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WPS4942

P OLICY R ESEARCH W ORKING P APER 4942

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Uncivil Societies
A Theory of Sociopolitical Change

Célestin Monga
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Public Disclosure Authorized

The World Bank

Development Economics
Policy Review Unit
May 2009
POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER 4942

Abstract
In times of crises, it is always useful to revisit some of the and international relations—have constructed influential
paradigms that underlie collective thinking and action. analytical frameworks in support of that general
For nearly 200 years, most social science has relied on the proposition. This paper examines the philosophical
assumption that the emergence of strong and nurturing foundations of conventional wisdom and observes that
social capital through a vibrant civil society yields all kind it often fails to take into account the dark side of some
of positive externalities to society. Following intuition civil society groups, from the mafia to Al Qaeda. While
and anecdotal observations from Alexis de Tocqueville, acknowledging the potential contribution of civil society
a large body of theoretical and empirical research has to the development process, the paper also cautions
attempted to confirm that societies strive politically again the rush to circumvent the state, which sometimes
and economically when they are able to build strong sustains community-based initiatives in poor countries.
non-state actors and community organizations. Many It suggests the possibility of the production of negative
disciplines—mainly political science, economics, law, social capital by non-state actors.

This paper—a product of the Policy Review unit, Development Economics-—is part of a larger effort in the department
to better understand the foundations of economic performance and social development. Policy Research Working Papers
are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The author may be contacted at cmonga@worldbank.org.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development
issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the
names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those
of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and
its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Produced by the Research Support Team

 UNCIVIL SOCIETIES
A Theory of Sociopolitical Change

Célestin Monga

The author is Lead Economist and Manager of the Policy Review unit in the Office of the Senior Vice
President and Chief Economist Office. cmonga@worldbank.org or celestin.monga@sloan.mit.edu This
paper was prepared for Reframing Africa: Politics, Economics and Culture in a Global Era, by Peyi
Soyinka-Airewele and Rita Kiki Edozie (eds), forthcoming.
 2

1. INTRODUCTION

An interesting tale has been at the core of mainstream democratic theory since de Tocqueville
published his Democracy in America more than 170 years ago. It can be summed up in one
sentence: Societies strive politically and economically when they are able to build strong and
nurturing social capital through a vibrant civil society. The tale builds on a series of
impressionistic and bold statements made by de Tocqueville in his work: “There is only one
country on the face of the earth where the citizens enjoy unlimited freedom of association for
political purposes. This same country is the only one in the world where the continual
exercise of the right of association has been introduced into civil life and where all the
advantages which civilization can confer are procured by means of it.” (2004, p. 741) These
intuitions were expressed with less popular success by Paine during the American
Revolution. 1 They have inspired several generations of social scientists who have tried to
document the key role of civil society in political theory (Cohen and Arato, 1992; Alexander,
2006). One of the well-known proponents of this now dominant thesis in political science and
sociology is Putnam, who claims that "effective and responsive institutions depend, in the
language of civic humanism, on republican virtues and practices. Tocqueville was right:
Democratic government is strengthened, not weakened, when it faces a vigorous civil
society" (1993, p. 182).

Many studies in various areas of the social sciences have come to conclude that the main
reason for the perceived failure of the Third Wave of Democratization in the African context
is the weakness or even the lack of civil society organizations. In fact, after decades of
neglect, African civil society has become a major topic of study. Landmark publications have
been released in recent years and international and academic institutions have even
established formal links with civil society organizations. A United Nations Secretary General
has noted that its organization “once dealt only with Governments. By now, we know that
peace and prosperity cannot be achieved without partnerships involving Governments,
international organizations, the business community and civil society. In today’s world, we
depend on each other.” 2

Indeed, an examination of the sociopolitical situation in most of the African countries since
the famous National Conference which ended an autocratic regime in Benin and Nelson
 3

Mandela’s release from prison (both events occurring almost at the same time in February
1990) highlights the preeminent role of previously neglected social mechanisms and public
opinion. People have become more and more aware of belonging to specific, defined groups
and increasingly express the desire to create interest groups in both civil and political arenas.
From human rights activists to small businessmen, from unemployed youths of the suburbs to
the intellectual and religious elites, there is hardly a social group that has not felt the need for
its members to communally articulate their daily concerns. In both public and private
companies the void due to the absence of structures of collective organization—notably,
unions, works committees, employers associations—is being filled by a multiplicity of
increasingly dynamic informal groupings, even if these are often established along Weberian
lines of sex, age, kinship, and religion. For Africans, these groupings are a way of reclaiming
the right of self-expression, long confiscated by the official institutions of power. In
establishing their members as full participants in the political game, these groups have
expanded the arena of association, stealthily influencing the ongoing multifaceted
transformation. By blurring the rules of the game, they represent a disruptive force in the
sociopolitical environment.

Yet, a closer examination of the empirics of political evolution shows that despite its
popularity, civil society has not really yielded either democratic consolidation or economic
well-being (Gyimah-Boadi, 2004; Bratton and van de Walle, 1997; Monga, 1996a). In fact,
even in so-called advanced democracies (North America, Western Europe, Japan) where civil
society is supposed to be much stronger than in developing countries, lack of confidence in
and mistrust of government are high. In 12 of the 13 countries for which data is available,
trust in representative institutions and politicians is in decline. 3

Moreover, civil society remains an elusive concept. For one, there is little consensus among
researchers on how to define it rigorously. Also, some creative authoritarian regimes have
attempted (often successfully) to hijack the concept: by creating their own civil society
groups, they have often been able to surreptitiously subvert the rules of the political game.
Furthermore, globalization has not only strengthened the winds of political change across the
world but has also strengthened the already influential role played by Western non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) whose philosophy, agenda and legitimacy are now
questioned in other regions of the planet.
 4

All these issues raise questions: What if de Tocqueville was wrong? What if the
philosophical assumptions underlying his approach to civil society and democracy were
inconsistent with an effective theory of freedom? In an era where various kinds of non-
governmental organizations—including infamous ones such as the Ku Klux Klan or Al
Qaeda—claim to represent civil society, what criteria should be used to define it? What
motivations give legitimacy to citizen advocacy organizations that represent various
segments of society? What moral principles and values should be considered in establishing
such criteria? Even if the definition of such criteria were straightforward, how would one
rigorously measure adherence to it by political, religious, business organizations? How would
one measure their contribution to social capital, social harmony and democratic
consolidation? In places where some citizen organizations promote their political agenda
through “immoral” means, is there such thing as a negative social capital? What are the
proper scope and functions of civil society?

