Civil Society Elites

Civil Society Elites PDF Author: Håkan Johansson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031401506
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
This open access book introduces a groundbreaking concept - civil society elites - and serves as an essential resource for scholars, researchers and students interested in the complexities of power and influence within contemporary civil societies. Through a series of unique empirical studies, the authors offer a comprehensive examination of the individuals occupying the upper echelons of influential civil society organisations and movements. By delving into the factors that propel individuals into key positions and examining the connections between civil society leaders within and across sectors, the book offers insight into the mechanisms that shape access to powerful positions in civil societies. As a reflection of current debates on elites and populism, the book furthermore explores the expression and conceptualisation of counter-elite positions and criticism of civil society elites. With its original approach, the book serves as a catalyst for further research into inequalities, power structures and elites within civil societies.

Civil Society Elites

Civil Society Elites PDF Author: Håkan Johansson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031401506
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Get Book Here

Book Description
This open access book introduces a groundbreaking concept - civil society elites - and serves as an essential resource for scholars, researchers and students interested in the complexities of power and influence within contemporary civil societies. Through a series of unique empirical studies, the authors offer a comprehensive examination of the individuals occupying the upper echelons of influential civil society organisations and movements. By delving into the factors that propel individuals into key positions and examining the connections between civil society leaders within and across sectors, the book offers insight into the mechanisms that shape access to powerful positions in civil societies. As a reflection of current debates on elites and populism, the book furthermore explores the expression and conceptualisation of counter-elite positions and criticism of civil society elites. With its original approach, the book serves as a catalyst for further research into inequalities, power structures and elites within civil societies.

Intelligence Elites and Public Accountability

Intelligence Elites and Public Accountability PDF Author: Vian Bakir
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351388959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
This book provides a definitive overview of the relationships of influence between civil society and intelligence elites. The secrecy surrounding intelligence means that publication of intelligence is highly restricted, barring occasional whistle-blowing and sanitised official leaks. These characteristics mean that intelligence, if publicised, can be highly manipulated by intelligence elites, while civil society’s ability to assess and verify claims is compromised by absence of independent evidence. There are few studies on the relationship between civil society and intelligence elites, which makes it hard to form robust assessments or practical recommendations regarding public oversight of intelligence elites. Addressing that lacuna, this book analyses two case studies of global political significance. The intelligence practices they focus on (contemporary mass surveillance and Bush-era torture-intelligence policies) have been presented as vital in fighting the ‘Global War on Terror’, enmeshing governments of scores of nation-states, while challenging internationally established human rights to privacy and to freedom from torture and enforced disappearance. The book aims to synthesise what is known on relationships of influence between civil society and intelligence elites. It moves away from disciplinary silos, to make original recommendations for how a variety of academic disciplines most likely to study the relationship between civil society and intelligence elites (international relations, history, journalism and media) could productively cross-fertilise. Finally, it aims to create a practical benchmark to enable civil society to better hold intelligence elites publicly accountable. This book will be of great interest to students of intelligence studies, surveillance, media, journalism, civil society, democracy and IR in general.

Civil Society Elites

Civil Society Elites PDF Author: Astrid Norén-Nilsson
Publisher: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies
ISBN: 9788776943288
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This innovative volume is the first systematic study of civil society elites in Southeast Asia (and indeed anywhere in the world). Spanning two previously separate areas of research - civil society and elites - it sheds new light on power inequalities within and beyond civil society, identifies different types of elite formation and elite interaction within and beyond civil society, and traces interactions and integration with elite groups from party politics, the state, and the business sector. This tightly edited volume, produced by a research team ranging from senior scholars to promising younger academics, analyses how such processes are influenced by reliance on foreign funding and explores how they play out in two settings - where the political space for civil society is generally shrinking (Cambodia) and where it is relatively expanding (Indonesia). However, the volume offers more than a rethinking of civil society in Cambodia and Indonesia; it looks beyond. It thus challenges a view of civil society entities as relatively isolated from the state and from political and economic society, revealing power relations that link them. Suggesting a new direction for civil society research, the book will be of great interest to the many researchers working on civil society, elites and contemporary Southeast Asian politics as well as those engaged in other areas of society in Cambodia and Indonesia. Policymakers, donors and not least civil society activists themselves will find the volume highly relevant to their work.

Civil Society Elites: A Research Agenda

Civil Society Elites: A Research Agenda PDF Author: Håkan Johansson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Abstract: This editorial introduces the thematic issue on 'civil society elites', a topic that has been neglected in elite research as well as civil society studies. It elaborates on the concept of 'civil society elites' and explains why this is an important emerging research field. By highlighting different methodological approaches and key findings in the contributions to the thematic issue, this article aims at formulating an agenda for future research in this field

