Source: Swedish Expert Group for Aid Studies
Support for civil society organisations is now a core element of official development assistance. Donors are generally committed to increasing their funding for civil society in developing states. And they want to make sure that such support is fully effective.
The challenge is that civil society is changing. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of new social movements, engaged in innovative types of protest. Analysts and activists debate how far the patterns of civil society activity are indeed changing. And they express different views on whether these new social and protest movements are good or bad for democracy. At the same time, governments around the world are making it more difficult for civil society organisations to function and to receive funding.
In this context, donors need to rethink the way they support civil society in developing states. They can take advantage of new opportunities presented by new civic movements; but also need to temper the downsides of these protest movements and think about how to push back against the new restrictions being placed on nongovernmental organisations (NGOs).This report contains an assessment of how donors should respond. It does not consider all elements of civil society support, but rather those elements most directly related to fostering democratic reforms.
An overview of the way that civil society is changing is presented. It points to the way that political protest has become driven by loosely organised social movements. It highlights the extent to which such activism is focused on a changing set of issues, and how it differs from more ‘traditional’ forms of civic organisation.
The report stresses how this embodies a more active citizenship. It looks at the related analytical debates about the relationship between democracy and these new civil society trends – including the way that this differs across regions. It points out that evolving forms of civic organisation show great advantages and the potential to contribute to democratic deepening – but that they also exhibit clear shortcomings. The challenge will be to harness their positive potential, while designing strategies that can mitigate their less welcome features.
The report then examines whether donors are beginning to react to the new challenges in an effective way. It looks at European Union (EU) programmes as an illustrative example of new thinking. It uncovers several new EU initiatives that do seek to reflect the changing shape of global protests and civil society. It also stresses, however, that in more general terms donors need to do a lot more to respond to the scale of change afoot within civil society movements across different regions.
The report moves from this analysis to five policy recommendations:
New actors and bridge-building actors: Sweden and other donors should use a balanced approach vis-a-vis civil society support and engage with a broad range of civil society actors. Donors will need to embrace two perspectives on the role of civil society at the same time, i.e. to combine support for more confrontational social movements representing a check against the state, with support for actors that have a bridge-building function in relation to state authorities.
New actors and new models? Donors need to experiment with new civil society actors, and to adopt an explorative approach in relation to the established understanding of civil society and different models of democracy. When engaging with a broader spectrum of actors, including new protest movements and customary organisations, there is a need for donors to review and reflect upon what constitutes ‘good democracy’, and the role to be played by these different groups, including their potential for strengthening democratic development. Rather than only focusing on tactical questions on how and where to support, donors will need to explore and consider the possibilitities of different models of democracy.
Re-opening closing spaces: In recent years, over 50 regimes have introduced legal restrictions on support for civil society organisations. More subtle restrictive techniques include closing civil society organisations on technical grounds. Donors should take the challenge of these ‘closing spaces’ seriously and need to adopt a more systematic and better organised strategy for re-opening the narrowing space that now restricts civil society in many countries. Dealing with the backlash must be part of a broader strategy, but it should not be overly defensive since that may engender counter-productive repression. It is important for donors to respond to the changes in a political way, and to ensure coherence between civil society support and other aspects of foreign policies. Innovative measures and fexible funding mechanisms are also important in meeting and circumventing the backlash. Donors should be open and transparent about the support. In addition, they may use different approaches to depoliticize their civil society support.
Support for information and communications technology: Donors need a more balanced and nuanced approach to supporting information and communications technology (ICT) within civil society, if this is to fulfil its pro-democracy potential. A general critique of European support is that it is too oriented to training individuals, and not sufficiently focused on the ‘enabling environment’ for ICT to have a political impact. Hence, donors need to focus more on infrastructure and to put an effort into targeting new groups. In addition, the adverse effects of ICT – the ways in which it helps regimes too – need to be addressed. The positive examples of using ICT to promote ‘open governance’ at local level could be used to take the next step to promote broader political reforms.
Linking civil society, beyond protest: Sweden and other donors should do far more to link together civil society actors across borders, preferably in cooperation with non-traditional democratic donors. The purpose would be to encourage mutual learning between social movements that have participated in major protests in recent years, but also search for positive alternatives beyond simply protesting. Such an initiative would respond to the need for donors to move from focusing on capacity building for individual organisations to ensuring that civil society activities channel into representative bodies and real change.
The report concludes with broader reflections on how important the stakes are in this debate – and the reasons why donors will need to show greater urgency and nuance in fully meeting the challenge of a fast-evolving global civil society. The key recommendation to donors is to have a balanced approach in rethinking civil society support. Donors will need to recognise that both positive and negative change has intensified in recent years. Consequently, they need to be agile and flexible in their response to the new circumstances, without losing the lessons already learned from the less changing part of civil society.
Read the full text of this article at the Expert Group for Aid Studies website.
