Civil Society Mobilization Research Articles

Evolution of Civil Society in Kuwait (1961–2020)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the development of civil society in Kuwait, one of the oil–producing monarchies of the Gulf region, which was distinguished by a high degree of civic activity. The purpose of the article is to trace the stages of the development of civil society in the context of domestic and international situation dynamics. The role of several key political events from the history of the country in the direction of civil activism of its inhabitants is shown The first stage refers to the period when the country gained political independence. At that time, the formation of civil society was influenced by the Kuwaiti crisis, when Iraq put forward claims to Kuwait as part of its state, which led to the growth of civil consciousness.The next stage was the period following the Iraqi aggression against the country in August 1990, creating another factor of civil society mobilization aimed at resisting the occupiers and protecting its national identity. Its further transformation takes place during the mass protests of 2011, to the present state. At that time, civil activity in Kuwait reached a peak level, especially among youth groups, but soon began to decline under the influence of turbulence that became reality of the region and related threats to society as a whole. Mass protests demonstrated that civil activity in Kuwait reached a peak level, especially among youth groups, but soon began to decline under the influence of turbulence that engulfed the region and related threats to society as a whole. The non-governmental organizations that emerged at that time were fragmentary. Most of them were created on the basis of the interests of small groups that solved tasks that had no significance for the broad strata of Kuwaiti society.

Управление цифровой социально-политической повесткой дня в онлайн-пространстве: субъекты, технологии и результаты

The aim of the study is to identify and characterize the actors, factors, technologies and results of managing the online social and political agenda and to propose models of its management to public authorities. The model of online agenda, developed by the authors, was tested on the empirical data of the ‘Constitution’ case. The empirical basis for the study of the digital agenda (March–September 2020) was 1,150 million messages on Twitter and Facebook, the news content (5,000 publications) of the major national agencies Interfax, RIA Novosti and TASS, and the accounts of 460,000 users.
 To identify technological methods of building and managing the socio-political agenda on the Internet and assess their effectiveness, the authors used methods of network, visual and linguistic analysis (content analysis, semantic analysis of hashtags in the obtained arrays of empirical data).
 As a result, conclusions were made on three strategies to manage the online agenda: the stra­tegy of engagement (expanding the range of issues covered and equal emphasis on a variety of topics to involve more participants in the discourse); the strategy of pragmatic modelling (narrowing the range of issues covered with uneven emphasis on topics, i.e. maintaining a focus only on certain concepts of issues covered); strategy of discursive substitution (complete transformation of the digital socio-political and political ‘Constitution’ agenda and its replacement with other connected topics).
 The study revealed the intersections and divergences between the discourse shaped by civil society and the official media, and, as a result, revealed the content and vectors that shape the online socio-political agenda. Obviously, the existence of divergent vectors in the digital socio-political agenda, especially in crisis and emergency situations, prevents social and political system stabilization and civil society mobilization for constructive social practices.

Social Change Philanthropy: The Role Of Rumah Zakat In Mobilizing Muslim Civil Society Against Poverty

Currently, the problem of poverty is one of the social problems in Indonesia. Therefore, it needs a strategy to solve it. The purpose of this paper is to present an approach of Rumah Zakat aimed at mobilizing civil society in reducing the poverty gap. This study used the descriptive method and qualitative analysis. The data source was secondary data collected from documents and texts related to the topic, be it books, articles, newspapers, and journals. This study found the that socio-economic empowerment of Rumah Zakat had a role in providing social change in the communities where the contribution of the program’s productive implementation has an impact in reducing the depth severity of poverty in Indonesia. The provision of voluntary charity through empowering programs in Muslim civil society is needed to bring welfare to the communities

Transitional Justice and Corporate Accountability: Introducing New Players and New Theoretical Challenges

Corporate accountability for complicity in past and ongoing gross violations of human rights and economic crimes is a rapidly growing area of interest in the transitional justice field. Addressing such violations and their role in fueling conflict and repression is now recognized as a key component of societies’ efforts to come to terms with the past, and, perhaps even more importantly, creating the conditions for non-recurrence of violent conflict and human rights abuses. Truth commissions have increasingly included such economic violations in their mandates, and corporate actors have been the focus of a number of high-profile court cases. Such civil claims and criminal cases appear to offer limited redress thus far, but the normative landscape of transitional justice is shifting, both at national and international levels. Scholarly interest has spiked, as illustrated in the review essay in this volume by Evelyne Owiye Asaala, which highlights three new volumes that unpack recent developments. We also see increased civil society mobilization to demand that corporate actors are held to account and contribute to reparations. In some cases, the amounts that corporate actors can or will contribute to compensate survivors dwarf the financial contribution to reparations funds by governments, demonstrating not just their potential contribution to transitional justice, but the scope of their liability for past abuses.1

Misinformation in childbirth and online exchanges: support among generational peers

The objective of this study was to investigate the role of online exchanges and the support of generational peers in childbirth. Researchers conducted a qualitative study by way of a collective case study (Stake, 2016), in which researchers analyzed 30 childbirth accounts published on personal blogs about pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood experiences, 15 of which were written by women and 15 by men. The results pointed to a scenario of misinformation about childbirth in Brazil and the power of online sharing among generational peers in terms of a support network during the transition to parenthood and the mobilization of civil society to change the childbirth assistance situation in Brazil. Share childbirth experiences is a powerful resource of psychological support for those who are about to give birth. Researchers highlight the importance of the appropriate health agencies promoting encounters at health centers that foster sharing between pregnant persons. Researchers emphasize that there were changes in support networks during the transition to parenthood, currently leading to a search for identity references predominantly in generational peers.