This paper attempts to address these questions by reexamining the intellectual foundations of
the concept of civil society debate. Section 2 discusses its origins and some of the current
approaches to the concept. It argues that the confusion over the semantics has led to
conflicting uses of the word, which is now claimed even by organizations that oppose the
democratic ideal and produce what I call negative social capital. Section 3 highlights the
philosophical baggage surrounding civil society and recommends a more flexible approach to
that concept. It then suggests a framework for understanding civil society’s role in the
process of democratic consolidation not as the generator of freedom but simply as the
platform for debates, and eventually the vector for sociopolitical changes. Section 4 offers
some concluding thoughts.

2. CIVIL SOCIETY: A SEMANTIC AND ETHICAL DEFICIT

Civil society has generated as much enthusiasm as skepticism. One major reason for this is
the heavy burden placed on it by some of its most vocal advocates who present it as a key
pre-requisite to sustainable democratization processes without fleshing out precisely its link
with normative theories of liberal democracy. 4 This creates an atmosphere of confusion in
which the realities and myths of civil society are intertwined. To reframe the debate in a
 5

constructive way, it may be useful to start by discussing briefly some of the challenges posed
by the semantics of civil society. Such a discussion highlights one fact: with all its virtues,
civil society is also the place where negative social capital—defined as instances where
social groups pursue radically different norms and values and work at cross-purpose, often
towards unethical ends—can be generated.

A. The Trouble with Semantics

What exactly is civil society? What criteria should meet the organizations classified under
that label? Trying to define a term that is used today in many different disciplines and
contexts and has a complex and still evolving conceptual history is a complicated task. The
term “civil society” was en vogue in Western Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries and
generally referred to all institutions, formal and informal, between the family and the state as
Hegel put it (1991, p. 23). Considering the link between civil society and the state as one of
mediation and interpenetration, he stressed three characteristics of the concept: legality,
plurality and association. Laws and self-mobilization were supposed to allow for the
institutionalization and long-term reproduction of civil society.

While such a framework may have seemed appropriate in the context of Western societies
because the law actually meant something, it was clearly not very pertinent in societies under
authoritarian political regimes. In most of 18th and 19th centuries Africa for instance, informal
or underground organizations later known as civil society groups often emerged against
existing laws and social norms (Isichei, 1997).

Hegel’s elegant but vague framework did not explain under what social conditions citizens
from various backgrounds get involved in voluntary associations to critically discuss and act
on public issues which they consider relevant for their lives. Habermas’ relatively recent
exploration of the “public sphere” offers a more convincing set of ideas for the analysis of
civil society (1989). It highlights the fact that the existence of a public sphere adequate to a
democratic polity usually depends both on the level of participation of the citizenry to a
rational-critical debate, the quality of the discourse and the subsequent ethical standards that
emerge from these often informal channels of conversation. This brings up two observations:
first, inclusion of all social groups into the public sphere is a pre-requisite for the production
 6

of positive social capital 5 and the sustainability of the democratic process. While it may bring
a “degeneration” of the quality of the public discourse dominated by scholars or professional
politicians, it gives a sense of legitimacy to the society at large. Second, one should also
recognize that including everyone into the social market for ideas, attitudes and public
policies, increases the risk of giving voice to non-democratic and non-ethical forces (negative
social capital). Still, bringing them out in the open is in fact a lesser evil: it improves
transparency in the struggle for power by all kinds of social forces and also sheds light on
their unconstructive ideas and harmful activities, and encourages democratic forces to build
the types of alliances needed to win.

The obvious question that comes to mind here relates to the transferability of the concept.
Should we agree with Habermas’ contention that the bourgeois public sphere is a “category
that is typical of an epoch” and that “it cannot be abstracted from the unique developmental
history of that ‘civil society’ (bürgerliche Gesellschaft) originating in the European High
Middle Ages; nor can it be transferred, ideal typically generalized, to any number of
historical situations that represent formally similar constellations”? (Habermas, 1989, p. xvii)
Habermas’ prudent view raises the traditional epistemological problem arising from the
transfer of sociological concepts across space and time. While his analysis of civil society
was restricted to the European bourgeois political life of the 17th through the mid-20th
centuries, his conclusions are of normative relevance to the discussion of social
transformations anywhere. He does not prescribe a ready-to-use framework to be imposed
upon social scientists everywhere and his two general principles for studying the bourgeois
public sphere have offered a great deal of richness to discussions of civil society in other
contexts.

The first principle from his analysis is the openness of civil society—its “transforming”
power: the European public sphere gained relevance by ceasing to be a bourgeois,
masculinist and elitist platform where educated men made decisions about social standards,
values, politics and public affairs. It opened itself up to women and to interlocutors of all
works of life. Status differentials were then bracketed so that people could deliberate as if
they were social equals. It was “a kind of social intercourse that, far from presupposing the
equality of status, disregarded status altogether.” (Habermas, 1989, p. 36) Societal equality
was no longer a necessary condition for political democracy (see Fraser 1992). Even the
 7

places where these rational-critical debates were held proliferated across Europe and became
much less formal. They ranged from open meeting public places to private homes or even
coffee shops. 6 A second principle is people’s willingness to discuss all sorts of topics,
including those over which church and state had hitherto exercised a virtual monopoly. These
principles allowed for a less idealistic approach to democratic consolidation: the myth of
common, shared interest that supposedly guide the design and implementation of political
rules and public policies was abandoned as people realized that reasonable political outcomes
emerge from negotiated compromises among competing social interests.

