Explaining Civil Society Development

Explaining Civil Society Development PDF Author: Lester M. Salamon
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421422999
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
How historically rooted power dynamics have shaped the evolution of civil society globally. The civil society sector—made up of millions of nonprofit organizations, associations, charitable institutions, and the volunteers and resources they mobilize—has long been the invisible subcontinent on the landscape of contemporary society. For the past twenty years, however, scholars under the umbrella of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project have worked with statisticians to assemble the first comprehensive, empirical picture of the size, structure, financing, and role of this increasingly important part of modern life. What accounts for the enormous cross-national variations in the size and contours of the civil society sector around the world? Drawing on the project’s data, Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, Megan A. Haddock, and their colleagues raise serious questions about the ability of the field’s currently dominant preference and sentiment theories to account for these variations in civil society development. Instead, using statistical and comparative historical materials, the authors posit a novel social origins theory that roots the variations in civil society strength and composition in the relative power of different social groupings and institutions during the transition to modernity. Drawing on the work of Barrington Moore, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and others, Explaining Civil Society Development provides insight into the nonprofit sector’s ability to thrive and perform its distinctive roles. Combining solid data and analytical clarity, this pioneering volume offers a critically needed lens for viewing the evolution of civil society and the nonprofit sector throughout the world.

Explaining Civil Society Development

Explaining Civil Society Development PDF Author: Lester M. Salamon
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421422999
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
How historically rooted power dynamics have shaped the evolution of civil society globally. The civil society sector—made up of millions of nonprofit organizations, associations, charitable institutions, and the volunteers and resources they mobilize—has long been the invisible subcontinent on the landscape of contemporary society. For the past twenty years, however, scholars under the umbrella of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project have worked with statisticians to assemble the first comprehensive, empirical picture of the size, structure, financing, and role of this increasingly important part of modern life. What accounts for the enormous cross-national variations in the size and contours of the civil society sector around the world? Drawing on the project’s data, Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, Megan A. Haddock, and their colleagues raise serious questions about the ability of the field’s currently dominant preference and sentiment theories to account for these variations in civil society development. Instead, using statistical and comparative historical materials, the authors posit a novel social origins theory that roots the variations in civil society strength and composition in the relative power of different social groupings and institutions during the transition to modernity. Drawing on the work of Barrington Moore, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and others, Explaining Civil Society Development provides insight into the nonprofit sector’s ability to thrive and perform its distinctive roles. Combining solid data and analytical clarity, this pioneering volume offers a critically needed lens for viewing the evolution of civil society and the nonprofit sector throughout the world.

Civil Society & Development

Civil Society & Development PDF Author: Jude Howell
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781588260956
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
Setting out to explore critically the way civil society has entered development thinking, policy and practice as a paradigmatic concept of the 21st century, Howell (development studies, U. of Sussex) and Pearce (Latin American politics, U. of Bradford) trace the historical path leading to the encounter between the ideas of development and civil society in the late 1980s and how donors have translated these into development policy an programs. They find that there are competing normative visions, which have deep roots in Western European political thought, about the role of civil society in relation to the state and market both among donors and within the societies where donors are operating. This leads to donors playing a major role in shaping the character of service provision. They also argue that their study exposes the hitherto unexplored power of the market, as opposed to solely the state, to distort donor programs. c. Book News Inc.

Roots of the State

Roots of the State PDF Author: Benjamin Read
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804782032
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Get Book Here

Book Description
Most social science studies of local organizations tend to focus on "civil society" associations, voluntary associations independent from state control, whereas government-sponsored organizations tend to be theorized in totalitarian terms as "mass organizations" or manifestations of state corporatism. Roots of the State examines neighborhood associations in Beijing and Taipei that occupy a unique space that exists between these concepts. Benjamin L. Read views the work of the neighborhood associations he studies as a form of "administrative grassroots engagement." States sponsor networks of organizations at the most local of levels, and the networks facilitate governance and policing by building personal relationships with members of society. Association leaders serve as the state's designated liaisons within the neighborhood and perform administrative duties covering a wide range of government programs, from welfare to political surveillance. These partly state-controlled entities also provide a range of services to their constituents. Neighborhood associations, as institutions initially created to control societies, may underpin a repressive regime such as China's, but they also can evolve to empower societies, as in Taiwan. This book engages broad and much-discussed questions about governance and political participation in both authoritarian and democratic regimes.

Sustaining Civil Society

Sustaining Civil Society PDF Author: Philip Oxhorn
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271048948
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Devoting particular emphasis to Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico, proposes a theory of civil society to explain the economic and political challenges for continuing democratization in Latin America"--Provided by publisher.