The European Parliament and Civil Society in EU Trade Negotiations: The Untold Story of an Erratic Engagement

The article calls into question the picture that is often uncritically depicted around the European Parliament (EP) and civil society as newly empowered actors and consistent advocates of citizens’ interests in EU trade negotiations. The contribution of the article is twofold. First, it provides a comparative and empirical account of the mobilization of the EP and civil society across the negotiations of the new generation EU trade agreements. It shows that a common thread has been an erratic engagement, along the lines of politicization: the EP has only been vocal in response to civil society mobilization; and civil society mobilization in turn has been inconsistent, even though some contested issues were common to all trade negotiations. Second, the article sheds light on improvements in democratic treaty-making practices that emerged as a result of the mobilization of the EP and civil society. While drawing some lessons on EU trade law-making going forward, the article calls for a more modest appraisal of the legacy of these newly emerged democratic practices. EU trade negotiations, international treaty-making, European Parliament, civil society, mobilization, CETA, TTIP, EU-Singapore FTA, EU-Japan EPA

Establishing political priority for global mental health: a qualitative policy analysis.

Mental disorders represent the leading cause of disability worldwide, yet they remain a low global health priority. This paper uses a case study methodology and different data sources (35 interviews and documents) to analyse factors that have shaped the generation of political priority for global mental health over the past three decades (1990–2020) and their changes over time. The Shiffman and Smith framework on determinants of political priority for global health issues is used to organize data into themes: actor power, ideas, political context and issue characteristics. Global mental health has gained political attention, especially over the past decade, yet support remains limited. Findings reveal that actor power is undermined by a fragmented policy community, the absence of one guiding institution or coordination mechanism and little civil society mobilization. Public portrayal of the issue is divided, hampered by the absence of a common understanding by the community and by stigma. Some policy windows have been missed and a strong global governance structure is lacking. Credible indicators and evidence on simple cost-effective solutions, especially in low- and middle-income countries, are scarce. However, opportunities are arising, including an increasing number of leaders and grassroots organizations, multiple arguments for action and integrated solutions resonating with broader audiences, widening political support at the national level, an emerging global governance structure and an expanding evidence base on the scale of the problem and available solutions. The results point to three technical and four political challenges that advocates need to address to increase political support over the next decade.

Politics of Disavowal: Megaprojects, Infrastructural Biopolitics, Disavowed Subjects

Focusing on the construction of Lamu Port as a focal point of the Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor in Kenya, this article explores how megainfrastructures are entangled with processes of life-making and -unmaking, thus producing specific subject dispositions within a state’s infrastructural biopolitics as infrastructure-based capacitation and control of national populations. Analyzing sociopolitical effects of state-led megaprojects, civil society mobilization, and livelihoods of artisanal fishermen, the article develops a theoretical account of a politics of disavowal—a tacit denial of a state-admitted responsibility and support to vulnerable populations that, despite formal inclusion into the state’s development visions, are rendered constitutively absent within biopolitical spatialities of life advanced by the state. Thereby, the article triangulates the binary of bio- and necropolitics standardly deployed in multiple theorizations of (re)production of liberal capitalist life in geographical and interdisciplinary literatures on biopolitics, necropolitics, or politics of infrastructure. It specifically foregrounds how governance of vulnerable, expendable populations does not oscillate between intentional life- and death-making, flourishing and effacement, bio and necro but unfolds as a politics of disavowal—a confluence of formal recognition and material neglect by the state, expressed as a dialectic of presence and absence, inclusion and neglect.

Local perception and attitude toward community forest concessions in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The effects of community forestry on biodiversity conservation and local development have been highlighted in Africa and elsewhere. However, little is known on the perception and attitude of local forest users toward community forestry programs. This study aimed to address this gap by identifying the factors that influence the perception and attitude of local forest users toward Local Community Forest Concessions (LCFCs) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). A survey of 138 households was conducted in three villages of the Bisemulu LCFC in eastern DRC. The responses to the close-ended questions were analyzed with a multinomial Probit regression to determine the factors explaining LCFC perception. The results revealed that the key factors determining positive attitude toward the LCFC include education, age, occupation, knowledge of the legal framework and family size. However, challenges remain to the local acceptability of the LCFC, as government employees, elders, youth and larger households expressed negative attitudes. Awareness campaigns mobilizing civil society organizations that have higher level of trust in the communities may overcome some of the challenges. Administrative procedures and the associated costs were seen as major obstacles to LCFC implementation and operation. Procedure simplification and funding support to the LCFCs would thus be needed. The results of this study will contribute to the formulation of sustainable forestry policies to make LCFCs a lever for local development in the DRC and elsewhere.