That acknowledgement has been the cornerstone of sustainable democratization processes

throughout the Western world. But they have done little to restrain the debate on what should
be the proper scope and functions of civil society. Some authors have tried to differentiate
civil society from political society (political parties, political institutions such as parliaments,
etc.) on the reason that their true aim is to control the state and gain power. Others sought to
exclude the economic society of firms and trade unions from civil society, arguing that they
represent an extreme form of capitalism, which has become a totalitarian threat to all spheres
of social activity. 7 Going back to Hegel’s initial, generic insight, Cohen and Arato suggest
that civil society be the “sphere of social interaction between economy and state, composed
above all of the intimate sphere (especially the family), the sphere of associations (especially
voluntary associations), social movements and forms of public communications” (Cohen and
Arato, 1992, p. x). But they are quick to circumscribe civil society more narrowly. They
argue that it would be misleading to consider all social life outside the administrative state
and economic processes to represent civil society because “the actors of political and
economic society are directly involved with state power and economic production, which
they seek to control and manage” (Cohen and Arato, idem). That distinction is a bit naïve, as
almost no group would pass such a stringent test: everywhere, all actors in the realm of
public participation in voluntary associations, the media, professional groups and lobbies,
trade unions and the likes have hope to either control power, or at least influence it in the
sense of their particular interests.

Still, that basic framework was adopted in the Charter of the United Nations (UN). It noted
that the UN’s Economic and Social Council "may make suitable arrangements for
consultation with non-governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within
 8

its competence. Such arrangements may be made with international organizations and, where
appropriate, with national organizations after consultation with the Member of the United
Nations concerned.” (Article 71) Though the term “non-governmental organization” was
never itself defined in the Charter, successive resolutions of the Economic and Social Council
have tended to highlight two basic characteristics of that notion: first, separation and
independence from the structures and processes of government 8 ; second, their aims and
purposes that are not primarily for profit.

In fact, the UN itself has struggled to maintain consistency in its literature on the topic. After
it issued a report on civil society in 2004, a group of influential international NGOs wrote
back to the Secretary General complaining that the definition used was too broad, as it
assimilated “fundamentally different groups”. “Though the term ‘civil society’ is notoriously
vague, and although the issue of whether [the UN] description also covers business entities is
highly contested, we would argue that it certainly does not cover parliamentarians—in view
of their direct participation in the structures and processes of government.” 9 Not surprisingly,
the writers of the letter did not question the legitimacy of their own international NGOS,
whose agendas have often been questioned, especially in the African context (Kemedjio,
2006).

The European Commission initiated in the 1990s a “civil dialogue”, which was a first attempt
by the European Union to give the institutions of society – and not only governments and
businesses – a voice at the policy-making tables in Brussels. Yet, the criteria to meet for any
particular organization to be invited to such a dialogue remained fuzzy. In fact, the very
broad definition recently offered by the London School of Economics’ Centre for Civil
Society to guide research activities and teaching sums up well the conventional wisdom and
the confusion: “Civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared
interests, purposes and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of the
state, family and market, though in practice, the boundaries between state, civil society,
family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated. Civil society commonly
embraces a diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forms, varying in their degree of
formality, autonomy and power. Civil societies are often populated by organizations such as
registered charities, development non-governmental organizations, community groups,
 9

women's organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trades unions,

self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy group.” 10

Defining civil society has been even more problematic in the African context. The main
reason is the inherent inadequacy of using tools designed for understanding the workings of
Western democracies to analyze the situation elsewhere in the world. The extreme diversity
of situations and political traditions from one area to another—and sometimes even within
the same country—further complicates the task. Sociologists in the Maghreb, for example,
tend to include only the parties and associations that, despite their divergences of opinion on
many issues, share the same values of human rights and individual freedoms (Zghal, 1991).
Such a definition excludes movements laying claim to Islam, even if they have a dominant
role in society.

The reluctance of many social scientists in North Africa to consider religious organizations as
an integral part of civil society should not be attributed simply to current events—the
resurgence of religious fundamentalism and its rejection of Western type liberal democracy.
The roots of the mistrust are deeper. In fact, the skepticism over the democratic virtues of
religious groups may originate from the differentiated ways in which Islam, Christianity, and
Judaism have dealt with political power over time. According to Sacred Texts, Moses, who
led the children of Israel from bondage to the Promised Land (of which he only had a
glimpse) never exercised political power. Jesus too was crucified and never had the chance to
rule any kingdom. By contrast, Prophet Muhammad achieved political victory in his lifetime.
He conquered the Promised Land and was the sovereign political figure of his state. “As
such, he promulgated laws, dispensed justice, levied taxes, raised armies, made war, and
made peace. In a word, he ruled, and the story of his decisions and actions as ruler is
sanctified in Muslim scripture and amplified in Muslim tradition.” (Lewis, 202, p. 101)
Because the original Islamic state was officially religious in its essence and ruled as such by
its founder, there was no need for secularism—understood as separation of religion and
political authority—except in Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey and in the six Soviet
Republics of predominantly Muslim population. For over a thousand years, Islam provided
the only officially recognized set of rules for the regulation of public and social life. This
may explain why some political scientists and sociologists in Muslim countries in North
Africa even today are hesitant—if not opposed—to integrating religious groups into civil
 10

society. As Lewis points out, “in the Islamic context, the independence and initiative of the
civil society may best be measured not in relation to the state, but in relation to religion, of
which, in the Muslim perception, the state itself is a manifestation and instrument” (idem, p.
112).

South of the Sahara, researchers have been willing to include religious groups in their
definition of civil society because of their generally positive legacy in the struggle for
freedom of the 1990s. 11 Despite their influence, religious organizations do not, at least for the
moment, claim to have determining roles on the course of political events, with the notable
exception of the Lord Resistance Army in Uganda. 12 Religious organizations comparable to
the Islamic movements that exist in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, or Morocco have not manifested
themselves in Sub-Saharan countries with large Muslim populations such as Mali, Niger or
Burkina Faso, though things appear to be evolving in that direction in the northern states of
Nigeria where religious conflicts have resulted in large casualties in recent years. In Senegal,
the very influential leader of the Mouride community has for many years dominated the
country’s power game but has so far chosen not to have his organization involved directly in
politics (Magassouba, 1985).

