Civic participation in post-Soviet Armenia

Central Asian Survey

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 261-279

  Babajanian, Babken V ^a  

^a LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

LOCAL PARTICIPATION; POST-COMMUNISM; STATE-LOCAL RELATIONS;

ARMENIA; ASIA; EURASIA; WEST ASIA;

EID: 31144439297     PISSN: 02634937     EISSN: 14653354     Source Type: Trade Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02634930500310345     Document Type: Article

References (95)

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2. See for example, Adam Michnik, Letters from Prison and Other Essays (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985);
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4. and George Konrad, Anti-Politics: An Essay (London: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1984).
5. See Alexander Smolar, 'From opposition to atomization', Journal of Democracy, Vol 7, No 1, 1996, pp 25-38;
6. and Michael Bernhard, 'Civil society after the first transition: dilemmas of post-communist democratisation in Poland and beyond', Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol 29, No 3, 1996, pp 309-330.
7. See Jude Howell and Jenny Pearce, Civil Society and Development: A Critical Exploration (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2001);
8. and Sabine Freizer, 'Central Asian fragmented civil society: Communal and neoliberal forms in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan', in Marlies Glasius, David Lewis and Hakan Seckinelgin, eds, Exploring Civil Society: Political and Cultural Contexts (London: Routledge, 2004), pp 130-141.
9. See for example, Adam Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (New York: The Free Press, 1992);
10. Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1992);
11. Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (London: Hamish and Hamilton, 1994);
12. and John Keane, Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998).
13. See Howell and Pearce, op cit, Ref 4;
14. Freizer, op cit, Ref 4;
15. Kaldor, op cit, Ref 1.
16. Howell and Pearce, op cit, Ref 4, pp 118-119.
17. Chris Hann, 'Introduction: Political society and anthropology', in Chris Hann and Elizabeth Dunn, eds, Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (London: Routledge, 1996), pp 1-26.
18. Hann, op cit, Ref 8, p 24.
19. See for example, Olivier Roy, New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (New York: New York University Press, 2000),
20. and Lucy Earle, 'Community development in Central Asia', Occasional Research Paper No 40, INTRAC, Oxford, 2004, on civil society in Central Asia;
21. Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), on civil society in India;
22. Francois Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (New York: Longman, 1993),
23. and John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, eds, Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa: Critical Perspectives (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999) on civil society in Africa;
24. Masoud Kamali, Revolutionary Iran Civil Society and the State in the Modernisation Process (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998)
25. and Amyn B. Sajoo, ed, Civil Society in the Muslim World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002) on civil society in Islamic societies.
26. Philippe Dongier, Julie Van Domelen, Elinor Ostrom, Andrea Ryan, Wendy Wakeman, Anthony Bebbington, Sabina Alkire, Talib Esmail and Margaret Polski, 'Community driven development', in The PRSP Sourcebook, Ch 9 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003).
27. Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra Rao, Evaluating Community-Based and Community-Driven Development: A Critical Review of Evidence (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003), p 2.
28. Alan Whaites, 'Let's get civil society straight: NGOs, the state, and political theory', in Deborah Eade, ed, Development, NGOs, and Civil Society: Selected Essays from Development in Practice (Oxford: Oxfam, 2002), pp 124-140.
29. See for example, Christopher Marsh, 'Social capital and democracy in Russia', Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol 33, 2000, pp 183-199;
30. Martin Raiser, Christian Haerpfer, Thomas Nowotny and Claire Wallace, Social capital in transition: A first look at the evidence, EBRD Working Paper No 62, EBRD, London 2001;
31. Gabriel Badescu, 'Social trust and democratization in the post-communist societies', in Gabriel Badescu and Eric M. Uslaner, eds, Social Capital and the Transition to Democracy (London: Routledge, 2003), pp 120-140;
32. Eric M. Uslaner, 'Trust and civic engagement in East and West', in Badescu and Uslaner, ibid, pp 81-95;
