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Related articles and reports
The paper offers five propositions about aid-backed projects. Secondly, ideas that make for ‘good policy’— policy which legitimises and mobilises political and practical support— are not those which provide good guides to action. Good policy is unimplementable..."
This two-page handout depicts in simplified form a number of ways in which things can go wrong -- or right -- in sequential steps at middle and lower ends of a typical aid chain intended to "build civil society".
In its third review of civil society engagement with the Millennium Declaration and its Development Goals (MDGs), this
2005 report is based on an extensive survey directed to civil society organizations from over 82 countries. The findings highlight the strengths and weaknesses of UN efforts to involve civil society organizations at a country level and calls for a scaling up of financial and political commitments towards the MDGs.
This insightful article by Ivan Krastev, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, Bulgaria warns of a new kind of 'civil society building' - à la the Krelmin.
It appears in full in Open Democracy 20 October 2005
Given the frequency with which these words are thrown around these days (even appearing as a rationale for war in Iraq), one might think they signify something clear and unambiguous. Yet ?civil society? has been appropriated by politicians on all sides of the spectrum to suit their own, very different agendas. It is easy to become lost in the complexities of this debate, or captured by the assumptions of one side or another. One way out of this impasse is to look beyond the clash of ideologies to the underlying capacities that are necessary to fashion a civil society worthy of the name, even if we continue to disagree on what it would look like at any level of detail.
From Georgia to Kyrgyzstan via Ukraine, new forms of youthful, tech-savvy mass mobilisation are impelling regime change from below. But is the phenomenon as benign as it appears? Are the movements who inspire the "colour revolutions" catalysts or saboteurs? Sreeram Chaulia analyses a modern face of global democratic politics.
NGOs remain the leaders in trust, but they also have to contend with some decline. In 10 of 17 countries for which data is available, trust in NGOs has fallen since 2004, in some cases sharply (e.g., Brazil, India, South Korea).
These findings are based on a global public opinion poll involving a total of 20,791 interviews with citizens across 20 countries, conducted between June and August 2005
This is a product of an intensive dialogue on the changing political context for social change work among 50 activists, policy analysts, and researchers from around the world.
Latin America has seen the rise of center-left governments, or governments that before assuming power embraced an anti-neoliberal program. In Peru, Alejandro Toledo gained office thanks to a broad-based movement that ousted Alberto Fujimori. Colonel Lucio Gutierrez rose to the presidency of Ecuador largely due to the support of a powerful indigenous movement. In Argentina and Brazil , Nestor Kirchner and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva became presidents in the wake of vast social movements that weakened or caused crises in the prevailing neoliberal model.
The following publication reports on the first independent review of Hivos’s Central Asia Programme from its beginning in 1994 through 2002. During these nine years Hivos allocated about €7.1 million in grants to 42 organisations in Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic, and to several West European organizations active in Central Asia.
