Building or Deconstructing Civil Society?

In dialogue with policy makers, academics and practitioners

Tags: Worldwide , Civil Society Building

At the conference “Power to the People? (Con-)Tested Civil Society in Search of Democracy”, which was hosted by the Centre for Sustainable Development (CSD, Uppsala University), in cooperation with the Swedish International Development Cooperative Agency (Sida), our Civil Society Building Knowledge Programme team member Marlieke Kieboom interviewed a range of participants and asked them several outstanding yet relevant questions. The respondents are: Mattias Jonsjö (Swedish policy specialist for the Sida Civil Society Team), Dayabati Roy (Indian post-doctoral fellow in Anthropology, Copenhagen University), Henning Melber (Namibian-German scholar-activist, director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation) and Brian Kagoro (Zimbabwen policy specialist for the Africa Region, Action Aid). Many thanks to you for offering us your valuable insights.

In between sessions, Sida policy specialist Mattias Jonsjö commented on the following questions:

Q: “During the conference, someone commented that donors are ‘too obsessed with the grassroots’ when aiming for change through development intervention. Maybe the grassroots are not such powerful catalysts as donors hope for. Why does Sida support civil society organizations, and what does Sida aim for when supporting them?”

MattiasJonsjö: “The Swedish government recently adopted a new policy, to support CSO’s in developing countries, six months ago. Although Sida took part in the process and proposed the direction, it is in the end the Swedish government policy. I think that the policy is emphasizing the political roles of civil society in the sense that the emphasis is put on providing platforms for people to mobilize around joint issues of common concerns, providing space to engage with the state, and explicitly political actors as well. CSO’s engage in service delivery to a specific group, that aspect of CSO’s work was emphasized earlier. Obsession with grassroots? I don’t think Sida is one of the donors that is obsessed with grassroots. I do believe in the potential of actors in the arena that we call civil society, but I think Sida and the Swedish government have a holistic approach to this. That is that you can not look at, analyze or support civil society in a vacuum. You have to take the state and the market into account through support, political dialogue, and take into account the different context in every situation. I don’t think we are being naive or believing that CSOs would do the trick in terms of poverty reduction. Civil society is an important arena or sphere to focus on.

Q: “Another participant at the conference made a comment saying that supporting civil society organizations can create byproducts and un-aimed for side effects. Does Sida have examples of these unpleasant ‘side effects’?

Mattias Jonsjö: “By products don’t have to be bad. Since the 1980s Swedish bilateral support and CSOs funded by Sida have engaged with NGOs that sprung out or acted very closely with social movements, in for example Latin America. Aid there was not key to change, but it helped speeding up and strengthening processes, for example the Maya movement in Guatemala and the Indigenous movement in Bolivia. When they enter politics, then it becomes very difficult for a donor to support CSOs. We are sometimes stuck in the illusion that development is not political, that in democratization you can be non-partial in promoting it, it’s a very difficult balance to strike.

One thing we haven’t really resolved yet through the conference. Yesterday we heard some “NGO bashing”, which has been going on for the past 15 years. As a donor you do feel that the “bashers” have a point, but its up to us as donors to identify NGOs that work closely with their “rights holders” as we say, the groups and peoples lives whose are important to change. They acts as brokers between donors and social movements and CBOs and so on, but they fulfill a role that is necessary. We shouldn’t believe that we, the donor community, would see more efficient development cooperation if bilateral donor agencies started working directly with social movements, that’s wishful thinking from some scholars.”

In the hotel lobby we find Brian Kagoro, policy specialist with ActionAid:

Q: “Mr. Kagoro, you’ve argued in your keynote that NGOs and traditional civil society have failed to address the structural causes of poverty, inequity and justice. You have been very critical on the role of NGO’s, you used acronyms like ‘Nothing Going On’, or ‘Next Government Official’. Could you elaborate on this point of view?

Brian Kagoro: “Civil society at the moment does not challenge the fundamental constitutive question. The failure is not a failure because nothing has been done (by civil society), but civil society does not “appreciate” the complex task of government, the complex planning as well as implementation needs of government. I am critical about social movements, peasants and labour unions. They don’t possess the skills to make policy proposals, and deliver nuanced work, but what they have is the legitimacy of representing specific interests.

Q: “Aid to CSOs can produce side affects or byproducts that are not favorable to civil society at all. What is your stance on this statement?”

Brian Kagoro: There are, but we should not use that as an alibi and say that therefore there should be no support. If civil society is only held accountable vertically to those that give it aid, and not to its local community, its primary constituencies, then illiberal tendencies will appear in this so called “civil society”. The same hegemonic, repressive authoritarian and politics of patronage may emerge as a result of a symbiotic relationship between a particular type of donors and actors in civil society. Those are the risks of support. The unintended consequences. Therefore it is useful to theorize on the concept of civil society. There are inherent dangers in the concept itself. We can theorize, but we should also focus on the intention: how do we achieve transformation in the lives of ordinary men and women, who don’t have as much money as people who have the luxury to theorize. That can be done through action by citizen associations, and those require forms of facilitation.

