'Civil society' and the limits of democratic assistance

Government and Opposition

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 379-402

  Sardamov, Ivelin ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 27844538289     PISSN: 0017257X     EISSN: 14777053     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-7053.2005.00156.x     Document Type: Review

References (86)

1. See Chris Hann, 'Introduction: Political Society and Civil Anthropology', in Chris Hann and Elizabeth Dunn (eds), Civil Society: Challenging Western Models, London, Routledge, 1996, p. 9.
2. Thomas Carothers points out that in 1999 USAID allocated more funds for 'civil society' assistance than for any other form of democratic assistance; see Thomas Carothers, Assisting Democracy: The Learning Curve, Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999, p. 50.
3. See also Julie Hearn, 'Aiding Democracy? Donors and Civil Society in South Africa', Third World Quarterly, 21: 5 (2000), pp. 815-30.
4. See John Locke, Two Treatises on Government, ed. Peter Laslett, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
5. See Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Duncan Forbes, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1966;
6. Adam Smith, A Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie, Indianapolis, Liberty Classics, 1982.
7. See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 2, ed. Phillips Bradley, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1987, p. 106.
8. See Carothers, Assisting Democracy, p. 19.
9. See Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993.
10. See Scott Turner, 'Global Civil Society, Anarchy and Governance: Assessing an Emerging Paradigm', Journal of Peace Research, 35: 1 (1995), pp. 25-42;
11. Richard Falk, 'Global Civil Society: Perspectives, Initiatives, Movements', Oxford Development Studies, 26: 1 (1998), pp. 99-110.
12. For example, the UNDP report on human development in Bosnia-Herzegovina proclaims the paramount significance of the 'strengthening of civil society, notably through support to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)'; quoted in Roberto Belloni, 'Civil Society and Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina', Journal of Peace Research, 38: 2 (2001), p. 164.
13. See Carothers, Assisting Democracy, p. 213;
14. Hearn, 'Aiding Democracy?'.
15. See 'Sins of the Secular Missionaries', The Economist, 29 January 2000;
16. Thomas Carothers, 'Think Again: Civil Society', Foreign Policy (Winter 1999-2000); http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/winter1999-2000/Thinkagain/ carothers.html; accessed 12 October 2000.
17. David Hume, Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1963, p. 203.
18. Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1995.
19. See George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, New York, Basic Books, 1999.
20. Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1992, pp. 3-4.
21. Philip Cushman, 'Why the Self Is Empty: Toward a Historically Situated Psychology', American Psychologist, 45: 5 (1990), p. 603.
22. Philip Cushman, 'Why the Self Is Empty: Toward a Historically Situated Psychology', American Psychologist, 45: 5 (1990), p. 603. ibid.
23. It is therefore difficult to draw a clear line between theoretical elaborations and policy prescriptions, since both groups of conceptualizations are based on the same set of fundamental assumptions concerning human agency and association.
24. See Zygmunt Bauman, Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, Cambridge, Polity, 2001.
25. Kenneth J. Gergen, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, New York, Basic Books, 1991, pp. 73-4.
26. Kenneth J. Gergen, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, Ibid., p. 74;
27. see also Robert Jay Lifton, The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation, New York, Basic Books, 1993, pp. 1-2.
28. In politics, this tendency is perhaps exemplified by the emergence of populist politicians like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, sometimes criticized for being all spin, without much political substance.
29. See Richard E. Nisbett, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently ... and Why, London, Nicholas Brealey, 2003.
30. See Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and ed. Hans Heinrich Gerth and Charles Wright Mills, New York, Oxford University Press, 1946.
31. See Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences, London, Sage, 2002;
32. Zygmunt Bauman, The Individualized Society, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000.
33. See Norbert Elias, The Civilizaing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation and Civilization, trans. Edmund Jephcott, Oxford, Blackwell, 1994.
34. See G. M. Tamas, 'A Disquisition on Civil Society', Social Research, 61: 2 (1994), pp. 205-22.
35. See Andrew Bard Schmookler, The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, 2nd edn, Albany, NY, SUNY Press, 1995. Recent brain research suggests that this internalization has probably entailed major changes in brain structure, wiring and functions within individuals;
36. see Elkhonon Goldberg, The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001.
37. See Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Civil Society, ed. Jose Harris, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
38. See Schmookler, Parable of the Tribes.