The Rise of Global Civil Society

The Rise of Global Civil Society PDF Author: Don Eberly
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594032947
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Global news is generally bad news. On the surface, the story is about war, poverty, ethnic and sectarian strife. Democracy movements advanced by the U.S. government seem to be stalled or even reversed. Yet just below the surface, more hopeful trends are brewing. A new global awareness of the people at "the bottom of the pyramid" is summoning forth an unprecedented response to human need and suffering. It involves a shift from vertical to horizontal power that official aid agencies are only beginning to comprehend. Whereas twenty-five years ago, government aid accounted for 70 percent of all American outflows, today 85 percent of all outflows of resources come from private individuals, businesses, religious congregations, universities, and immigrant communities. If aid policy in the twentieth century relied on top-down bureaucracy dominated by policy specialists and elites, the twenty-first century is shaping up as an era in which citizens, social entrepreneurs, and volunteers link up to solve problems. U.S. military and economic power are basic components of America's presence in the world; but in an environment of rampant anti-Americanism, it is compassion that is America's most consequential export. Civil society, once the distinctive characteristic of American democracy, is now advancing across the globe, carrying with it new forms of philanthropy, citizenship, and volunteerism. Tens of thousands of voluntary associations are prying open closed societies from within, solving problems in new ways, and forming the seedbed for a long-term cultivation of democratic norms. Building Nations from the Bottom Up: The Global Rise of Democratic Society presents a sweeping overview of the forces now shaping the global debate, including citizen-led development projects, poverty-reduction strategies that substitute opportunity for charity, and electronically linked movements to combat corruption and autocratic rule.

The New Custodians of the State

The New Custodians of the State PDF Author: William Genieys
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351478710
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The New Custodians of the State uses contemporary France to reassess sociological theories of political and policymaking elites. Based on detailed case studies drawn from social policy and national defense sectors, it concludes that a new type of sectorally-based elite has risen to prominence in France since the 1980s. Genieys suggests that programmatic elites found in specific policy sectors, made up of individuals linked both by common career paths and the resulting skills and expertise, should be seen as new guardians of state power.Like their technocratic predecessors, programmatic elites maintain a high degree of independence with respect to electoral politics and to civil society; like them, they share an ideological commitment to protect and expand the role of the state in French society. Unlike them, however, these new guardians of the state are structured around specific policy programs and limited in scope to a given sector. Competition among programmatic elites at the highest levels of the state emerges as the chief driving force behind innovation for social change.The New Custodians of the State introduces programmatic elites both as real-world actors and as an analytic category and highlights the limits of elite power by analyzing the defeat of efforts by the French Ministry of Defense. This book presents a thought-provoking critical case study that suggests that models presenting either a single unified state elite or those that herald or decry the demise of the state require modification. The work will be of interest to students and scholars of France, and its society and government as well as anyone interested in the policymaking process in other countries with respect to domestic policy or national defense.

Saving the Sacred Sea

Saving the Sacred Sea PDF Author: Kate Pride Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190660945
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
"Civil society" is a loaded concept in Russia; during the Soviet period, the voices that heralded civil society were the same ones that demanded the Union's dissolution. So, for the Kremlin, civil society is not the guarantor of democracy, but a force that has the power to end governments. This book looks at how civil society negotiates power on a global stage, under Russia's authoritarian regime, and in a particularly isolated and remote part of the world: within environmental activism around Lake Baikal in Siberia. More than a mile deep, Lake Baikal is the oldest, deepest, and most voluminous lake on the Earth, and home to thousands of endemic species. It is also ecologically unique in that it is oxygenated to its maximum depth and supports life even at the lake floor -- a phenomenon occurring nowhere else on the planet. The lake is not just a natural wonder, but home to a strong environmentalist community that works tirelessly to protect the lake from human harm. Environmentalism at Baikal began in the late 1950s, eventually igniting the first national protest in the USSR. They have remained active in some form ever since, across the years of chaos, instability, and crisis, from the opening of Russia to the forces of globalization to the authoritarianism of Putin in the present. This book examines the struggle of Baikal environmentalists to develop a new understanding of civil society under conditions of globalization and authoritarianism. Through extended, historically-informed ethnographic analysis, Kate Pride Brown argues that civil society is engaged with political and economic elites in a dynamic struggle within a field of power. Understanding the field of power helps to explain a number of contradictions. For example, why does civil society seem to both bolster democracy and threaten it? Why do capitalist corporations and environmental organizations form partnerships despite their general hostility toward each other? And why has democracy proven to be so elusive in Russia? The field of power posits new answers to these questions, as Baikal environmental activists struggle to protect and save their Sacred Sea.

Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times

Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times PDF Author: Nancy G. Bermeo
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691089701
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
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Dynamics of Democratization

Dynamics of Democratization PDF Author: Graeme Gill
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0333985540
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
The author assesses the main theories developed to account for and explain why and how authoritarian regimes give way to democratic ones. The book takes issue with the predominantly élite-centred focus of much of the literature, and illustrates how an understanding of democratization can be gained only if the role of civil society is taken into account.

Civil Society

Civil Society PDF Author: Howard Wiarda
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429970137
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Civil Society focuses on the processes and politics of dismantling "corporate" (state directed) economies and political systems in the Third World. Howard Wiarda explores how this separation would create a move toward civil societies of free associability and democracy, as well as the limits to and pitfalls of this approach. The book examines case studies from sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and includes such critical countries as South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and Egypt.