Civil Society in Democratization by Burnell Peter;Calvert Peter;

Author:Burnell, Peter;Calvert, Peter; [PETER BURNELL PETER CALVERT]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2011-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSION

The core of the problem with the conventional argument that civil society makes a critical contribution to democracy is the separation of the organizations which the concept privileges from the society which they are supposed to reform. Since the success of democratization ultimately depends on broad acceptance or acquiescence in the distribution of social power reflected in the new political settlement, the organizations that promote it must themselves be connected to the social roots of the society. They must be engaged in the issues that matter. Authoritarian rulers resist democracy because they represent the interests of social forces that benefit from their regimes. Societies are not fundamentally changed by groups which are created primarily to correct the flaws of government, however much those flaws may need correcting.

With notable exceptions, the African organizations specified by conventional civil society notions are new, lack social roots, have objectives unrelated to ongoing political conflicts and are heavily financed by outside donors. Indeed, Schmitter’s broadly shared definition creates a civil society of actors with little purchase on the substantive politics of the larger society they inhabit—particularly in Africa. Though his intention is to identify a category of organizations, his definition tends to isolate them from politics. The autonomy these organizations must manifest from both social interests and the state, their lack of an intention to rule and their willingness to act ‘civilly’, combine to make them peculiarly nonpolitical. I am not suggesting they are irrelevant to politics. When provided with sufficient resources, these civil society organizations will have a substantial political impact and can even make a dictator falter or give way. But that does not suggest they are capable of creating a viable democracy.

Perhaps it is the absence of embeddedness of civil society organizations, particularly those engaged in civil advocacy, that makes them so attractive to proponents of the conventional approach. If democracy in Africa has been conspicuous mostly by its absence, then new initiatives by new organizations may strike these analysts and donors as the best way to bring it into being. Since they regard multi-party democracy combined with respect for human rights, tolerance of different views and densely populated civil societies as a fixture in Western countries, these new civil society organizations become their vehicle for importing democracy into Africa. But it is an idealized version not the actual practice of civil society in Western countries that they wish to import. One of the puzzling features of their enthusiasm is that participation in civil society organizations in many Western countries, particularly America, has been declining for more than a generation. Either civil society has less to do with democracy in the West than these civil society analysts and donors think, or the nature of Western democracy is changing in ways that make it less desirable as a model for Africa.

Because they support strong civil societies as the means to achieve democracy, it is not surprising that they exhume a functional notion of pluralism based on competing interest groups that had its heyday in American political science a generation ago.

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