*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
Civil Society Assistance Doesn’t Include Political Parties
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- CIVIL SOCIETY IS A REALM OF SOCIAL LIFE DESIGNED TO INFLUENCE BUT NOT CONTROL POLITICAL DECISIONS
- UNCLEAR THAT CIVIL SOCIETY AID SHOULD BE PRIVILEGED ABOVE POLITICAL – PARTY ASSISTANCE
- CIVIL SOCIETY DISTINCT FROM POLITICAL PARTIES AND MEDIA
Civil Society Assistance Doesn’t Include Political PartiesDEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE DEFINES CIVIL SOCIETY AS DISTINCT FROM POLITICAL PARTIES G. Shabbir Cheema, Director Asia-Pacific Governance & Democracy Initiative, 2010, Engaging Civil Society: Emerging Trends in Democratic Governance, eds. G. Cheema & V. Popovski, p. 3 In the field of democracy assistance, Larry Diamond (1994:5) defined civil society as “the realm of organized social life that is voluntary, self-generating, (largely) self-supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules. It is distinct from society in general in that it involves citizens acting collectively in a public sphere to express their interests, passions and ideas, exchange information, achieve mutual goals, make demands on the state, and hold state officials accountable.” He adds that it excludes “political efforts to take control of the state.” The United Nations, the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) define civil society in an almost identical manner. The UN definition includes “all groups outside government such as community groups, non-governmental organizations, labor unions, Indigenous Peoples’ organizations, charitable organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations and foundations. CIVIL SOCIETY IS A REALM OF SOCIAL LIFE DESIGNED TO INFLUENCE BUT NOT CONTROL POLITICAL DECISIONS Massimo Tommasoli, UN Observer for IDEA, 2010, Engaging Civil Society: Emerging Trends in Democratic Governance, eds. G. Cheema & V. Popovski, p. 134 In the field of democracy assistance, Larry Diamond formulated an influential definition of civil society: “the realm of organized social life that is voluntary, self-generating, (largely) self-supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules. It is distinct from society in general in that it involves citizens acting collectively in a public sphere to express their interests, passions and ideas, exchange information, achieve mutual goals, make demands on the state, and hold state officials accountable…it excludes…political efforts to take control of the state.” In this conception, civil society is an intermediary between the private sphere and the state. By acting as a check on the state, it legitimizes and strengthens it. CSOs stimulate political participation, educate citizens for democracy, provide group representation and articulation, help improve the political system, disseminate information and mobilize support for economic reform policies. In this perspective, the overall aim of civil society is to improve the liberal democratic model through monitoring, reporting, documenting, educating and debating, and to make the market-led neoliberal economic model work more effectively, thus laying the basis for sustainable growth. In this approach, civil society consists of a range of associations and membership organizations that bring citizens together to act in political and policy realms. It cannot be segregated from the private sector, as it sometimes is, because it will inevitably include associations with commercial and business interests. Nor can civil society be discussed as an independent sector, as it can be remarkably partisan in its expression. Rather, it may be considered an amorphous conglomeration of interests and resources that can, at crucial moments in a country’s history, be aligned in favor of certain social goals. UNCLEAR THAT CIVIL SOCIETY AID SHOULD BE PRIVILEGED ABOVE POLITICAL – PARTY ASSISTANCE Massimo Tommasoli, UN Observer for IDEA, 2010, Engaging Civil Society: Emerging Trends in Democratic Governance, eds. G. Cheema & V. Popovski, p. 135 Another body of criticism has developed from within the field of democracy assistance. It stresses the effectiveness of supporting CSOs in new and emerging democracies, constantly grappling with what are intrinsically political issues, as opposed to providing support to other traditional actors from the political society, like political parties. It is not possible in this chapter to consider the current debate on political party assistance and its effectiveness. Apart from the unresolved issue of the extent to which advocacy NGOs are representative of public interests, the hypothesis of a “post-party,” civil-society-based democracy would “also fall short regarding the structuring of political choices and the organization of governance.” However, it is interesting to trace the conceptual basis of such criticism back to the distinction between civil society and political society that we encountered in the analysis of the controversial conceptual debate on civil society as a separate sphere. Some authors call for a balanced approach to supporting both CSOs and political parties as actors of democratization, but the terms and modalities of such support meet with similar challenges in terms of aid effectiveness and the conditions for donors’ engagement. CIVIL SOCIETY DISTINCT FROM POLITICAL PARTIES AND MEDIA Amy Hawthorne, Carnegie Endowment, 2005, Unchartered Journey: promoting democracy in the middle east, eds. T. Carothers & M. Ottaway, p. 108 Political parties are not part of civil society. Parties’ main objective is to capture and exercise political power through elected public office. Although some civil society groups may seek to influence the political process, gaining public office is not their objective. The media are also a sphere separate from civil society. The media’s market-based character and role as a vehicle for public communication differ from civil society’s voluntary character and role as a vehicle for citizen association and collective activity. However, political parties and independent media are often closely intertwined with civil society, in that civil society organizations can share their philosophy, political agenda, and membership. 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