Carothers, Thomas and William Barndt. "Civil Society". Foreign Policy, No.117 (1999): 18-29.

Carothers, Thomas and William Barndt. "Civil Society". Foreign Policy, No.117 (1999): 18-29.

• The modern idea of civil society is a concern from the English and Scottish Enlightenment, representing a domain separate from the state where citizens expressed their interests. The term largely fall into disuse until the work of Antonio Gramsci motivated the reincorporation of the term into revolutionary political circles, which became popular after the fall of the Berlin Wall (18-19).
• Non-governmental organizations [NGOs] have been the epicenter of public excitement with civil society. However, the authors object that NGOs represent only a narrow band of civil society; which also includes political parties, professional associations, labour unions, and any other voluntary association (19).
• Most NGOs in developing countries represent only a small minority of elite interests, and accordingly depend on international aid rather than domestic support for their activities. Instead other civil society organizations, such as labour unions and religious organizations, have more support and influence in developing countries (20).
• Civil society represents a true diversity of societal interests and causes, including 'bad' causes such as organized crime, hate groups, or proto-fascist movements. Moreover, the interests of society are contested and civil society will almost never have a single unified cause or idea (20-21).
• The internationalization of civil society has also had positive effects on these sort of groups. Hate groups have connected across borders, as have extremists. Organized crime has quickly become the most internationalized group of civil society organizations (27-28).
• The idea that a strong civil society promotes democratic institutions has been popular since at least the early 1990s, but other work -- such as Dr. Sheri Berman's article on civil society in Weimar Germany -- demonstrates that outsized civil society can actual reflect the weakness of a state and allow powerful non-state movements, like fascism, to seize the institutions of the weakened state more easily (21, 23).
• Similarly, a strong democratic state does not guarantee the development of a strong civil society. Developed democracies like Japan, France, and Spain experience very low levels of participation in civil society (23).
• Some have argued that civil society results in a stronger economy because businesses are able to better organize and express their interests, but this pattern is not clearly shown. South Korea had one of the largest economic expansions in history under a brutal dictatorship, while countries with diverse and strong civil societies like Bangladesh still have stagnant economies (24).
• A well-developed civil society representing different interests can grow alongside a developed economy, however this does not imply causality, and strong civil society groups like labour unions likely hinter growth as often as they foster increased growth (24).
• "A major comparative study of nonprofit sectors, sponsored by Johns Hopkins University, found that, 'Government is thus almost twice as significant a source of income for American non- profit organizations as is private giving, despite the presence there of numerous large foundations and corporate giving programs" (26).
• Certain figures have imagined that a growth of civil society will result in a new post-Westphalian world were minimalist states are secondary to powerful civil society groups, but empirical evidence has demonstrated that weak states retard the success of civil society groups, which largely depend on states to enforce their beliefs through law (26).
• Civil society is increasingly international, however this phenomenon is neither as new as many assume. Religious organizations like the Roman Catholic Church have been transnational for centuries. Furthermore, most international civil society organizations do not represent 'global' interests, they reflect the cultural assumptions and interests of the predominantly Western societies they are based in (27).