It is often argued that the enhanced consultation of civil society contributes to the democratization of European and global governance. This collection investigates whether this theoretical argument is supported by empirical evidence. Ten original essays analyze current patterns of civil society consultation in 32 intergovernmental organizations.
In order to democratize governance at the global level, it is imperative to ensure that the voice of ordinary citizens, especially the most excluded, are heard and acted upon. What forms of direct citizen engagement in the arenas, platforms and mechanisms of global governance can promote this? Which of these forms and processes can be institutionalized? What mechanisms of democratic accountability can be enabled to make representative forms of global governance institutions accountable to the citizens of their own countries? Global Governance, Civil Society and Participatory Democracy: A View from Below answers these questions through the experiences of FIM Forum for Democratic Global Governance in democratizing certain arenas and spaces of global governance. Such arenas are not only the powerful and global multilateral organizations of the UN system; they include supraregional intergovernmental organizations such as the Commonwealth, the OIF, the OIC, as well as the G8, G20, and BRICS. The book is a must read for all those engaged in facilitating, scaling-up, and strengthening the mechanisms of participatory democracy in order to create global citizens who become agents of change for a better world.
The Handbook presents a most updated and comprehensive exploration of social movement research. It not only maps, but also expands the field of social movement studies, taking stock of recent developments in cognate areas of studies, within and beyond sociology and political science. While structured around traditional social movement concepts, each section combines the mapping of the state of the art with attempts to broaden our knowledge of social movements beyond classic theoretical agendas, and to identify the contribution that social movement studies can give to other fields of knowledge.
This book investigates participatory budgeting—a mainstay now of World Bank, UNDP, and USAID development programs—to ask whether its reforms truly make a difference in deepening democracy and empowering civil society.
Democracy is established as a generally uncontested ideal, while regimes inspired by this form of government fall under constant criticism. Hence, the steady erosion of confidence in representatives that has become one of the major political issues of our time. Amidst these challenges, the paradox remains that while citizens are less likely to make the trip to the ballot box, the world is far from entering a phase of general political apathy. Demonstrations and activism abound in the streets, in cities across the globe and on the internet. Pierre Rosanvallon analyses the mechanisms used to register a citizen's expression of confidence or distrust, and then focuses on the role that distrust plays in democracy from both a historical and theoretical perspective. This radical shift in perspective uncovers a series of practices - surveillance, prevention, and judgement - through which society corrects and exerts pressure.
Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) can make a vital contribution to public health and health systems but harnessing their potential is complex in a Europe where government-CSO relations vary so profoundly. This study is intended to outline some of the challenges and assist policy-makers in furthering their understanding of the part CSOs can play in tandem and alongside government. To this end it analyses existing evidence and draws on a set of seven thematic chapters and six mini case studies. They examine experiences from Austria Bosnia-Herzegovina Belgium Cyprus Finland Germany Malta the Netherlands Poland the Russian Federation Slovenia Turkey and the European Union and make use of a single assessment framework to understand the diverse contexts in which CSOs operate. The evidence shows that CSOs are ubiquitous varied and beneficial and the topics covered in this study reflect such diversity of aims and means: anti-tobacco advocacy food banks refugee health HIV/AIDS prevention and cure and social partnership. CSOs make a substantial contribution to public health and health systems with regards to policy development service delivery and governance. This includes evidence provision advocacy mobilization consensus building provision of medical services and of services related to the social determinants of health standard setting self-regulation and fostering social partnership. However in order to engage successfully with CSOs governments do need to make use of adequate tools and create contexts conducive to collaboration. To guide policy-makers working with CSOs through such complications and help avoid some potential pitfalls the book outlines a practical framework for such collaboration. This suggests identifying key CSOs in a given area; clarifying why there should be engagement with civil society; being realistic as to what CSOs can or will achieve; and an understanding of how CSOs can be helped to deliver.
Public authorities from all levels of government increasingly turn to Citizens' Assemblies, Juries, Panels and other representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy problems ranging from climate change to infrastructure investment decisions. They convene groups of people representing a wide cross-section of society for at least one full day – and often much longer – to learn, deliberate, and develop collective recommendations that consider the complexities and compromises required for solving multifaceted public issues.
The transition to democracy underway in Latin America since the 1980s has recently witnessed a resurgence of interest in experimenting with new forms of local governance emphasizing more participation by ordinary citizens. The hope is both to foster the spread of democracy and to improve equity in the distribution of resources. While participatory budgeting has been a favorite topic of many scholars studying this new phenomenon, there are many other types of ongoing experiments. In Barrio Democracy in Latin America, Eduardo Canel focuses our attention on the innovative participatory programs launched by the leftist government in Montevideo, Uruguay, in the early 1990s. Based on his extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Canel examines how local activists in three low-income neighborhoods in that city dealt with the opportunities and challenges of implementing democratic practices and building better relationships with sympathetic city officials.
This book suggests that our notions of civil society have undergone radical changes—including structural changes in the nature of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Such massive structural changes greatly problematize the older liberal view of a simple split between state and civil society actors which nonetheless remains dominant in much of social and political sciences. The author argues that the naturalist and behaviorist approaches to civil society occlude the fact that citizens increasingly live within a particular and highly contestable way of imagining and constructing civil society. The book shows that changes in how civil society is conceptualized and organized around new practices, might mark radically new conceptions of the state that are ideologically neo-liberal and subtle in the ways they disempower ordinary citizens.
John Keane, a leading scholar of political theory, tracks the recent development of a big idea with fresh potency - global civil society. In this timely book, Keane explores the contradictory forces currently nurturing or threatening its growth, and he shows how talk of global civil society implies a political vision of a less violent world, founded on legally sanctioned power-sharing arrangements among different and intermingling forms of socio-economic life. Keane's reflections are pitted against the widespread feeling that the world is both too complex and too violent to deserve serious reflection. His account borrows from various scholarly disciplines, including political science and international relations, to challenge the silence and confusion within much of contemporary literature on globalisation and global governance. Against fears of terrorism, rising tides of xenophobia, and loose talk of 'anti-globalisation', the defence of global civil society mounted here implies the need for new democratic ways of living.
