Received wisdom suggests that social organizations (such as non-government organizations, NGOs) have the power to upend the political status quo. However, in many authoritarian contexts, such as ...China, NGO emergence has not resulted in this expected regime change. In this book, Timothy Hildebrandt shows how NGOs adapt to the changing interests of central and local governments, working in service of the state to address social problems. In doing so, the nature of NGO emergence in China effectively strengthens the state, rather than weakens it. This book offers a groundbreaking comparative analysis of Chinese social organizations across the country in three different issue areas: environmental protection, HIV/AIDS prevention, and gay and lesbian rights. It suggests a new way of thinking about state-society relations in authoritarian countries, one that is distinctly co-dependent in nature: governments require the assistance of NGOs to govern while NGOs need governments to extend political, economic and personal opportunities to exist.
Engagement with Russian civil society is the least contested part of the EU’s current and expected future approach to Russia. There is broad agreement on the need to conduct a dialogue with Russian ...citizens and to facilitate people-to-people contacts, as well as to support civil society as such. However, this general goal is not fully matched by a clear understanding of what the basic features and sentiments of Russian society are today. This article seeks to sketch an unvarnished picture of Russian society, knowledge of which is essential for the effective design and successful conduct of any engagement activities (their formats, channels of communication and content). The key problems include the lack of enthusiasm among ordinary Russians for the European project, and their growing confusion—fuelled by authoritarian control and disinformation—about European institutions and norms.
South Africa's Suspended Revolution tells the story of South Africa's democratic transition and the prospects for the country to develop a truly inclusive political system. Beginning with an account ...of the transition in the leadership of the African National Congress from Thabo Mbeki to Jacob Zuma, the book then broadens its lens to examine the relationship of South Africa's political elite to its citizens. It also examines the evolution of economic and social policies through the democratic transition, as well as the development of a postapartheid business community and a foreign policy designed to re-engage South Africa with the world community. Written by one of South Africa's leading scholars and political commentators, the book combines historical and contemporary analysis with strategies for an alternative political agenda. Adam Habib connects the lessons of the South African experience with theories of democratic transition, social change, and conflict resolution. Political leaders, scholars, students, and activists will all find material here to deepen their understanding of the challenges and opportunities of contemporary South Africa.
•We present a novel tripartite framework for understanding civil society organisations’ engagement with services in the MENA region.•We argue that services play a crucial, yet highly varied, role in ...CSOs’ efforts to mobilise and build legitimacy.•Service provision has a mixed role because it can be used to bolster the legitimacy of both CSOs that are critical of existing powerholders and those that are supportive of them.•Inadequate service provision acts as an important focal point for protests that challenge the status quo.•These patterns suggest that CSOs’ engagement with services has potentially important impacts on peace and conflict dynamics.
How and why do civil society organisations (CSOs) engage with service delivery and with what consequences for political change in conflict-affected contexts? Most existing work in this area focuses on specialist NGO service provision, concluding that this remains a relatively apolitical sphere of activity with little relevance for peace and conflict dynamics. By examining the experience of CSOs in three countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, we show that engagement with services plays a crucial, yet highly varied and hitherto under-studied, role in these organisations’ efforts to build legitimacy and pursue their political goals, with potentially important implications for peace and conflict dynamics. By bringing literature on social movements into conversation with research on NGOs and civil society in conflict settings, and drawing on interviews with key informants, we develop a novel tripartite framework for understanding civil society engagement with service delivery. We identify three main patterns where CSOs’ engagement with services contributes to political change and highlight the dynamic interaction between these three patterns: providing to initiate a challenge (where services provision is used as a means of establishing new organisations that are critical of the status quo by bolstering community-level legitimacy), protesting (where services are used as a focal point for critical groups’ mobilisation and coalition building) and providing to reinforce (where groups that are supportive of the status quo use civil society service provision to shore up support). We show that in the MENA region, civil society’s engagement with service delivery makes an important but mixed contribution to political change. While it can contribute indirectly to political transformation by cultivating the legitimacy of new civil society groups or provide a focal point for a wider critique of the status quo, it can also undermine a shift towards political transformation by entrenching the position of existing elites.
The establishment of an efficace child protection system requires social policies to mobilize the resources of the populations to make them agents of change of their own situation. Social work is the ...most important part of all protection systems. It constitutes the responses provided in terms of services, programs and human resources that would help to atenuate risk situations, vulnerability factors and their negative impact on children and their families. The aim of this study, using documents devoted to the responses provided to childhood deprived of family in Algeria, is to summarize the mechanisms and child protection devices, the efficacy of these responses, the main difficulties encountered, and propositions concerning social work.