The complexity of the semantics of civil society makes it unrealistic to come up with a
definition that would be valid in all places and at all times. For the purpose of analyzing
sociopolitical transformations in Africa today, I will approach civil society as a flexible
concept that includes all organizations and individuals whose actions strengthen social
identities and the rights of citizenship, often in opposition to those in power, whose natural
tendency is to repress such identities and rights. Civil society in this paper refers to all social
and political movements formed on a voluntary basis and aiming to produce social capital.
Clearly, the specific organizations to be included in such a framework would necessarily vary
from one place to another. Some of them work within the prevailing value system to expand
the boundaries of collective freedom and strengthen the democratic ideal in the polity. Others
only focus on their microscopic and often egoistic objectives. They all contribute in different
(and sometimes conflicting) ways to enlarging social participation. In the era of globalization,
they all benefit or suffer from the external influence of foreign NGOs or institutions (Figure
1).
 11

Figure 1. Anatomy of the Civil Society: A Flexible Approach

International institutions and foreign NGOs

Community
Associations

Unions and
Family Business Groups State

Medias

Religious
Organizations

Despite its advantages—most notably not having to prescribe a pre-determined and generic
definition of civil society to all contexts—such a minimalist approach does not immunize one
from the next difficult challenge, which is to assess the commitment to democratic ethics by
all these organizations. Conventional wisdom about what constitute civil society and its role
in fostering political change does not address the difficulties of identifying clear mechanisms
through which it can help strengthen political accountability. Across Africa in particular, the
upsurge of civil society has contributed to changing not just the existing political order but
also the prevailing value system—if not the surrounding moral order. Civil society
organizations have contributed both to the quest for freedom and sometimes to the weakening
of democratic ideals.

B. The Production of Negative Social Capital

While the debate over which specific organizations should be considered components of civil
society is likely to remain open-ended, most researchers agree that its role in the
consolidation of a democratic political system should be encouraged. Summing up the
emerging consensus, Diamond (1994) has suggested an interesting framework for assessing
 12

what he calls the ten democratic functions of civil society. His analysis highlights the
educational virtues of a dynamic civil society, the numerous advantages of social
mobilization and participation, the adoption of transparent rules in the political game, and the
recognition and institutionalization of lobbies, which means the emergence of a new type of
political culture focusing on cooperation, bargaining, and accommodation rather than on
conflict and violence. The question is what institutional mechanisms should be put in place to
stimulate these democratic functions.

In the economic sense, civil society’s importance is reinforced by the assertion that a strong
social capital (defined by Putnam as “features of social organization, such as trust, norms,
and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions”)
is a key factor in the process of wealth creation, as it brings large segments of the labor
market in a more efficient production of goods and services. Social capital thus reflects the
strength of civil society, that is, the willingness of individuals from all social groups to
adhere to networks where they can equip themselves with the skills needed to improve their
productivity. As noted by Loury, 13 “opportunity travels along the synapses of these social
networks. Thus, a newborn is severely handicapped if its parents are relatively uninterested in
(or incapable of) fostering the youngster’s intellectual development in the first years of life.
A talented adolescent whose social peer group disdains the activities that must be undertaken
for that talent to flourish is at risk of not achieving his or her full potential. An unemployed
person without friends or relatives already at work in a certain industry may never hear about
the job opportunities available there. An individual’s inherited social situation plays a major
role in determining his or her ultimate economic success.” (2000, p. 77)

While few authors would dispute the sociopolitical and economic importance of civil society
groups, it is unclear what the net result of their intellectual influence actually is in the
production of social capital. How does one assess the legitimacy of the many groups who all
claim to speak on behalf of the people? What are their hidden agendas? How are these
agendas consistent with the collective quest for freedom? What is their level of commitment
to ethics and to the democratic ideal? Do they aim to embody the earnest proclamations of
democracy or to establish alternative spiritual values and impose radically different modes of
social exclusion and violence? Do they really hold the moral high ground as they always
claim? Are civil society groups centripetal forces that stimulate and enhance the construction
 13

of a developmental state, or do they act as centrifugal forces that surreptitiously pull nations
apart? In sum, do civil society groups generate “positive” social capital by contributing to the
consolidation of the democratic process, or do they actually produce “negative” social capital
by serving as underlying currents to the political groups that are simply engaged in the power
struggle? Answers to these questions are obviously difficult to get. Still, the questions need to
be asked in each context before one can conclude that civil society has a net positive or
negative influence on democratic consolidation.

Approaching the notion of social capital from an economic perspective raises even more
questions about the decision-making processes and the ethical considerations in civil society
groups. Traditional economic analysis assumes that human beings are “rational” agents with
a given set of preferences and who act more or less independently, seeking to maximize their
utility (or satisfaction), on the basis of their knowledge and perception of the situation, and
the actions available to them. These assumptions have been very useful in economics,
allowing for a strong theoretical framework for modeling human behavior. Yet we also know
that rationality is bounded in many ways: whether they act as individuals or as civil society
groups, people are not optimal in the way they make political decisions.

In fact, in any given country, politically active citizens are not the rational individuals
described in economic textbooks. They are almost always embedded in complex networks
and hold several different and often conflicting social affiliations. The nature of one’s
involvement in civil society groups often depends on one’s position in the social structure,
due to imperfect political markets for ideas and public policy that necessitate reliance on self-
education and information obtained through personal ties, social externalities mediated by
location and peer associations, psychological processes and other random factors that shape a
person’s outlook on life. As a result, familial and communal resources—which constitute
social and cultural capital—directly influence a person’s acquisition of political knowledge
and ability to contribute effectively to the public debate. A dominant part of one’s political
capital arises from opportunities available in social networks to which one belongs. Empirical
research has shown, for instance, that the lack of access to ethnic networks through which
workers are recruited for jobs in construction and services is a more important cause for
unemployment in the black community in New York than racism by employers (Waldinger,
1996). Just like economic theory now acknowledges the importance of family and
 14

community background in determining individual achievement (Loury, 1977; Becker and

Murphy, 2000, section 1) political theory should take into account the role of an individual’s
inherited social situation and its affiliation in civil society groups in determining his or her
political choices.

