assistance, through a complementary relationship with the state. The current effectiveness of the settlements’ representative organizations—the principal vehicles through which community members voice their collective demands—is limited by a mix of factors intimately related to civil society–state relations, including irregularities in election processes, conflicts between organizations, and lack of transparency in the allocation of public resources. The paper concludes that true empowerment of these communities to act as a unified force for change requires the strengthening of neighborhood organizations and greater government openness to civil society participation in public decision-making processes.     

The state,refugees and migration in sub-Saharan Africa

Migration and refugee movements could significantly decline in sub-Saharan African countries. However, countries must redistribute meager resources equitably and engage in environmental protection. Refugee and migrant populations have increased in sub-Saharan Africa during 1969-95, from 700,000 to 6.8 million. This study examined the causes of migration and the implications for host countries. Doornbos (1990) identifies the root problem as the partisan nature of African politics and the incapacity to manage ecological degradation. The African state is wholly or partially responsible for the creation of conflicts. Examples abound in Zaire, South Africa, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Ethiopia, Liberia, Congo, and Chad. State partisanship is also evident in Angola, Mozambique, Uganda, and Sierra Leone. An estimated 10 million Africans, in 1985, left their homes due to wars, government repression, or the inability of land to support them. In 1994, USAID estimated that 11.6 million Africans in 10 countries were threatened by famine from drought. Environmental degradation has generated conflicts. Africa's marginalized economy results in recession, unemployment, inflation, and distributional conflicts. Democratization has brought conflicts between the state, civil society, and exiles. Refugees face homelessness, poverty, emotional distress, inadequate food, and disease. Host countries face security threats, pressure on limited resources, rebellions from refugees and their involvement with foreign mercenaries, local conflicts between native and refugee populations, and environmental degradation from refugees.     

Civil Society Efficacy,Citizenship and Empowerment in Africa

This paper contributes to the debate on the limited efficacy of civil society in Africa. It examines the complex interface between notions of civil society and citizenship within the context of the postcolonial state in Africa. It argues that the bifurcated character of citizenship is implicated in the inefficacy of civil society. This is underlined by the limited achievements in social citizenship, aggravated by the economic crisis and neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s as well as the politics of regime sustenance. Political disengagement, drain on the moral content of public life and diminished collective orientation of citizens, aggravated conflicts within society, thereby, promoting a democratisation of disempowerment and a disorganised civil society.     

The NGOs and the Grand Illusions of Development and Democracy

The role of civil society in the improvement of equitable development and the stimulation of democratic culture has been notably recognised by international development agencies. In the new policy of ‘good governance’ that proposes progress regarding development and democracy in parallel in the developing countries, civil society is often represented by non-governmental organisations (NGOs). This paper bases its arguments primarily on theories in relation to the role of civil society with regard to development and democracy to raise concerns about current policy trends of ‘good governance’ in the general context of developing countries with the main focus on Africa. The concerns are substantiated by empirical verification through a review of literature. The paper concludes that NGOs are unlikely to have the strength to either promote development or foster democracy.     

Poverty,oil and corruption: the need for a Quad‐Sector Development Partnership (QSDP) in Nigeria's Niger Delta

This article starts by charting the conflicting position in Nigeria's Niger Delta between its petroleum wealth and the poverty of its inhabitants before observing how government corruption has hampered development agencies from rectifying this situation. It then examines trans‐national company (TNC) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives via a case study of the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC). It concludes that, while there are useful projects, their success is felt at a micro level that cannot supplant wider government development. Finally, the article sets out why Quad‐Sector Development Partnerships (QSDP) between an international development agency, the state, TNCs and civil society will help to neutralise the national problem of corruption so that Niger‐Delta socioeconomic development can be improved.     

Engendering Citizenship,Feminizing Civil Society

Abstract

In this paper, I describe how feminists in countries of the Middle East and North Africa are challenging their second-class citizenship largely institutionalized in patriarchal family laws-and are calling for an extension of their civil, political, and social rights. I use the term “feminist” to denote de jureand de factofeminists working to advance women's rights. The paper seeks to make theoretical sense of contemporary rights-based movements and discourses in the region through an application of theories of citizenship. It highlights the role of women's organizations in the regional call for democratization, civil society, and citizenship and it provides an empirical content to the discussion of citizenship, state, and civil society. Data and information are gleaned from a close reading of the literature by and on women's organizations in the region, and from personal observations and interviews.     