The Legitimacy of new Regionalism in the European Integration Process István-József POLGÁR; Mircea BRIE (Coordinators)
Analele Universitatii din Oradea. Relatii internationale si Studii europene,
01/2023, Letnik:
Supplement of the Annals University of Oradea. International Relations and European Studies, Številka:
III
Book, Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
European borders have gone through allot of changes in terms of understanding the space of a culture, race, religion, city or nation. Growing from physical walls, intense militarized areas to a ...formal understanding of regions with no physical boundaries or restrictions of any kind, the frontier or the border, has been an area of the utmost importance to the different branches of science. The issue of cross-border cooperation in general goes beyond geographical, economic and legal approaches. If we intend to treat the phenomenon from a specific point of view, we will find ambiguities and uncertainties regarding the role and functioning of some institutions in the process of cross-border cooperation and partnerships. The international conference volume entitled „The Legitimacy of New Regionalism in the European integration process”, through its 4 chapters and 30 articles is focusing on, the role of civil society in the democratization and European Integration Process of Central and Eastern Europe; the role of regional, transnational and cross‐border co-operation in the European integration process; security versus openness of borders. Social, confessional and cultural differences between communities and new policy trends and civil initiatives in South Eastern Europe. The present volume contains the papers of the international Jean Monnet conference “The Legitimacy of new Regionalism in the European Integration Process”, held in Oradea between 4th-5th of May 2023, organized by the Department of International Relations and European Studies, University of Oradea with the support of the European Commission.
h4Studies the impact neo-traditionalism has on the religious and political subjectivities of Muslims in the West/h4ulliShows the importance of neo-traditionalism in the changing conceptions of ...religious orthodoxy, religious authority and spirituality for young Muslims in the West/liliStudies primarily – although not exclusively – three neo-traditionalist shaykhs: Hamza Yusuf, Abdal Hakim Murad and Umar Faruq Abd-Allah/li liAnalyses how neo-traditionalist shaykhs construct the notion of ‘tradition’ concerning what they perceive to have been lost in modernity/li liExamines the political implications to their critiques of modernity – as it pertains to political quietism, race and gender/li/ulpExamining Muslim neo-traditionalist scholars in the West and their community of young seekers of sacred knowledge, Walaa Quisay explores the emerging trend within Anglo-American Islam that emphasises the importance of ‘tradition’. This book focuses on spiritual retreats hosted by three main shaykhs – Hamza Yusuf, Abdal Hakim Murad and Umar Faruq Abd-Allah – to examine how religious authority is formed and affirmed./ppThrough interviews with seekers who have attended retreats, the author sheds light on how discourses are shaped and practised and analyses how neo-traditionalist shaykhs construct the notion of ‘tradition’ concerning what they perceive to have been lost in modernity. The importance is highlighted of neo-traditionalism in the changing conceptions of religious orthodoxy, religious authority and spirituality for young Muslims in the West, and Quisay examines the political implications to the shaykhs’ critiques of modernity as it pertains to political quietism, race and gender./p
Chinese civil society groups have achieved iconic policy advocacy successes in the areas of environmental protection, women’s rights, poverty alleviation, and public health. This book examines why ...some groups are successful in policy advocacy within the authoritarian context, while others fail. A mechanism of cultural resonance is introduced as an innovative theoretical framework to systematically compare interactions between Chinese civil society and the government in different movements. It is argued that civil society advocacy results depend largely on whether advocators can achieve cultural resonance with policymakers and the mainstream public through their social performances. The effective performance is the one in which advocators employ symbols embraced by the audience (policymakers and the public) in their actions and framings. While many studies have tried to explain the phenomena of successful policy advocacy in China through institutional or organizational factors, this book not only contains extensive empirical data based on field research, but takes a cultural sociological turn to identify the meaning-making process behind advocacy actions. Civil Society in China will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, political science, social work, and Chinese and Asian studies more broadly. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license
In dem aktuell geführten Diskurs um den ‚Shrinking Space‘ von Zivilgesellschaft wird bereits sprachlich durch den Begriff, wie auch thematisch, ein Rückgang zivilgesellschaftlichen Handelns ...appliziert. Die Angriffe auf den Raum der Zivilgesellschaft, so die Diagnose vieler Autor*innen, müssen als zunehmendes und global verbreitetes Problem gesehen werden. Dennoch lässt sich empirisch das Wachstum vieler Zivilgesellschaften beobachten. Diese Annahmen muten in der Gleichzeitigkeit paradox an und führen häufig zu analytischer Verwirrung. Ich argumentiere in diesem Artikel, dass sich dieses Paradox auflösen lässt, indem man sich zum einen eingesteht (1), dass der Begriff
nur als kritischer, nicht jedoch als deskriptiver Begriff verwendet werden sollte, und zum anderen (2), dass eine adäquate Beschreibung des Handlungsraums von Zivilgesellschaft verlangt, diesen als multidimensionalen Dynamikbereich zu verstehen, der von unterschiedlichen gesellschaftlich-politischen Entwicklungen und Akteur*innen in seiner Kontingenz beeinflusst wird. Ich schlage vor, deswegen besser von
zu sprechen.
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