Borders among Activists

Borders among Activists PDF Author: Sarah S. Stroup
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801464722
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Borders among Activists, Sarah S. Stroup challenges the notion that political activism has gone beyond borders and created a global or transnational civil society. Instead, at the most globally active, purportedly cosmopolitan groups in the world—international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs)—organizational practices are deeply tied to national environments, creating great diversity in the way these groups organize themselves, engage in advocacy, and deliver services. Stroup offers detailed profiles of these "varieties of activism" in the United States, Britain, and France. These three countries are the most popular bases for INGOs, but each provides a very different environment for charitable organizations due to differences in legal regulations, political opportunities, resources, and patterns of social networks. Stroup's comparisons of leading American, British, and French INGOs—Care, Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and FIDH—reveal strong national patterns in INGO practices, including advocacy, fund-raising, and professionalization. These differences are quite pronounced among INGOs in the humanitarian relief sector, and are observable, though less marked, among human rights INGOs. Stroup finds that national origin helps account for variation in the "transnational advocacy networks" that have received so much attention in international relations. For practitioners, national origin offers an alternative explanation for the frequently lamented failures of INGOs in the field: INGOs are not inherently dysfunctional, but instead remain disconnected because of their strong roots in very different national environments.

Multilevel Democracy

Multilevel Democracy PDF Author: Jefferey M. Sellers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108427782
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 413

Get Book Here

Book Description
Explores ways to make democracy work better, with particular focus on the integral role of local institutions.

International Encyclopedia of Civil Society

International Encyclopedia of Civil Society PDF Author: Helmut K. Anheier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387939962
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1722

Get Book Here

Book Description
Recently the topic of civil society has generated a wave of interest, and a wealth of new information. Until now no publication has attempted to organize and consolidate this knowledge. The International Encyclopedia of Civil Society fills this gap, establishing a common set of understandings and terminology, and an analytical starting point for future research. Global in scope and authoritative in content, the Encyclopedia offers succinct summaries of core concepts and theories; definitions of terms; biographical entries on important figures and organizational profiles. In addition, it serves as a reliable and up-to-date guide to additional sources of information. In sum, the Encyclopedia provides an overview of the contours of civil society, social capital, philanthropy and nonprofits across cultures and historical periods. For researchers in nonprofit and civil society studies, political science, economics, management and social enterprise, this is the most systematic appraisal of a rapidly growing field.

Rethinking an NGO

Rethinking an NGO PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781417520985
Category : Community development
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Get Book Here

Book Description


Civil Society in Bangladesh

Civil Society in Bangladesh PDF Author: Farhat Tasnim
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9813344040
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is the first of its kind to offer an understanding, analysis, and prediction of the state of civil society in Bangladesh in relation to development and democracy. It is a research attempt to reveal the paradox found in developing countries like Bangladesh where there are numerous and active civil society organizations (CSOs) that have had almost no influence in consolidating democracy. This book, however, also qualifies the normative assumption on the positive relationship between civil society and democracy asserted by the mainstream neo-Tocquevillean School that has a profound influence on donor policies. Readers are introduced to civil society in Bangladesh from a broad perspective. Rather than confining the analysis to NGOs, chapters explore the origin, nature, and function of both modern and conventional CSOs, which helps to provide a more authentic understanding of the genuine state of civil society in relation to other actors in the political system. Combining survey data analyses and empirical observations with carefully chosen case studies, the book reveals that CSOs participate very actively in social services. This research also reveals that these highly active CSOs in the field of social development lack the necessary attributes for ensuring participation, proper interest articulation and monitoring of the state. Through systematic analysis, the book shows that political structures—and for Bangladesh, particularly political parties—along with vertical social relationships such as clientelism, patronage, nepotism, and corruption have contributed to a non-vigilant civil society in Bangladesh, although it often is spoken of in different terms. This book is highly recommended for researchers, students, and development practitioners interested in South Asia as well as in understanding the potentials and limitations of civil society in relation to development and democracy. Farhat Tasnim's book is a comprehensive treatment of civil society in Bangladesh. It will serve as a useful resource for future researchers in this field for a long time to come. Harry Blair, Yale University, USA Farhat Tasnim provides in this book a new perspective on one of the essential cases of civil society study, Bangladesh. Her penetrating analysis of the relationship of civil society organizations and democracy in Bangladesh should attract a wide readership. This is an important book not only for students of Bangladesh, but for scholars and practitioners interested in the relationship of civil society organizations and democracy. Robert J. Pekkanen, University of Washington, USA

The Development of Civil Society in Central Asia

The Development of Civil Society in Central Asia PDF Author: Janice Giffen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781897748756
Category : Asia, Central
Languages : en
Pages : 197

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book considers the applicability and use of civil society, both as a concept and in practice, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The volume examines whether civil society organisations (CSOs) are a progressive force for change, or a safety net. Various forms of CSOs are investigated: NGOs and community based organisations, trade unions, political parties and religious groups, as well as more long-standing soviet and traditional institutions and practices. The book contains lessons and perspectives about civil society growth across time, and considers future directions.