33. and Marc M. Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
34. The World Values Survey measured trust by asking a question: 'Generally speaking, would you say most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?'.
35. Cited in Raiser et al, op cit, Ref 14. It is notable that despite the divergence in these indicators, the indices of 'civic-mindedness' and altruism in transition and OECD countries were not found to be significantly different (a fact that has passed unnoticed by most analysts of civil society).
36. Howard, op cit, Ref 14.
37. Henry R. Huttenbach, 'Post-Soviet crisis and disorder in Transcaucasia: the search for regional security and stability', in Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed, Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (New York: M.E Sharpe, 1995), pp 337-369.
38. Huttenbach, op cit, Ref 18, p 364.
39. Ibid, p 339.
40. Ibid, p 330.
41. Patricia Carley, 'The legacy of the Soviet political system and the prospects for developing civil society in Central Asia', in Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed, Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), p 292.
42. Howard, op cit, Ref 14, p 49.
43. World Bank, Making Transition Work for Everyone: Poverty and Inequality in Europe and Central Asia (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001), p 199.
44. World Bank, 'Scaling up community-driven development in Armenia: A strategy note', Draft, World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001.
45. Ibid, p 2.
46. World Bank, The Europe and Central Asia CDD Strategy: Scaling Up Community-Driven Development in Europe and Central Asia (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000), p 2.
47. Ibid, p 2.
48. Vladimir Shlapentokh, Public and Private Life of the Soviet People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp 9, 191.
49. Vladimir Shlapentokh, A Normal Totalitarian Society: How the Soviet Union Functioned and How it Collapsed (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2001).
50. Thomas H. Rigby, 'Mono-organisational socialism and the civil society', in Chandran Kukathas, David W. Lovell and William Maley, eds, The Transition from Socialism: State and Civil Society in the USSR (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991), pp 107-123;
51. and Thomas H. Rigby, 'The USSR: End of a long, dark night?', in R.F. Miller, ed, The Developments of Civil Society in Communist Systems (Sydney: Allen and Union, 1992), pp 11-23.
52. Rigby, 1992, op cit, Ref 31, p 19.
53. Similarly, Michal Buchowski in his article 'The shifting meanings of civil and civic society in Poland', in Chris Hann and Elizabeth Dunn, eds, Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (London: Routledge, 1996), pp 79-97, argues that civil society in socialist Poland included both associative and communal dimensions: Official church groups and politically independent organisations (such as Solidarnosc), various unofficial interest groups as well as extended family and informal community groups.
54. Shlapentokh, op cit, Ref 29.
55. Alena Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
56. Gregory Grossman, 'The second economy of the USSR', Problems of Communism, September-October 1977, pp 25-40.
57. Aron Katsenelinboigen, 'Coloured markets in the Soviet Union', Soviet Studies, Vol 29, No 1, 1977, pp 62-85.
58. See for example, Gregory Grossman, op cit, Ref 36;
59. and Konstantin M. Simis, USSR: The Corrupt Society. The Secret World of Soviet Capitalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982).
60. Gerald Mars and Yochanan Altman, 'The cultural bases of Soviet Georgia's second economy', Soviet Studies, Vol 35, No 4, 1983, pp 546-560;
61. and Gerald Mars and Yochanan Altman, 'Case studies in second economy production and transportation in Soviet Georgia', in S. Alessandrini and B. Dallago, eds, The Unofficial Economy (Gower: Aldershot, 1987), pp 197-219.
62. Roy, op cit, Ref 10.
63. Ibid, pp 90-91.
64. The path-dependency and continuity of socialist networks was first examined by Gernot Grabher and David Stark, Restructuring Networks in Post-Socialism: Legacies, Linkages, and Localities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997);
65. and Laszlo Bruszt and David Stark, Post-Socialist Pathways: Transforming Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
66. and Laszlo Bruszt and David Stark, Property in East Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) with regard to the issue of restructuring of state-owned property and the formation of new business networks.
67. For more discussion on the continuity of Soviet institutional legacies in Russia, see Klaus Segbers, ed, Explaining Post-Soviet Patchworks: Transition from the Past to the Global, Vol 2 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001).
