Civil Society

Abstract

Until the late 1980s, the term “civil society” was largely absent from the political and social lexicon (Edwards 2004). The restart of interest in this idea has been spurred by a number of quite heterogeneous, if parallel, developments. In the crumbling socialist regimes of Eastern Europe in the 1980s, “civil society” was hailed, in a classic Lockean sense, as the locus of citizens' autonomy and resistance to an authoritarian, invasive state (Seligman 1995). In Western neoliberal democracies, civil society has been seen as one possible alternative to the financial crisis of the welfare state, and as the embodiment of the virtues associated with cooperation and generalized trust and solidarity (Deakin 2001). The European Commission has repeatedly stressed the possible contribution of civil society to reducing its (real or perceived) “democratic deficit.” Its 2001 EU White Paper on Governance paid a lot of attention to the role of citizens and associations, although it remains an open issue whether significant increases in rates of active participation from the citizenry would actually be sustainable for the policy process.

Network leadership for transformative capacity development: roles, practices and challenges

“…Many academic insights addressing the question of collective agency, scaling of innovations and empowerment via networks have been developed in diverse fields, including transformative social innovation (TSI) theory (Pel et al, 2020), transition studies (Geels, 2005; Köhler et al, 2019), social and institutional entrepreneurship (Battilana, Leca, & Boxenbaum, 2009; Busch, 2019; Garud, Hardy, & Maguire, 2007; Howaldt, Kaletka, & Schröder, 2016), social movement studies (Crutchfield, 2018; Diani, 2013; Monticelli, 2018) and institutional theory (Battilana et al, 2009; DiMaggio, 1988; Scharpf, 2018). Across these fields, and in TSI theory in particular, the role of transnational networks was found to play a vital role in strengthening the agency of SI actors (Avelino, Dumitru, Cipolla, Kunze, & Wittmayer, 2020; Loorbach, Wittmayer, Avelino, von Wirth, & Frantzeskaki, 2020).…”