The Backlash against Civil Society in the Wake of the Long War on Terror

Publication date: Monday 03 September 2007

The euphoria which emerged in the late 1980s with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the spread of democratic regimes has been replaced in recent years by a sombre backlash against civil society on many levels and fronts. This has particularly intensified following the attacks on September 11 and the ensuing global war on terror. This working paper examines the causes of the backlash against civil society within the context of the War, describes the overt and implicit manifestations of that backlash, and reflects upon the implications for the future. It considers how the growing prominence of security concerns and the concomitant expansion of counter-terrorist measures across the world threaten the spaces for civil society to flourish and act. It argues that while the manifestations of the backlash, such as the crackdown on NGOs in Russia or the taming of NGOs by bilateral and multilateral agencies, may appear to be disparate, unconnected phenomena, on closer inspection it is clear that they are intricately intertwined.

The paper begins by examining the overt backlash against civil society organizations, and in particular NGOs receiving foreign funding, that is emerging in authoritarian regimes and reluctant or ‘managed’ democracies such as China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Nigeria. It then considers the more implicit forms of backlash such as the disciplining and taming of civil society, which began in the late 1990s but have intensified in the context of LWOT. We consider how the LWOT has implications for civil societies not just in new or emerging democracies but also in older, more established democratic states. We examine how this multi-layered backlash is manifested and how it is a product of local political developments as well as the policies, discourses, and practices of the LWOT. Furthermore, we consider how concerted efforts at ‘building civil society’ by development agencies from the late 1980s onwards have had unintended consequences. These include repression from host states that are increasingly suspicious of civil society as well as criticism from grassroots groups and social movements toward NGOs which consider the latter as having been co-opted by development agencies.

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Full text can be downloaded from:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CCS/pdf/CSWP/CCS_WP_Howell_26.pdf