68. Richard Rose, Getting things done in an anti-modern society: Social capital networks in Russia, Social Capital Initiative Working Paper 6, World Bank, Washington, DC, 1998);
69. and Richard Rose, 'Uses of social capital in Russia: Modern, pre-modern, and anti-modern', Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol 16, No 1, 2000, pp 33-57.
70. Rose, 2000, op cit, Ref 43, p 42.
71. Rose, 1998, op cit, Ref 43.
72. Ledeneva, op cit, Ref 35.
73. Alena Ledeneva, 'Networks in Russia: Global and local implications', in Klaus Segbers, ed, Explaining Post-Soviet Patchworks: Transition from the Past to the Global, Vol 2 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), p 73.
74. Grazyna Skapska, 'Learning to be a citizen: Cognitive and ethical aspects of post-communist society transformation', in Robert Fine and Shirin Rai, eds, Civil Society: Democratic Perspectives (London: Frank Cass, 1997), pp 145-160.
75. Ibid, p 154.
76. See for example, Martin Raiser, Informal institutions, social capital and economic transition: Reflections on a neglected dimension, EBRD Working Paper No 25, EBRD, London, 1997;
77. Stefan Hedlund and Niclas Sundstrom, 'Does Palermo represent the future of Moscow?', Journal of Public Policy, Vol 16, No 2, 1996, pp 113-156;
78. Mark Levin and Georgy Satarov, 'Corruption and institutions in Russia', European Journal of Political Economy, Vol 16, 2000, pp 113-132;
79. Stephen Handelman, 'Stealing the dream: 'bandit capitalism' in the post-communist states', in Nations in Transit 1998 (New York: Freedom House, 1998);
80. and Stephen Handelman, 'Thieves in power: The new challenge of corruption', in Nations in Transit 2001 (New York: Freedom House, 2001).
81. Nicolas Hayoz and Victor Sergeyev, 'Social networks in Russian politics', in Gabriel Badescu and Eric M. Uslaner, eds, Social Capital and the Transition to Democracy (London: Routledge, 2003), pp 46-61.
82. Ibid, p 50.
83. The NGO sector in Armenia emerged after the devastating earthquake of 1988, when many non-governmental organisations were set up to support the relief efforts and distribution of humanitarian aid. Currently, there are about 3500 officially registered NGOs in Armenia (total population of Armenia is 3.2 million). While many of them are non-functioning or ineffective, others have been very active in delivering social care and services, promoting public and reproductive health awareness, working with vulnerable people, and advocating gender and human rights.
84. Armenia is divided into 930 units of local government, or 'communities'. Of these, 59 are urban communities, including 47 cities and the 12 districts of Yerevan. Rural communities account for 872 of the 930 units of local government. Rural communities usually correspond to the geographic boundaries of a village. Both urban and rural communities are governed by local mayors, who are elected by the population through democratic elections once in every four years.
85. Not all rural communities in Armenia are equally cohesive. An in-depth discussion about the sources, forms and manifestations of social capital in Armenia will appear in a forthcoming article by the author.
86. Not all local mayors in Armenia are equally committed or developmentally effective. An in-depth discussion about the types of local leaders, the nature of local governance and social outcomes in Armenia, will appear in a forthcoming article by the author.
87. See for example, Peter Evans, ed, State-Society Synergy: Government and Social Capital in Development (Berkeley, CA: University of California at Berkeley, 1996);
88. and Judith Tendler, Good Government in the Tropics (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1997).
89. Peter Evans, 'Government action, social capital, and development: reviewing the evidence of synergy', in Evans, op cit, Ref 57, pp 178-211.
90. Larissa A. Lomnitz, 'Informal exchange networks in formal systems: A theoretical model', American Anthropologist, Vol 90, 1988, pp 42-55.
91. Rose, 1998, op cit, Ref 43.
92. Ibid, p 1.
93. See for example, Greg Hansen, 'The programming environment and donor coordination on anti-corruption assistance in Armenia', A Case Study prepared for the Donor Standards in Anti-Corruption Project (DSACP), The Collaborative for Development Action (CDA) Inc., CDA, Cambridge, MA, 2002;
94. UNDP, Human Development Report 2001: Ten Years of Independence and Transition in Armenia (Yerevan: UNDP, 2001);
95. and Jean-Jacques Dethier, 'Corruption in the CIS-7 countries', Paper Presented at the Lucerne Conference of the CIS-7 Initiative, 21-22 January 2003, World Bank, 2003.