Explaining Civil Society Development

How historically rooted power dynamics have shaped the evolution of civil society globally. The civil society sector—made up of millions of nonprofit organizations, associations, charitable institutions, and the volunteers and resources they mobilize—has long been the invisible subcontinent on the landscape of contemporary society. For the past twenty years, however, scholars under the umbrella of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project have worked with statisticians to assemble the first comprehensive, empirical picture of the size, structure, financing, and role of this increasingly important part of modern life. What accounts for the enormous cross-national variations in the size and contours of the civil society sector around the world? Drawing on the project’s data, Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, Megan A. Haddock, and their colleagues raise serious questions about the ability of the field’s currently dominant preference and sentiment theories to account for these variations in civil society development. Instead, using statistical and comparative historical materials, the authors posit a novel social origins theory that roots the variations in civil society strength and composition in the relative power of different social groupings and institutions during the transition to modernity. Drawing on the work of Barrington Moore, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and others, Explaining Civil Society Development provides insight into the nonprofit sector’s ability to thrive and perform its distinctive roles. Combining solid data and analytical clarity, this pioneering volume offers a critically needed lens for viewing the evolution of civil society and the nonprofit sector throughout the world.

How historically rooted power dynamics have shaped the evolution of civil society globally. The civil society sector—made up of millions of nonprofit organizations, associations, charitable institutions, and the volunteers and resources they mobilize—has long been the invisible subcontinent on the landscape of contemporary society. For the past twenty years, however, scholars under the umbrella of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project have worked with statisticians to assemble the first comprehensive, empirical picture of the size, structure, financing, and role of this increasingly important part of modern life. What accounts for the enormous cross-national variations in the size and contours of the civil society sector around the world? Drawing on the project’s data, Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, Megan A. Haddock, and their colleagues raise serious questions about the ability of the field’s currently dominant preference and sentiment theories to account for these variations in civil society development. Instead, using statistical and comparative historical materials, the authors posit a novel social origins theory that roots the variations in civil society strength and composition in the relative power of different social groupings and institutions during the transition to modernity. Drawing on the work of Barrington Moore, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and others, Explaining Civil Society Development provides insight into the nonprofit sector’s ability to thrive and perform its distinctive roles. Combining solid data and analytical clarity, this pioneering volume offers a critically needed lens for viewing the evolution of civil society and the nonprofit sector throughout the world.

Setting out to explore critically the way civil society has entered development thinking, policy and practice as a paradigmatic concept of the 21st century, Howell (development studies, U. of Sussex) and Pearce (Latin American politics, U. of Bradford) trace the historical path leading to the encounter between the ideas of development and civil society in the late 1980s and how donors have translated these into development policy an programs. They find that there are competing normative visions, which have deep roots in Western European political thought, about the role of civil society in relation to the state and market both among donors and within the societies where donors are operating. This leads to donors playing a major role in shaping the character of service provision. They also argue that their study exposes the hitherto unexplored power of the market, as opposed to solely the state, to distort donor programs. c. Book News Inc.

“South America is not the poorest continent in the world, but it may very well be the most unjust.” This statement by Ricardo Lagos, then president of Chile, at the Summit of the Americas in January 2004 captures nicely the dilemma that faces Latin American countries in the wake of the transition to democracy that swept across the continent in the last two decades of the twentieth century. While political rights are now available to citizens at unprecedented levels, social and economic rights lag far behind, and the fledgling democracies struggle with long legacies of poverty, inequality, and corruption. Key to understanding what is happening in Latin America today is the relationship between the state and civil society. In this ambitious book, Philip Oxhorn sets forth a theory of civil society adequate for explaining current developments in a way that such controversial neoconservative theories as Francis Fukuyama’s liberal triumphalism or Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” cannot. Inspired by the rich political sociology of an earlier era and the classic work of T. H. Marshall on citizenship, Oxhorn studies the process by which social groups are incorporated, or not, into national socioeconomic and political development through an approach that focuses on the “social construction of citizenship.”

This volume is a collection of original essays prepared by colleagues, collaborators, and former students on the occasion of Helmut K. Anheier’s 65th birthday and retirement from the University of Heidelberg. An internationally recognized pioneer of nonprofit and civil society studies, Anheier focused his work on providing clarity around (1) civil society, local and global, observing its origins and trajectory and developing theories to explain it; (2) the nonprofit sector and institutions within and extending from it, including nonprofit organizations, philanthropy and social investment; and (3) culture as it relates to democracy and back to civil society. The essays in this volume refer to these concepts and position them in the context of developments over the last two to three decades. The volume is arranged in three sections. The first section comprises essays that elucidate concepts and probe theories in the field. The second section presents chapters discussing current global challenges and trends in the focal areas. The third and final section then comprises country and regional case studies illustrating important aspects of the global challenges or theoretical issues of the two preceding sections. A fascinating and up-to-date overview of key issues and trends in civil society and nonprofit research by an international collection of eminent scholars in these fields, this book will be attractive to civil society and nonprofit sector researchers as well as a broader academic community of political scientists, sociologists, economists, and cultural experts.

This book re-conceptualizes civil society engagement with global governance institutions in the field of development in terms of opposition. With an innovative theoretical framework, it maps and explains opposition strategies through detailed case studies on the EU, the Asian Development Bank, and the Global Forum on Migration and Development.

Set within the context of Europe, this book demonstrates the contribution that community development can make to strengthening civil society. The book interweaves case studies with discussion of community development principles and theory to provide a critical and accessible approach.

What does 'civil society' really mean? What is civil society's role? How can civil society best be supported? INTRAC's latest book uses case studies from around the world which show a clear framework for understanding the nature and role of civil society, prove that civil society is alive and kicking, and makes recommendations for more effective civil society strengthening. Vibrant examples of action by indigenous groups, advocacy journalism, and transnational southern campaigning alliances are all explored, illustrating a framework for understanding civil society .The cases remind us of the vital need for an independent, diverse and strong civil society. The battle to reduce poverty will not be won without developing a supportive civil society which can act to demand rights, transparency and good governance from the state, counterbalance elite controls of the economy and polity, and build a culture of cooperation, trust and accountability from below. This book makes strong recommendations to help us build towards diverse and sustainable civil societies, including: an emphasis on building networks and coalitions across civil society associations of different shapes and sizes; placing a high value on membership-based groups; a focus on the enabling environment, and long-term, holistic capacity building. We are encouraged to once again let civil society shape our development agendas. This book is intended for NGOs, think tanks, multilateral and bilateral donors; all those engaged in supporting civil society, or running wider programmes where it is important to take civil society into account.