CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY
Keywords:
civil society organizations, nongovernmental organizations, democracy, representation, accountability, social capitalAbstract
Often requests in political science literature for stabilization and deepening of democracy through bigger role of civil society organizations (CSOs) require questioning the relationship between these actors and people, as well as the relationship between this idea with democracy. This work presents complicated relations between civil society and its organizations and democracy through different understandings of theorists, with emphasize on their comprehensions of democracy, important for understanding the role of civil society in its development. Even it is clear that more influential CSOs, such as nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) and organized political movements are not the same as the whole civil society sector, as well as that civil society sector is not the same as often mentioned civil society, in assessing democratic potential of civil society I was more concentrated on these organizations because they are obviously able to play much more important political role than the rest of the sector.
After that, I critically analyzed mentioned arguments. For that reason I also used authors who were mostly skeptical about civil society organizations as important democratic actors, or who were even afraid of greater role of civil society organizations in politics. While I only explained the strongest arguments for CSOs as democratic actors, I supported the claim from the critique that civil society has mostly been idealized, or not connected with the real organizations who often suffer from many defects. As main disadvantages of civil society organizations I identified their dependence on donors, partial representation and often negligence of common people’s interests and attitudes, as well as the fact that nothing guaranties that the real organizations are going to spread positive social capital.
In conclusion I tried to identified the real place of these organizations in development of democracy, establish criteria for assessing the nature of civil sector and its democratic potential and criteria which state should use when deciding about cooperation with individual CSO. As the basic conditions for democratic contribution of whole civil sector I emphasized that it (with some exceptions) ought to follow the social needs, represent the attitudes widespread in society and develop positive social capital. Individual organizations, on the other side, should be tolerated when they represent voices different from majority, but state shouldn’t include them in decision making process if they represent attitudes strange to majority of people influenced by decisions. Also they should be accountable to chosen groups and others influenced by their work, while accountability to donors should be limited on utilization of gained resources. These criteria could also be useful as standards for other researchers.
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