day and kreutzner: civil society [b721d454]

Conceptualizing civil society

• Gramsci vs Tocqueville

  • Gramsi - Civil society as a way to scruntize governments
  • Tocqueville - Civil society as a community

Seven functions in state building put forward by Thania Pattenholz and Christopher Spurk, civil society can pursue any # of these

• Protection

  • Safeguards the rights of citizens from the state and non-state-actors

    • democratic republic of the congo (DRC) civil society groups worked with schools to identify security threats

• Monitoring

  • Instills a culture of accountability

    • bangladesh Ain o Salish Kendra monitors human rights violations

• Advocacy

  • Civil society can elevate issues onto the political stage
  • sudan - ousting of al-Basher

• Socialization

  • Incubator for shared values
  • Generates reconcilation between shared groups
  • tunisia, six civil society NGO's conducted public workshops for education

• Social Cohesion

  • Conflict fractures societies
  • Civil society can bridge joint community associations, forms of cultural exchange

  • sierra leone

    • grassroots efforts to support the truth and reconciliation program
    • focused on reconciliation within local communities first

Intermediation & Facilitation

• civil society can actually play a peace mediation role
• guatemala - civil society placed a key role in the conclusion of peace

Service Provision

• civil society can provide essential services
• yemen - movement of civil society from political mobilization to the provision of services as war has gone on

gov restricting civil society engagement

• often can be done with onerous registraiton requirements

  • sudan passed the Voluntary & Humanitarian Work act, which bars many from participation
• some staes engage with direct vioklence

gov & events indirectly restrict civil society

• civil society struggles when the gov cannot provide basic services
• survival over group objects hamper society

diversity of civil society views

• civil society is not strictly good
• can spoil peace
• somalia - too many actors want peace but also restrict central government
• too many civil orgs -> too much coordination -> competition over funding

state builders can proritize the state

• peacebuilding cannot strictly focus on institutional capacity

• balkans - peace deals heavily prioritized instituional reforms

  • allowed the ethnoationalists to gain ground

Engage with civil society early, even mid-conflict to prepare for the end of conflict

• preserves civil society
• identifies local needs
• helps set up monitoring benchmarks

engage with civil society in a legal reform process

• public education is effective for civil society to mobilize
• public solication
• advising legislative design