scholarly journals Democracy, elite power and civil society: Bolivia and Peru compared

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-162
Author(s):  
John Crabtree ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Business Power ◽  
History Of ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Neoliberal Policies ◽  
Popular Movements ◽  
Politically Active

Despite proximity and cultural similarities, Peru and Bolivia provide contrasting examples of elite power as opposed to that of popular movements. Peru in recent years has seen the consolidation of business power at the expense of a politically active civil society; opposition to neoliberal policies has been fragmented and weak. Bolivia has a history of strong social movements that underpinned successive administrations by the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS). However, these trajectories are not fixed and the ability of civil society and elites to control the state fluctuates. The November 2019 coup in Bolivia is a reminder of this. This article compares the two countries over different time periods: that of state-led development prior to 1980, the neoliberal period in the 1980s and 1990s, and that of post-neoliberalism period after 2000.

scholarly journals Toniemy w czerwonych buraczkach, zatykając dziury w żelaznej kurtynie”. Punkowa Lublana w późnych latach siedemdziesiątych i wczesnych osiemdziesiątych

2010 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 197-210
Author(s):  
Oskar Mulej
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Force ◽  
Alternative Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

In this article, the Slovenian author merges the perspectives of the history of popular culture and of the history of social movements. At the turn of the 1970s/1980s, the little town of Ljubljana, the capital of the communist-ruled Slovenia, became the centre of Yugoslavian alternative culture, which run parallel to the official culture but was completely independent from it. Alternative culture constituted a protest against the realities of the last years of Josip Broz Tito’s rule. As such, it provoked hostile reactions of the state. The rulers of Yugoslavia did not take into account the fact that the punks only constituted a kind of “cultural opposition”, and not a viable political force. The punk culture was an attempt to create a new mode of expression and a new lifestyle, and its power as an inspiration in Europe, including Poland, was unprecedented. As a sui generis social movement, the punk paved the way for the emergence of civil society.

scholarly journals A Conceptual History of Civil Society: From Greek Beginnings to the End of Marx

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boris DeWiel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Critical Event ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Ways Of Life

The idea of civil society has undergone a renaissance in recent years, but missing from this literature is an explanation for its historical transformation in meaning. Originally civil society was synonymous with political society, but the common modem meaning emphasizes autonomy from the state. This paper traces this historical transformation within the context of the history of ideas, and suggests that the critical event was an eighteenth-century reaction against the rationalistic universalism associated with the French Enlightenment. The continued significance of the question of universalism is suggested by the fact that universalistic Marxist Leninist theories provided the ideological underpinnings for the destruction of civil society in Eastern European nations. The paper concludes that three elements are essential to the modern understanding of civil society: its autonomy from the state, its interdependence with the state, and the pluralism of values, ideals and ways of life embodied in its institutions.

Civil Society, Social Movements and the Irish State

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peadar Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political System ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Partnership ◽  
Corporate Profit ◽  
Fianna Fail

This article develops a theoretical framework to consider the symbiotic relationship between civil society, social movements and the Irish state. Civil society, largely through social movements, laid the foundations for an independent Irish state in the half-century before independence. Following independence, the nature of the civil society–state relationship changed; civil society became much more dependent on the state. The article empirically traces the nature of society's relationship to the state since the 1920s, and examines the nature of the political system and its major political party, Fianna Fáil, the structure of the economy, and the dominance of particular understandings of the role of civil society and the nature of society itself. The period since the advent of social partnership in 1987 is examined; this period marks a new attempt by the state to co-opt organised civil society making it subservient to its project of the imposition on society of the requirements of global corporate profit-making. The more forceful implementation of a global free-market project by the Irish state since the 1980s, and the co-option of organised civil society into this project, has left huge space for an alternative to emerge, the potential of which was indicated by the success of the ‘No’ campaign in the 2008 Lisbon referendum campaign.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Philosophy of Politics

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thom Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Philosophy Of Right

G. W. F. Hegel is widely considered to be one of the most important philosophers in the history of philosophy. This entry focuses on his contributions to political philosophy, with particular attention paid to his seminal work: the Philosophy of Right. A particular focus will be placed on Hegel’s theories of freedom, contract and property, punishment, morality, family, civil society, law, and the state.

‘What Will We Be without Them?’ Rural Intellectuals in the State and NGOs in Zimbabwe’s Crisis-Ridden Countryside

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 595-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Moore ◽  
Zenzo Moyo
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
The State ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
South West ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
State Organizations ◽  
The Many

Research on NGOs in rural Zimbabwe suggests that ideas of automatic opposition between ‘civil society’ and/or non-governmental organizations and authoritarian states are too simple. Rather, relations between state and non-state organizations such as those referenced in this article, in the rural district of Mangwe about 200 kilometres south-west of Zimbabwe’s Bulawayo, are symbiotic. This contrasts with urban areas where political histories have led to more contested state-civil society relations in the last two decades, during which social movements with a degree of counter-hegemonic (or counter-regime) aspirations were allied with many NGOs and opposition political parties. Gramsci’s idea of ‘rural intellectuals’ could complement the widely used notion of ‘organic intellectuals’ to examine the members of the intelligentsia appearing to be at one with subordinate groups in the countryside and at odds with the state. Likewise state workers distant from the centre and close to their class peers in NGOs as well as their ‘subjects’ may operate with autonomy from their masters in ruling parties and states to assist, rather than repress, citizens and also to co-operate with NGO workers. This research indicates that discerning how hegemony works across whole state-society complexes is more complicated than usually perceived, given the many regional variations therein.

Collective Activism: The Domestic Violence Bill becoming Law in Ghana

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akosua Adomako Ampofo
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
National Coalition ◽  
Domestic Violence Legislation ◽  
Collective Activism

Abstract This article reflects on contemporary struggles for citizenship rights through an examination of civil society's advocacy for the passage of domestic violence legislation in Ghana. The National Coalition on Domestic Violence Legislation, established in 2003 specifically to push for the passage of the legislation, at various times worked closely with, and at other times independently of, or even in conflict with, the state. These processes and engagements point to the vibrancy of civil society and suggest the need for new analyses of social movements, political power and democracy that are rooted in Africa's contemporary realities.

Political Inclusion and the Dynamics of Democratization

1996 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Dryzek
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Political Inclusion ◽  
Progressive Inclusion

Once universal adult citizenship rights have been secured in a society, democratization is mostly a matter of the more authentic political inclusion of different groups and categories, for which formal political equality can hide continued exclusion or oppression. It is important, however, to distinguish between inclusion in the state and inclusion in the polity more generally. Democratic theorists who advocate a strategy of progressive inclusion of as many groups as possible in the state fail to recognize that the conditions for authentic as opposed to symbolic inclusion are quite demanding. History shows that benign inclusion in the state is possible only when (a) a group's defining concern can be assimilated to an established or emerging state imperative, and (b) civil society is not unduly depleted by the group's entry into the state. Absent such conditions, oppositional civil society may be a better focus for democratization than is the state. A flourishing oppositional sphere, and therefore the conditions for democratization itself, may actually be facilitated by a passively exclusive state, the main contemporary form of which is corporatism. Benign inclusion in the state can sometimes occur, but any such move should also produce exclusions that both facilitate future democratization and guard against any reversal of democratic commitment in state and society. These considerations have substantial implications for the strategic choices of social movements.

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