Civil Society,Legitimacy and Political Space: Why Some Organisations are More Vulnerable to Restrictions than Others in Violent and Divided Contexts

This paper examines legitimacy and political space for civil society in violent and divided contexts. It draws on qualitative fieldwork with civil society groups in Burundi, where government restrictions and political violence have increased in recent years. However, not all civil society groups experienced these pressures in the same way, and some were more vulnerable to restrictions than others. This paper asks why and considers whether civil society legitimacy can help to explain some of these differences. In doing so, it develops a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between legitimacy and political space, and processes of legitimation and delegitimation in violent and divided contexts. The paper finds that the experiences of civil society groups in Burundi prior to the 2015 elections not only related to their organisational legitimacy, but also the extent to which they were perceived to challenge the political legitimacy of government elites.     

Rural governance and local involvement: assessing state—community relations in the Scottish Highlands

Questions of rural governance have been attracting growing interest in recent years as rural analysts turn their attention to the institutional transformations that are taking place in and around the local state. This paper is concerned with the relationships between new governance agencies and rural communities. It follows recent contributions to the rural studies literature by adopting a ‘governmentality’ perspective which views the current emphasis on community involvement and empowerment as part of a broader neo-liberal strategy of ‘governing through community’. In the paper, I address a particular gap in the governmentality literature by examining how the underlying shift towards community action and local involvement is mediated and implemented by local and regional agencies in the Scottish Highlands, focusing specifically on the relationship between local enterprise companies and local communities. As such, the paper explores the tension between the concern with local participation and the reliance upon a set of managerial ‘technologies’ such as targeting and financial controls which reflect a need to ensure that local agencies are accountable to (central) government. The paper argues that while local state agencies must be analysed within wider circuits of power, local agencies and community groups retain some capacity to influence processes of rural governance. In conclusion, I suggest that the governmentality approach provides some critical insights for re-interpreting and analysing rural governance as a particular field of research.     

Power,poets and the people: Mozambican voices interpreting history

This article analyses the relationship between the state and the nascent African trade unions in South Africa between 1918 and 1948. It shows how the government's attempts to deal with African workers separately from white workers became increasingly difficult during this period. Pressures from African unions themselves, from liberal groups and from the increasingly important role played by Africans in the economy, forced the state to seek a coherent way of handling African trade unions. The paper shows how the state was divided over this issue, with Native Affairs and Labour Department officials conflicting with each other and with government ministers. Although the cabinet held ultimate power within the state, civil servants played a significant role in shaping government policy and determining how it was implemented. The paper concludes that, although circumstances have changed greatly since 1948, the pre‐apartheid era has important lessons for state/organised labour relations in the post‐apartheid South Africa which is currently taking shape.     

The Participation of Civil Society Organizations in Public Policies in Latin America

Throughout Latin America, the relationship between government and civil society organizations (CSOs) has been characterized by opposition, substitution, and submission; and, the incipient path to cooperation is barely noticeable. For their part, participatory public policies make sense within a theory of democratic governance. Democratic governance seeks two propositions: (a) participation from other social actors will give rise to more efficient government action; and (b) citizen support will emerge from the said government action. This paper criticizes the current relationships between the governments and CSOs in this region. In addition, it explores the potential strategies that could be adopted were there a cooperation between these two entities. The paper is supported by theoretical literature as well as by a revision of some cases of participatory public policies that are currently active in the region. The paper proposes that the strategies of opposition to government and government substitution have to be abandoned in this region. The paper focuses on civil organizations (CSOs). It is true that they do not constitute the entirety of civil society; however, they are frequently the most organized compared with other civic actors, such as social movements, families, and individual initiatives. CSOs form only a part of the diversity known as civil society; however, they significantly contribute to the discussion about the public good, and very often they participate in providing such goods. The future of participatory democracy in Latin America is related to our ability to achieve a more complete participation of CSOs in the entire process of participatory public policies—from the formation of public agendas to their design, implementation, and evaluation.     

What is society? Social thought and the arts of government

Following conservative politicians, neoliberal philosophers and radical critics, different strands of social science, including those using Foucault's governmentality approach, joined the questioning of the salience of 'society' and ideas of 'the social' over the last decades. When the social reappeared, it was often in the moral domains of community and civil society. This argument re-evaluates the contribution of Foucauldian histories, or 'genealogies', of the social to these fundamental questions. Drawing upon them, it attends to their arguments concerning the place of social thought on the modern episteme in relation to economics, the emergence of the idea of 'society' with the modern arts of government of the state, and the formation of the 'social question'. The argument here allows that preconditions of formation of 'society' lie in the legal and political techniques of the territorial sovereign state. However, the literature under investigation indicates the implicit normativity of an idea of 'society' as a 'problematic unity' and the enduring necessity of a social domain in a law-governed state with a relatively independent economic sphere. This discussion thus seeks to contribute to the wider revaluation and redeployment of these terms in today's context.     

