Civil Society and Democratic Participation: Theme and Variations

2002 ◽  
pp. 245-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Theme And Variations

Revitalizing the State's Urban “Nerve Tips”

2000 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 806-820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Read
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Base Level ◽  
International Attention ◽  
Party State ◽  
Mao Era

While observers of China have always paid attention to the “base-level” administrative institutions and mass organizations created by the Communist party-state, urban Residents' Committees (RCs; jumin weiyuanhui) have received relatively little study in recent years. Though the RCs remain pervasive in most areas of most cities and engage the energies of millions of activists and volunteers, this neglect is understandable. During the Mao era, Western writing on neighbourhood organizations emphasized their role in helping to police and administer the harsh political order that gripped the cities. In the 1980s and 1990s, the authorities have yielded much greater space to a private sphere in which law-abiding individuals are relatively free from intrusion. Instruments of state penetration such as the RCs have seemed less worthy of analysis. They also lack the requisite autonomy to qualify as part of an emergent civil society, and moreover their limited progress in serving as a focus for democratic participation earns them much less international attention than their rural equivalents, the Villagers' Committees. They may even seem worthy of derision rather than study; merely mentioning the term juweihui often brings an amused smile to people's faces, as it connotes ageing, officious busy bodies poking into people's personal matters.

Civil Society as Public Space and Democratic Participation

Eco-ethica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 47-61
Author(s):  
Manuel B. Dy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
The Third

This paper attempts to show how civil society has served as public space and democratic participation in a society, in particular in Philippine society. It consists of three parts. The first part tries to delineate what constitutes civil society. The second part discusses the antinomies of elite democracy and participatory democracy, of rights-oriented liberalism and communitarianism, of welfare state and free market, and how civil society answers these antinomies. The third part surveys the role of civil society as public space and democratic participation in Philippine society. The paper concludes with the challenges in the context of the new dictatorial regime of President Rodrigo Duterte.

scholarly journals The V in VGI: Citizens or Civic Data Sources

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suthee Sangiambut ◽  
Renee Sieber
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
Data Use ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Structured Interviews

Volunteered geographic information (VGI), delivered via mobile and web apps, offers new potentials for civic engagement. If framed in the context of open, transparent and accountable governance then presumably VGI should advance dialogue and consultation between citizen and government. If governments perceive citizens as consumers of services then arguably such democratic intent elide when municipalities use VGI. Our empirical research shows how assumptions embedded in VGI drive the interaction between citizens and government. We created a typology that operationalises VGI as a potential act of citizenship and an instance of consumption. We then selected civic apps from Canadian cities that appeared to invoke these VGI types. We conducted interviews with developers of the apps; they were from government, private sector, and civil society. Results from qualitative semi-structured interviews indicate a blurring of consumer and citizen-centric orientations among respondents, which depended on motivations for data use, engagement and communication objectives, and sector of the respondent. Citizen engagement, an analogue for citizenship, was interpreted multiple ways. Overall, we found that government and developers may increase choice by creating consumer-friendly apps but this does not ensure VGI offers an act of civic participation. The burden is placed on the contributor to make it so. Apps and VGI could potentially further a data-driven and neoliberal government. Planners should be mindful of the dominance of a consumer-centric view even as they assume VGI invariably improves democratic participation.

scholarly journals Participation and implementation in the decisional: procedure of basic criteria of participative democration

2021 ◽  
pp. 98-105
Author(s):  
Ludmila Rosca ◽  
◽  
Valentina Ursu ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Direct Involvement ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Fundamental Values

Considering that the participation of individuals and communities in public life at all levels – national, regional and local – is part of the fundamental values of democracy and that the direct involvement of the population, by virtue of its civic rights and obligations, is the essence of any democratic system. We conclude that the impact of participatory democracy in ensuring involvement is a matter of the impact of local and national authorities, which must assume a recognised leadership role in promoting population participation, and that the success of any process of democratic participation depends on the real commitment of these authorities. Recognition and strengthening of the role played by civil society, the main actor and driving force through groups and associations, in the development and support of a genuine participatory democracy.

Witness, Democracy and Civil Society: Reflections on John Howard Yoder's Exilic Ecclesiology

Ecclesiology ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-213
Author(s):  
Richard Bourne
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Theological Ethics ◽  
John Howard Yoder ◽  
John Howard ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Christian Witness

AbstractThis article examines the compatibility between an ecclesial focus in contemporary theological ethics and an account of democratic citizenship. It focuses on the work of the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. It explores the use of a motif that appeared with increasing frequency in Yoder's later writings, and has yet to receive much substantial academic attention — that of exilic citizenship. It then notes parallels between this exilic ecclesiology and contemporary understandings of civil society. It concludes that an exilic reading of Christian witness provides a fruitful basis for a theology of democratic participation.

Do Service Provision NGOs Perform Civil Society Functions? Evidence of NGOs’ Relationship With Democratic Participation

2021 ◽  
pp. 089976402199167
Author(s):  
Jennifer N. Brass
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
International Donors ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The Relationship

Scholars have long been interested in the relationship between civil society and democracy. Today, international donors promote civil society in developing countries, and they explicitly define civil society to include nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It remains an open question, however, whether service provision NGOs in developing countries fulfill this civil society function. Some prominent scholarship argues that only NGOs that explicitly pursue advocacy perform civil society roles; service provision NGOs do not. I address this question, testing the relationship between individuals’ experience with, and perceptions of, NGOs and their political participation in voting, protests, and raising issues with public officials. Using data from Kenya, I find that individuals who report contact with, or positive views of, NGOs are more likely to engage in certain political activities, providing some evidence for the inclusion of NGOs in the concept of civil society. I theorize mechanisms by which service provision NGOs may affect various forms of participation.

I, the Citizen

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Balasubramaniam ◽  
M. N. Venkatachalia
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Citizen Engagement ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Development Initiatives ◽  
Policymaking And Implementation ◽  
Development Movement

This book is an attempt to understand citizen development and engagement. It takes the reader through interpretations of development initiatives at the grassroots and what good governance means to ordinary people. The book unravels the power of citizen engagement through the author's experiences of leading civil society campaigns against corruption and towards strengthening democratic participation of people. It also deals with the philosophical underpinnings of public policies, drawing from the author's on-the-ground experience as well as engagement with those in the higher echelons of policymaking and implementation. The last section of the book provides glimpses into milestones of a development movement; milestones that are responsible for a continued faith in citizen engagement despite the hindering forces.

scholarly journals Die Lega Nord: Zwischen ethnischer Staatsbürgerschaft und föderalem Projekt

1995 ◽  
Vol 25 (98) ◽  
pp. 53-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianni D'Amato ◽  
Siegfried Schieder
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
The South ◽  
Protest Movement ◽  
The Public ◽  
The North ◽  
Lega Nord ◽  
Thought Patterns ◽  
National Consensus

The article reconstructs origin and rise of the North Italian protest movement Lega Nord since the beginning of the Eighties as a political undertaking of the Italian crisis which threw stereotyped thought patterns overboard and replaced them by new political mobilization offers providing identity: the North's aversion towards the South, the contrast between centre and periphery, the public and the private, the civil society and the Partitocracy. By demanding a radical federalism (Reppublica del Nord) which ties  democratic participation to an ethnically defined and economic homogenous territorium, the Lega Nord jeopardizes the national consensus. A possible effect of this ethno federalismcould be the termination of the historically developed solidarity relations between the economically and culturally less developed South and the prospering North.

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