Belonging to civil society groups provides people with multiple social identities that often
determine the level and nature of their participation to the political discourse. This raises
several questions: what are the true objectives of these civil society groups? How do they
operate? How consistent are their stated and hidden goals with the national project of
building and sustaining democratic institutions? What type of means do they have at their
disposal to achieve their goals? What is the relationship between self-proclaimed “a-
political” NGOs and political parties with clear ideological agendas that compete fiercely for
power? What type of connections do they entertain with business interests and financial
lobbies, both local and foreign? What kind of support do they gain from international civil
society groups that may not be constrained by national law and regulations?

These questions complicate the assessment of the way civil society groups operate but they
help understand why some of them may not focus on consolidating democratic processes as it
is often assumed. In fact, in places where they have become too powerful, some authoritarian
leaders have even created their own “independent” NGOs. A well-known case was that of
President Mobutu Sese Seko of then Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo). Forced in 1991
by social uprising to concede a national conference to rewrite the rules of the political game
(including the appointment of an independent Prime minister and new government, the
adoption of a new Constitution and electoral timetable), he was able to slowdown the process
of democratic transition by infiltrating the civil society movement: it is estimated that over
half of the newly created NGOs who sent delegates to the national conference were actually
his supporters.

Moreover, because civil society leaders are often political entrepreneurs, some NGOs are
hijacked by and serve as Trojan horses to people who are motivated by the quest for political
power. True, this particular argument is sometimes used by authoritarian leaders who oppose
the kind of political awareness that civil society groups may bring to the people. This was
most notably the case in Cameroon in 1991 when President Paul Biya arbitrarily banned a
 15

large number of civil society organizations that were seen as spreading “subversive ideas”—
including a local affiliate of Human Rights Watch. That strategy has not been used only by
African authoritarian leaders. In recent years, the battle over control of so-called “a-political”
NGOs has made headlines in many different places: Palestinian Authority President and
leader of the Fatah Mahmoud Abbas has banned religious charities in the West Bank,
accusing them of serving as underground political affiliates to rival organization Hamas.
Over the past decade, media organizations and NGOs of various types have been banned in
Vladimir Putin’s Russia for arbitrary reasons. Even in the US, a well-known Islamic charity
has been indicted on terrorism charges, prompting the attorney general to announce that “a
U.S.-based charity that claims to do good works is charged with funding the works of evil.” 14
While some of the crackdown operations on civil society groups are often motivated by
purely partisan or political reasons, it is also undeniable that some organizations that pretend
to work under the civil society umbrella do not adhere to national laws and regulations. Far
from contributing to the emergence of a collective social compact, their actions can actually
generate negative social capital.

The hijacking of civil society by oppressive and totalitarian groups everywhere and the
disaffection with the myths of democracy in many places, including the so-called established
Western democracies, have shed a crude light on the shortcomings of de Tocqueville’s
political theory. It now seems that all human societies are uncivil by nature and capable of
producing simultaneously the kind of positive social capital needed to sustain democratic
consolidation, and also some negative social capital that constraints human freedom. This
raises some difficult questions about how to assess civil society’s role in sociopolitical
transformations, and its contribution to the process of democratic consolidation: How to
disentangle pro-democratic activities by civil society groups from routine power struggle by
political entrepreneurs who hide behind civic or charitable organizations to pursue an often
unethical agenda? In sum, what principles should be taken into account when monitoring the
production of social capital in uncivil societies?

Answering these questions may very well represent a utopian intellectual agenda, as the
conceptual differentiation between “pro” and “anti”-democratic civil society groups is
illusory when put into practice. Besides the fact that it is impossible to measure the degree of
ethical commitment of any civil society group, most of them operate on several levels: they
 16

fight for positioning and for power and can therefore generate negative social capital, even
when they are genuinely involved in great democratic ideals. Western political scientists have
been struggling to label community organizations such as Hezbollah a terrorist group, 15 while
hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon have always considered it the main employer
and only provider of welfare in their neighborhoods. The same is true for Islamic charities
that fund schools on Pakistan or Indian Madrassahs, which are described both as threats to
democratic principles and sole providers of basic public services in poor communities (Ali,
2005; Sikand, 2005).

In fact, a close analysis of the ethical content of the jihad of an international NGO such as Al
Qaeda, as opposed to its purported political intent, reveals that it differs profoundly from
such groups as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah, which aim
to establish fundamentalist Islamic states. With its decentralized structure and emphasis on
moral rather than political action, Al Qaeda may actually have more in common with
multinational corporations, anti-globalization activists, and environmentalist and
organizations that are self-proclaimed defenders of social justice (Devji, 2005). In
metaphysical terms, the Jihad discourse may appear extreme but it de-legitimizes the idea
that certain civil society groups may have monopoly over morals and ethics. The same kind
of ambivalence is found in analyses of controversial civil society organizations throughout
Africa (see for instance Pommerole, 2006).

3. A FRAMEWORK FOR ASSESSING CIVIL SOCIETY

The intrinsically uncivil nature of all human societies and the ambivalence of civic groups
that claim to advance democratic ideals yet can produce negative social capital invalidate de
Tocqueville’s main insight— the assumption that civil society development is closely and
positively correlated to freedom. An effective framework for assessing civil society’s
contribution to democracy should therefore involve at least two steps: an acknowledgement
of the subjective philosophical stance from where the notion of civil society is conceived in
any given context, and a flexible (or minimalist) approach to a normative theory of freedom.
 17

A. Beyond Objectivism

Like most social science concepts that originated during the Enlightenment, civil society was
bound to have some major birth defects as it embodied some of the Kantian themes in general
knowledge and political philosophy that came under heavy criticism during the twentieth
century. Popular approaches to civil society that are derived from mainstream democratic
theory still assume some central truths about the ethics of social norms and the way polity
should be organized. Civil society is expected to be a fully formed construct and the engine
for spreading freedom (as defined in the Western world) and some other values across a
globalized world. 16

Its importance for the strengthening of liberal democracy seems self-evident: political power
is not something possessed by any given individual or subject. Rather, it is a network, grid or
field of relations in which subjects are first constituted as both the products and the agents of
power. “The modern modalities of power are misconceived if they are taken to be essentially
negative, prohibitive instances at the top or the center of the social order, interdicting and
repressing the actions of those below or at the margins.” (Baynes et al., 1987, p. 96) If civil
society is understood as these organizations that enlarge and enrich social dynamics and
political possibilities, then it is certainly a contributing factor to the mitigation of power and
de Tocqueville was certainly justified in claiming that “in democratic countries knowledge of
how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that
of all the others”(de Tocqueville, p. 543).