The Constraints on Civil Society beyond the State: Gender-based Insecurity in Meghalaya,India

The role of civil society is vital for politicizing, contesting, and addressing human insecurity, yet there is very little analysis of the ability of civil society actors to do so. Recent critical approaches to the concept have questioned the tendency to view civil society as an unequivocal good, yet the majority of these critiques still focus on civil society at a global level or on the enabling and disabling capacity of the state at the national level. This paper argues that civil society is constrained not only by the state but by local government and other actors from within civil society. Identity politics, power relations, and existing inequalities between and within communities affect the ability of formal and informal organizations to contest the causes of insecurity. This paper examines the role of civil society in addressing gender-based insecurity in the Indian state of Meghalaya to demonstrate the influence of these factors on civil society and concludes by arguing that civil society is a much more dynamic and contradictory sphere than is often recognized by both advocates and critics. These dynamics must be understood if the constraints on civil society are to be transcended.

Analysing State–Civil Society Associations Relationship: The Case of Lebanon

Civil society organizations in Lebanon have a long history, pre-dating even the existence of the Lebanese state itself, which has directly shaped their major phases of development since its creation. Based on the social origins theory and using the framework developed by Marchetti and Tocci (Peace Secur Former Pac Rev Peace Secur Glob Chang 21:201–217, 2009), this paper analyses the relationships that have developed between the state and civil society organizations in Lebanon. The main argument presented in this paper is that the scope of work of civil society organizations, in addition to their freedom of action, is directly linked to the social, political and economic development of the state. The main conclusion of this paper is that a new social contract should be forged between associations and the state in Lebanon, one that would allow them to carry out their functions properly.     

The governmentalities of neoliberalism: panopticism,post‐panopticism and beyond

This paper draws on the writings of Michel Foucault, in particular his lectures on biopolitics at the Collège de France from 1978–79, to examine liberalism and neoliberalism as governmental forms that operate through different models of surveillance. First, this paper re‐reads Foucault's Discipline and Punish in the light of his analysis of the art of liberal government that is advanced through the course of these lectures. It is argued that the Panopticon is not just an architecture of power centred on discipline and normalization, as is commonly understood, but a normative model of the relation of the state to the market which, for Foucault, is ‘the very formula of liberal government’. Second, the limits of panopticism, and by extension liberal governance, are explored through analysis of Gilles Deleuze's account of the shift from disciplinary to ‘control’ societies, and Zygmunt Bauman's writings on individualization and the ‘Synopticon’. In response to Deleuze and Bauman, the final section of this paper returns to Foucault's lectures on biopolitics to argue that contemporary capitalist society is characterized not simply by the decline of state powers (the control society) or the passing down of responsibilities from the state to the individual (the individualization thesis), but by the neoliberal marketization of the state and its institutions; a development which is underpinned by a specific form of governmentality. In conclusion, a four‐fold typology of surveillance is advanced: surveillance as discipline, as control, as interactivity, and as a mechanism for promoting competition. It is argued that while these types of surveillance are not mutually exclusive, they are underpinned by different governmentalities that can be used to address different aspects of the relationship between the state and the market, and with this the social and cultural logics of contemporary forms of market capitalism more broadly.     

Who Can Help People with HIV/AIDS in Africa? Governance of HIV/AIDS and Civil Society

This paper locates NGOs dealing with HIV/AIDS problems in sub-Saharan Africa into the larger governance context within which they function. This aims at a theoretical shift to assess the aspirational characteristics for the agency of NGOs that are used to legitimate contracting out implementation of internationally designed HIV/AIDS policies to these organizations. The paper interrogates the nature and impact of the governance structure on NGOs and then looks at the implications of this for HIV/AIDS. The questioning is based on a juxtaposition of the perspective of international policy fora in relation to civil society organizations with the way NGO work is perceived by the people at the receiving end of the policies. The paper suggests that as part of the international governance structure, NGOs are limited within the policy frameworks created by this structure. Furthermore, due to their organizational characteristics, NGOs lack capacity to establish sustainable long-term interventions relevant for sociocultural change as perceived by people themselves.     

Virtual Shop Fronts: The Internet,Social Media,and Caribbean Civil Society Organisations

The Internet and, more recently, social media seem to promise the ability for non-state actors to more easily participate in domestic and international politics. ‘Global civil society’ can become ever more global with the help of these ‘new media’. This article uses the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) case to question the capacity of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to contribute positively to the insertion of developing country civil society organisations (CSOs) in a global civil society. Notwithstanding the possibilities that ICTs may open, Caribbean CSOs are not yet able to tap into these potentials effectively. Caribbean CSOs face resource constraints that ICTs alone may be unable to solve. However, the most significant hurdle that Caribbean CSOs face to elevating their work within global civil society is their relative powerlessness within global civil society. The article contends that this limited ability to be of influence is historically contingent and illustrates that hierarchies exist within global civil society that mirror asymmetries of power inherent in the state system.