39. Chris Hann, 'Philosophers' Models on the Carpathian Lowlands', in John A. Hall (ed.), Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison, Cambridge, Polity, p. 168.
40. See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston, Beacon Press, 1944;
41. John A. Hall, 'In Search of Civil Society', in Hall, Civil Society.
42. See Robert D. Putnam, 'Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital', Journal of Democracy, 6 (January 1995), pp. 65-78.
43. Taylor, Ethics of Authenticity;
44. Michael Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1996;
45. Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd edn, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.
46. Polanyi, Great Transformation.
47. See Carl-Ulrik Schierup (ed.), Scramble for the Balkans: Nationalism, Globalism, and the Political Economy of Reconstruction, Houndmills, Macmillan; New York, St Martin's Press, 1999;
48. Sultan Barakat and Margaret Chard, 'Theories, Rhetoric and Practice: Recovering the Capacities of War-Torn Societies', Third World Quarterly, 23: 5 (2002), p. 827.
49. See Steven Sampson, 'The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil Society to Albania', in Hann and Dunn Civil Society, p. 125;
50. Karl K. Barbir, Modernization in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire and Its Afro-Asian Successors, London, Darwin, 1992;
51. John Tierney, 'Iraqi Family Ties Complicate American Efforts for Change', New York Times, 28 September 2003 (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/ international/middleeast/28CLAN.html; accessed 28 September 2003).
52. See Nicos Mouzelis, 'Modernity, Late Development and Civil Societies', in Hall, Civil Society, pp. 233-4.
53. See Robert M. Hayden, 'Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics', Slavic Review, 51: 4 (1992), pp. 654-73.
54. See Sampson, 'Social Life of Projects';
55. Ferenc Miszlivetz and Katalin Ertsey, 'Hungary: Civil Society in the Post-Socialist World', in Alison Van Rooy (ed.), Civil Society and the Aid Industry, London, Earthscan, 1998. In Bulgaria, a survey done by Snelling Personnel Services showed that in 1999 programme directors in the biggest Western-funded NGOs received an average monthly salary of around $2,000 (almost 20 times the official rate for the whole country). For two years from autumn 1998, I supplemented my own salary from the American University in Bulgaria with a scholarship from the Civic Education Project (a US-based NGO operating in post-communist countries, funded largely by the Open Society Institute in Budapest).
56. See Shelley Feldman, 'NGOs and Civil Society: (Un)stated Contradictions', Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 554 (November 1997), p. 51.
57. Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments.
58. See Zygmunt Bauman, In Search of Politics, Cambridge, Polity, 1999.
59. See Hann, 'Political Society and Civil Anthropology';
60. Mark Duffield, 'Lunching with Killers: Aid, Security and the Balkan Crisis', in Schierup, Scramble for the Balkans;
61. Feldman, 'NGOs and Civil Society'. Julie Hearn has even argued that civil society assistance aims to neutralize potential opposition within educated non-Western elites;
62. see Hearn, 'Aiding Democracy?'.
63. See Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: From State to Civil Society, Washington, DC, AEI Press, 1996;
64. Gregg Vanourek, Is There Life After Big Government? The Potential of Civil Society, Indianapolis, Hudson Institute, 1996.
65. USAID, 'Supporting Private-Public Partnerships to fight Corruption', (http://www.usaid.gov/democracy/anticorruption/p3conf.html; accessed 12 January 2003).
66. Cf. Rita Abrahamsen, Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa, London, Zed Books, 2000.
67. See Duffield, 'Lunching with Killers';
68. Mark Duffield, 'Humanitarian Intervention, the New Aid Paradigm and Separate Development', New Political Economy, 2: 2 (1997), pp. 336-40.
69. See Polanyi, Great Transformation.
70. Polanyi, Great Transformation. Ibid.;
71. see also Susan Strange, Mad Money, Lansing, University of Michigan Press, p. 129.
72. See Kevin F. F. Quigley, 'Philanthropy's Role in East Europe', Orbis, 37: 4 (1993), pp. 581-98.
73. Kevin F. F. Quigley, 'Philanthropy's Role in East Europe', Orbis, 37: 4 (1993), pp. 581-98. Ibid.
74. See Sampson, 'Social Life of Projects'.
75. See Mouzelis, 'Modernity, Late Development and Civil Societies', pp. 241-3;
76. Petia Kabakchieva, Grazhdanskoto obshtestvo sreshtu dyrzhavata: Bulgarskata situacija [Civil society against the state: Bulgaria's situation], Sofia, LIK, 2001, pp. 147-8.
77. Belloni, 'Civil Society and Peacebuilding', p. 178.
78. See Bauman, Community Seeking Safety.
79. See Paul Stubbs, 'Blitz Statement on the Role of NGOs', Nettime Conference 'Beauty and the East', session on 'Power Politics: Virtual Europe, Ministate Thinking and the Construction of the Data East', Ljubljana, 23 May 1997 (http://www.moneynations.ch/topics/euroland/text/paulblitz.htm; accessed 3 September 2002).
80. See Hann, 'Philosophers' Models', pp. 178-9.
81. See Sampson, 'Social Life of Projects', p. 142.
82. See n. 34 above.
83. Some scholars have recently questioned the very existence of such a link in democratizing societies;
84. see Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord (eds), Civil Society before Democracy, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
85. See Larry Diamond, 'Universal Democracy?', Policy Review, 119 (June-July 2003), http://www.policyreview.org/jun03/diamond.html; accessed 1 December, 2003.
86. See Polanyi, Great Transformation.