But the analysis of civil society’s sociopolitical role is superficial and inaccurate if it does not
also focus on its contrasting functions in different contexts, and on some of its undemocratic
natural tendencies. Political power is an essentially positive, productive, and “capillary”—in
the sense that it circulates throughout the cells and the extremities of the social body—
therefore it is an aspect of every social practice, social relation, and social institution
(Foucault, 1980). Civil society is also a platform for the production of socially accepted
truths, which are then used to govern ourselves and others. Under this light, it appears to be a
place where technologies of power are used to achieve “discipline” and “normalization”, to
produce docile and useful bodies and subjects. What makes it more insidious than the other
structures of political power is that it presents itself as a place where individual free will is
 18

expressed, not as the structure of competition and social indoctrination that it really is.
Because civil society itself is atomistic and made up of autonomous subjects, it is naïve to
overlook the presence of the irrational—the economy of desire, the fight for power—in its
rationale. Civil society deserves, therefore, to be questioned and constantly reexamined.

The proposition that democratic consolidation depends only on the strength of civil society
(assumed to be led by ethical leaders) is not only naïve. By prescribing a specific way in
which political reality should be analyzed, that approach to civil society implicitly postulates
a particular conception of reason and validates the Platonic idea of a unique, transcendent
political truth. It is derived from de Tocqueville’s theories of social order and tends to rely
either on the rationalist assumption that we attain knowledge by a process of reasoning from
self-evident first principles, or on empiricism, which assumes that all knowledge comes from
sense perception (see Harbeson, 1994). In both cases, it advocates objectivity as the “normal”
way of analyzing the dynamics of sociopolitical changes. Not surprisingly, it has been
increasingly criticized by African social scientists, who perceive such attempts to impose a
Western-centered philosophical criterion for knowledge to be a mere form of ethnocentrism.
In response, they have offered relativist approaches to the analysis of civil society.

Unfortunately, both the de Tocqueville followers (universalists) and their critics (relativists)
often fall into the trap of objectivism, as they implicitly believe in that political reality exists
as an objective absolute—“facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or
fears,” as Rand put it (2005, p. 12). Yet, the study of civil society dynamics—especially in
the African context—challenges their rather simplistic view that reason is man's only means
of perceiving reality. It is certainly not his only source of knowledge, nor is it his only guide
to action. In fact, the story of African civil society highlights the multiplicity of political
truths, and the fact that democratic change actually originate from struggle, conflicts,
arbitrariness and contingency. In other words, the conditions for democratic consolidation
and the prescription of the role of civil society offered by traditional democratic theory do not
hold in different places and times.

A democratic system—defined as a given set of rules widely accepted to represent the

prevailing value system, and accompanied by a set of shared ethical principles—is therefore a
reflection of social practices, dominant discourses and institutions in which they are
 19

embedded, internal logics, and the collective desire for representation and power. A more
realistic stance in the design of any theory of freedom and democratization would be to
acknowledge and embrace subjectivism: moral judgments on sociopolitical changes in
general and on the role of civil society in particular are fundamentally based on feelings.

B. A Theory of Freedom in Uncivil Societies

Any attempt to design a useful framework for understanding the mechanics of sociopolitical
changes should start with an acknowledgement of the complex genealogy of freedom. Only
by understanding why and how freedom was initially constructed as a supreme social value
and how it maintained its preeminence can we highlight the role of civil society
organizations.

The main evidence of the uncivil character of all human societies is the fact that freedom has
not always been the powerful value that it has become. It is probably an exaggeration to
assert that personal liberty is a “modern” concept and that there seems to be scarcely any
discussion of individual liberty as a conscious political ideal (as opposed to its actual
practice) in the ancient world (Berlin, 1958). But it is true that for most of human history,
freedom was not among the top social goals. Other values and ideals such as nationalism,
imperial grandeur, the pursuit of glory, faith, justice, material well-being or even hedonism
and nirvana were of much greater importance (Patterson, 1991). In fact, it was only in the
course of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. in ancient Greece, at the dawn of the so-called
Western civilization, that freedom became an important goal to be pursued (Raaflaub,.2004).
That new quest was neither a linear nor a smooth process, as it took several centuries for the
idea of freedom to prevail. It was not until a couple of centuries ago that it became the most
dominant value of Western civilization.

Three closely interrelated and sometimes conflicting ideas constitute freedom: 17 Personal
freedom, which gives a person the sense of not being coerced or restrained by another person
and also the conviction to do as one pleases—within the limit of other people’s desire to do
the same; sovereign freedom, which is the power to act as one pleases if possible, regardless
of the wishes of others. 18 Civic freedom is the opportunity that one has to participate in all
forms of social life and to be involved in community affairs—it should be noted that
 20

“participative politics is a necessary but not sufficient condition for civic freedom”
(Patterson, 1991, p. 4.).

If one agrees with the argument that freedom was generated from the experience of slavery
(Davis, 1988; Pohlenz, 1966, Patterson, 1991), then the question becomes what were the
channels of transmission from one to the other, and how the social dialectics of personal,
sovereign and civic freedom played out. This is where civil society—or what later came to be
known as such—enters into play. Just like slavery never existed in a social vacuum, freedom
only became an enduring social value with the support of the most influential community
groups. Both in the western world and elsewhere, it was debated, opposed vehemently, and
subsequently institutionalized through formal and informal social networks. Civil society
groups played an essential role in this process, as they offered a platform for sorting out the
various ideas in competition in the sociopolitical sphere and eventually helped sustain the
most enduring ones. They contributed to the strengthening of institutions 19 and helped spread
the ideal of freedom. It has now been well documented, for instance, that women groups and
religious organizations played a key role in the invention of personal freedom and enshrining
it in the collective consciousness of people in imperial Rome. Since the French and the
American Revolutions, it has also became clear that a key ingredient in the design of a stable
political system valuing freedom is the acceptance of a set of rules by the most influential
social groups. In other words, political rules are as strong as the underlying level of general
consent that legitimizes them (Rémond, 1979). While civil society is not ethically one-
dimensional as implied by mainstream democratic theory, it has eventually provided the
space for the diffusion of freedom.