At the hotel we also met with Dayabati Roy, a post doctoral fellow in Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. Her research is on policies of poverty reduction programmes in West Bengal, India.

Q: We talked about civil society, action and actors. What is understood by ‘civil society’ in an Indian context?

Dayabati Roy: “by civil society in India is meant the “elite society”. Civil society in India is a limited space used by individual members of the elite. The masses in India live in other formations, their style of associating with others is different from the Western notion of civil society, like class, caste and the family. Moreover people are in touch with leaders and members from political parties to solve their problems to negotiate with the government. Civil society is far away from the masses of the people in India. It would be useful to expand the notion of civil society, that would be more appropriate to explain formations and political processes in for example my country. We should offer some other critical space for people who are not complying with actors in civil society.

Q: What would be useful external support to CSOs in West-Bengal?

Dayabati Roy: People themselves are aware of the obstructions of getting their basic livelihoods, their basic rights. External support is most effective in areas where people are not aware of their rights, where they are not so active. The result of donor action depends on the people. Where people are already active, the solution often works better. Civil society is actually successful in making people aware about their rights. Action is not so much coming from the people as long as they are not aware that they are not entitled to certain rights. External actors could support making people aware of their rights. But actually, I wouldn’t fund at all. It often causes unintended trouble. To support local grassroots, you often sponsor local elites, who actually have a stake in keeping people poor. That is in their benefit, their interest. A more viable question to ask is then: “is civil society able to do something for people who are beyond civil society? Who are outside civil society?"

We meet Henning Melber, director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation at his office, located in a beautiful, old country house, situated exactly in the middle between the stately home where Dag Hammarskjöld grew up, and the grave where he is put to rest.

Q: What is your opinion an external support to civil society organizations?

Henning Melber: “I am basically in favour. The tricky issue is that a strong civil society should survive without external support. That’s the dilemma. In the absence of a strong civil society in these countries, which has to do with regimes that are not in favour of strong civil societies, those who challenge those regimes in power are very often only able to do so efficiently with external support. In the ideal case you could see external support as a kind of point of departure which strengthens civil society organization to an extend that rather sooner or later they don’t need the external support any longer. That is the ideal scenario. But it’s a paradoxical situation. That’s for me where the notion of solidarity kicks in. By describing it as a dilemma, I’m actually indirectly giving credit to that argument, that civil society actors should not be relying on external support. In return you could say: why? What’s wrong with the fact that likeminded people and organizations all over the world work together. There’s nothing wrong with that. The flaw comes, which was part of the 2 day debate, when we make reference to civil society, why do we say "support to civil society"? We should say support to democratization movements, to human rights advocacy, to gender based equality initiatives, to self-help groups, to shack dwellers who want to have decent housing. Break it down, make it specific! It’s not that Sida or other donor organization sign a check that says: “recipient is civil society in India, Bangladesh, or Namibia”. They support a specific project, let’s say journalist association that supports free media, or a women’s group fighting against sexual violence. That’s the dilemma, what is support to civil society? The term is fluffy, what does it mean?”

Q: Would you say the concept is not useful in practice?

Henning Melber: “The concept is at least risky. It is risky because it is weak, it doesn’t really say something. Too many people hold the believe that it actually says a lot. But it only allows you to project something in to it, something good. Civil society as a term resonates as a ‘good term’. But then our discussions over the two days said: it doesn’t say that at all! It’s not, it doesn’t say anything, it actually draws the lines for territory, for space, but what happens in that space, is not per definition good. That’s why you should not say "support to civil society", it does not say anything. Who do you support? Those who do not support hosting refugees? I don’t’ think you’ll get Sida to support an initiative like that. We need to be more specific. What kind of activities, values, norms do you want to support?”

Q: How should we then move forward with this debate?

Henning Melber: "Why not call your programme “civil society deconstructing”? You can build civil society by deconstructing civil society, saying: what are the components, the elements? What part do you want to support, for which reasons? Donors are not neutral transmitters, you directly influence social processes by supporting some people. You not only promote issues, you support persons who stand for these issues, and who then make their own career on the basis of the issues. Unfortunately you then have the alienation of exactly the opposite effect of what you want to achieve. It’s classical. If these civil society persons become a nuisance, like for the example in Namibia with the head of the trade union, the government makes them deputy ministers. That’s the decapitation of the trade union in Namibia, and it works. None of them have refused to be promoted to that level. They all turn their back on the movement. Why is that? Those activists who decline those incentives, they are very rare, who say ‘no, my place is in the getto’. It’s difficult to find these people, but those are the most useful to support.”

Read more on Sida here: here

Read more on ActionAid here: here

Read more on the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation here: here

Note from the editor: These are original words of the respondents. However, some sentences were cut out to reduce the size of this article.