Recent experience of sociopolitical transformations in African also confirms that civil society
groups have helped advance the cause of freedom and the democratic ideal, despite their
fragmentation and relative fragility. As the space for exchange and debate on matters related
to citizenship and public life, civil society groups have disseminated all these three features
of freedom: By promoting values from the Habeas corpus, they have contributed to the
strengthening of personal freedom. By offering the opportunity to publicly discuss the
distribution of power among social groups, they have often served as platforms for mediating
issues of sovereign freedom. By clarifying and promoting the rights and duties attached to
citizenship, they have extended the realm of civic freedom. The process has not been, by any
 21

means, a smooth one. In fact, there has been constant hesitation between conflicting goals
and even some backsliding in the collective quest for freedom. Because civil society is by
nature heterogeneous—its components are fundamentally diverse in their goals—and produces
both positive and negative social capital, the democratic consolidation process is often more
circular than linear in nature. Indeed, any step forward can be followed by a setback, for
movement here is a reflection of the clash of different social groups' conflicting interests – those
who stand to lose out are unlikely to give up the status quo without a fight.

But by and large, civil society groups appear to have played their role as vectors of major
social movements of all kinds. Working under the influence of external stakeholders
(international NGOs, foreign medias), political and community groups (voluntary
associations, traditional institutions), religious groups, business interests (trade unions,
business associations, lobbies) and external stakeholders (international NGOs) have often
coalesced to produce sufficient amount of positive social capital throughout Africa. Together,
they have pushed away the boundaries of authoritarianism.

Figure 2. Civil Society Dynamics and Social Capital: a Five-Force Model

External Stakeholders

Political and
Community Groups

Net Social
Capital
produced by
Religious Civil Society Medias
Organizations

Business Interests
 22

Democratization is by nature a continuing and ongoing process (Monga, 2002). Therefore,

the major question ahead is whether civil society will be able to generate enough positive
social capital to sustain the quest for freedom. Civil society will need to play a net positive
role in each of the three phases of the process:
The design of the new system the transition seeks to install, that is, the formulation of
the judicial and institutional framework in which the political game will henceforth take
place. This stage allows influential actors on the political scene to express their fears,
ambitions, and interests. It is also the time when the processes of inclusion and exclusion
are elaborated that will later determine the winners and losers of the game. The new
architecture of power is developed during this phase. Political parties tend to use and
rely on civil society groups to extend their influence in this first, crucial phase.

The implementation of the texts codified during the previous stage, texts that were
judged to be satisfactory by the main political actors and that motivate (or obligate) them
to honour their commitments. At this stage, the institutions that have been crafted – sites
and structures of public responsibility – are brought into dynamic equilibrium. The
instruments of power and the coercive apparatus (the military and security forces),
together with incentives (systems of social and political promotion), now take on their
assigned roles. The rules of communication between social groups are tested out. Civil
society groups usually serve as watchdogs.

The maintenance, over the years, of the democratic system that has been implemented.
This assumes the existence of built-in mechanisms designed to deal with unforeseen
events and to ensure continued public support for the idea of a democratic society. This
third function allows for democratic consolidation over time. The true strength and
effectiveness of the new citizenry born of the democratic process can then be measured.
The political culture of the leaders (and not that of the population, to which it is difficult
to assign any real content), the flexibility of the system and its ability to renew itself, and
the feeling of collective well-being condition the success of this third stage of the
 23

process. Civil society plays a key role in the monitoring of socio-political progress,
documents grievances from all social groups and finds ways to put them on the national
agenda.

In that three-step process, democratic consolidation and the quest for freedom in each country
depend on the capabilities of the national political system which itself is a reflection of the
strengths and weaknesses of civil society. For the emergence of efficient political markets, the
system must exhibit the ability to invent, which allows a political system to expand its creativity
and to mobilize all the human, material and financial resources necessary to bring together
political supply and demand. New leaders emerge and through their actions and ideas, change
the dynamics of political supply and demand. Civil society per se tends to have a very limited
role in this initial phase. The system must also be able to mediate, that is, the capacity to arbitrate
the conflicts that mark all democratic transitions. It is the measure of the actual effectiveness of
the rules adopted by the consensus of the largest possible number of political actors. This is
where the role of civil society groups pursuing conflicting objectives sometimes with unethical
means becomes dominant. It is usually unclear what kind of social capital (positive or negative)
will eventually be the net effect of this dynamics. Third, the system must be able to adapt, that
is, the political system's capacity to reinvent itself whenever new social demands must be
integrated into the system. This serves to guarantee the continued feeling of legitimacy
necessary for the survival of the system. Civil society plays a crucial role in determining
whether any democratic system is eventually able to endure.

4. CONCLUSION

The concept of civil society has enjoyed much success in the social sciences in recent
years—especially because of the role that it supposedly played in the rise of the Third Wave
of democratization. Yet, mainstream democratic theory has struggled to define it
convincingly, and to outline its functions in the collective quest for freedom. The reason is
that the concept originated from the Hegelian, one-dimensional view of history, and carried
the heavy baggage of ethnocentrism associated with the Enlightenment. Not surprisingly,
many researchers from the non-Western world have adopted radically different approaches to
 24

civil society, often by opposing relativist definitions of civil society to what they perceived as
a tyranny of universalism.

Going beyond the objectivism that underlines the views from both sides, this paper has
attempted to offer a more flexible framework to civil society and an analysis of the
mechanics of freedom. It concludes that its role in fostering sociopolitical changes cannot be
denied. But the argument here differs from mainstream theory of democratic consolidation on
at least two important points: first, civil society plays an important role in diffusing social
norms and social values but not necessarily in generating them. Moreover, some civil society
groups might actually work against the diffusion of freedom and the process democratic
consolidation. The production of social capital, which is the final outcome of the struggle
between these forces, is often uncertain.

Second, civil society is neither monolithic in the values that it endorses and advertises, nor is
its march towards a democratic horizon a linear one. In de Toqueville’s America of the
1830s, slavery was in full force as a system of brutality and coercion denying millions of
people the right to citizenship. While the abolitionist movement that emerged in the early
1830s was vocal and insistent on an immediate end to slavery, other civil society
organizations such as the one later known as the Ku Klux Klan dominated the political and
associational life. Yet, de Tocqueville could describe America as “the government of a
democracy [that] brings the notion of political rights to the level of the humblest citizens” (de
Tocqueville, p. 472). Such statements may well have been signs of an extraordinary dose of
naiveté or cynicism on his part. They could also simply reflect the fact he missed the
fundamentally uncivil nature of all human societies, and the limited role that associations and
other non-governmental organizations actually play in the process of social change.
 25

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1
T. Paine considered civil society to be “a natural condition of freedom” and the last line of defense against state
despotism. Keene, 1988.
2
K. Annan, Speech at the 2005 World Summit General Assembly, September 14, 2005.The UN’s Department of Public
Information now has a special section for civil society issues. Arguing that “the growth of civil society has been one of
the most significant trends in international development”, the World Bank has also created a special website that
provides information on its evolving relationship with civil society organizations around the world. Many academic
institutions have done the same thing. Pioneering institutions in this domain are the Johns Hopkins University Center
for Civil Society and the London School of Economics Centre for Civil Society, which seeks to improve understanding
and the effective functioning of not-for-profit, philanthropic, or civil society organizations throughout the world in
order to enhance the contribution these organizations can make to democracy and the quality of human life.
3
See Putnam et al., 2000. Their data confirm the intuitions already laid out in M. Crozier et al. , 1975.
4
Cohen and Arato, op. cit,. is a notable exception.
5
Coleman (1988) defined social capital as “people’s ability to work together in groups”. Fukuyama (2002) defines the
concept more broadly to include “any instance in which people cooperate for common ends on the basis of shared
informal norms and values. I prefer to define it here as people’s ability to work together and voluntarily in groups
towards freedom, democratic consolidation and other ethical goals. This allows for the distinction between positive and
negative social capital.
6
According to Calhoun (1992), London had 3,000 coffee houses by the first decade of the 18th century, each with a
core of regulars. Conversations in these little circles branched out into affairs of state administration and politics. In
Germany, table societies drew together academics and laymen. In France, salons located in private homes brought
together aristocrats and other social groups. On the claim to full accessibility, it must be stressed that the so-called
revisionist historiography suggests a much darker picture of the bourgeois public sphere than the one described by
Habermas. Women of all classes and ethnicities were excluded from political participation while plebeian men were
excluded on the basis of property qualifications. See Fraser (1992).
7
See Rosanvallon and Viveret, 1977. See also Gramsci, 1977, whose theory of hegemony also builds the distinction
between political society (political institutions) and civil society (the non-state or private sphere, including the
economy). He recognizes that his conceptual categorization does not hold in practice, as political and civil society
overlap.
8
While this distinction between governments and NGOs may seem straightforward, the question could be raised in
some contexts where ruling entities are dominated by/or essentially reflect the philosophy and implement the agenda of
specific non-governmental organizations. This was the case for instance in Iran after the 1979 Revolution or in
Afghanistan under the Taliban. It is also the case in Somalia today.
9
See the Report of the Panel of Eminent Persons on United Nations-Civil Society Relations, We the Peoples: Civil
Society, the United Nations and Global Governance (A/58/817), released on June 21, 2004; and the Letter to the UN
Secretary General dated Sep. 1, 2004, http://www.un-ngls.org/10901joint.pdf
10
The Centre stresses that this definition should not be interpreted as a rigid statement See
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CCS/what_is_civil_society.htm
11
Several French-speaking countries such as Benin, Gabon, Congo, Congo/Zaire, Chad, Niger, Togo, avoided civil
wars in 1990 and 1991 because of the mediating role played by respected religious leaders. Cf. C. Monga, 1996b.
 30

12
Founded in 1986 as the successor to Alice Lakwena’s guerilla group Holy Spirit Movement, the LRA has called for
the overthrow of the Ugandan government and its replacement with a regime run on the basis of the Ten
Commandments. More frequently, however, Joseph Krony, its current leader who claims to have supernatural powers
and to receive messages from spirits, has spoken of the liberation of the Acholi people who he sees as oppressed by the
“foreign” government of Uganda. See US Department of States (2004). For an analysis of the social and historical
contexts which gave rise to that movement and the use of spirituality by its founders, see Allen, 1991.
13
Loury is widely credited for coining the term social capital in his seminal 1977 piece.
14
Statement by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft on July 27, 2004. The charges included conspiracy, providing
material support to a foreign terrorist organization, tax evasion and money laundering. The 42-count indictment,
returned by a federal grand jury in Dallas, Texas, alleged that the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development
provided more than $12.4 million to individuals and organizations linked to Hamas from 1995 to 2001. The U.S.
government froze the charity's assets in December 2001.
15
See Harrik, 2005. A much more nuanced analysis is provided by Saad-Ghorayeb, 2002.
16
Mamdani (1996, p. 13) notes that “the current discourse on civil society resembles an earlier discourse on socialism.
It is more programmatic than analytical, more ideological than historical.”
17
I borrow this idea of “tripartite freedom” from O. Patterson.
18
Observing that “most human beings […] desire to control not only their own lives but also the lives of others”, B.
Russell dismisses these impulses from the domain of freedom (1940, p. 259). But such a moral argument is irrelevant
from a purely political science or sociological perspective.
19
Institutions are defined here in the sense suggested by D.C. North, that is, “the rules of the game in a society or, more
formally, […] humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction.” (1990, p. 3).