Building a Global Movement to Respond to Child Marriage

As current and former regional coordinators of Girls Not Brides, we have supported and mobilized civil society organizations and advocacy for the global movement to end child marriage. Each of us has worked in one specific region of the world—Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, or Asia—and we have been struck by the hopefulness of progressive regional tools to end child marriage. In Africa, the Member States of the African Union adopted the Maputo Protocol in 2003 as a framework to hold African governments to account on the violation of women's and girls' rights [1].

Natural Allies? External Governance and Environmental Civil Society Organizations in the EU’s Eastern Partnership

ABSTRACT Civil society networks have received little attention when it comes to sectoral analysis of adaptation of EU rules beyond borders. This article offers a remedy by conceptualizing EU influence as an opportunity structure, a resource, and a discursive frame used by civil society organizations. Empirically, it describes how EU rules are used to support environmental reforms by civil society networks in Georgia and Ukraine. Civil society activism and mobilization can lead to high levels of policy approximation despite weak sectoral conditionality, entrenched domestic interests, and low public salience.

COLOMBIA 2021: BETWEEN CRISES AND HOPE

Although in the last few years Colombia has faced significant civil society mobilization, 2021 represented critical juncture in social mobilization that was the result of three converging crises. The COVID-19 pandemic, a health crisis, triggered an economic crisis that exacerbated existing social and economic inequalities. Together they aggravated a pre-existing governability crisis. Unions and other actors convened a national strike on April 28 and the violent police response ignited the protest. The strike lasted almost two months and framed the legislative and presidential elections in 2022. This paper analyzes these events, their effects, and the perspectives for the future.

Conceptual contours of migration studies in and from Asia

Conceptual contours of migration studies in and from Asia

Understanding low mobilization for non-communicable diseases among people living with NCDs: A qualitative study on hypertension in urban South India

There is low civil society mobilization for NCD policies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) despite a growing NCD burden. While existing research explains low mobilization largely through constraints such as inadequate funding and capacity at the organizational level, we explore the issue from the perspective of people living with NCDs and ask how lay understandings of hypertension may inform potential mobilization for multisectoral policy actions by people living with hypertension. To explore this question, we develop a theoretical framework that casts mobilization as a function of people's recognition of disease importance, attribution of NCD risk factors to government policies, beliefs about who bears responsibility for NCD prevention and management, and beliefs around efficacy of multisectoral policies. We present findings from 45 semi-structured interviews with people living with hypertension in a qualitative study in Chennai, India. Our thematic analysis reveals that respondents can dedicate limited time and resources to actions around hypertension. People living with hypertension also strongly internalize responsibility for developing and managing their condition and focus primarily on achieving lifestyle changes. Instead of demanding multisectoral policy action around hypertension, respondents recommend that government actions focus on measures that enable their lifestyle changes, such as increasing awareness and health care capacities, and express doubts about the efficacy of government policies. Our findings expand existing theories around mobilization by revealing how people's own understanding of their illness, its risk factors and their underlying drivers, as well as their perception of challenges in NCD policy making can present barriers to mobilization around multisectoral policies. Theory on health social movements would benefit from a deeper integration of individual perspectives and a closer consideration of the specific challenges of living with NCDs given the local context.

Political prioritization of early childhood education in low- and middle-income countries

Despite a growing evidence base and global consensus on the importance of Early Childhood Education (ECE), it remains under-resourced and comparatively neglected as a policy issue. This paper seeks to better understand which factors facilitate or impede efforts to make ECE a political priority in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), applying a framework used primarily in global public health. We draw on a comparative analysis of four countries: Ethiopia, Liberia, Pakistan (Punjab Province), and Tanzania. Even though each of these countries has undertaken recent, concrete efforts to scale ECE, the political economy conditions to support sustained commitment are only partially present. National policymakers have responded to global efforts to advance early childhood development, and ideas about the benefits of ECE have gained significant traction. With few exceptions, however, civil society mobilization around ECE is relatively weak, and focusing events and prominent champions for ECE are uncommon. Taken together, these factors are consistent with a strong rhetorical commitment to early learning but a lack of sustained follow-through and resource provision.

Leben im Versteck. Eine multiperspektivische Annäherung an die Geschichte von Kindern ausländischer Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter in der Schweiz der Hochkonjunktur

According to an estimate from the 1970s, during the boom years after the Second World War, 10,000 to 15,000 children of foreign workers lived secretly in Switzerland because their parents had no right to family reunification due to their seasonal status. As a result, many of these children stayed in hiding in Switzerland, sometimes for several months, often for several years. The clandestine character of this situation is reflected in the almost complete absence of these children in the historical record. The paper argues that a historical reappraisal of the history of the hidden children requires a multiperspective approach, drawing on a variety of source genres and sources. Three approaches are presented: an approach that focuses on sources from popular culture in order to highlight the gender-historical dimensions of the topic; a second one that looks at the mobilisation of civil society in terms of solidarity and lobbying; and a third that examines political discourses between national and international agenda-setting. The approaches reveal that the story of the hidden children is able to challenge long-held certainties of post-war history at the intersection of gender and social history.

Defending access to medicines in regional trade agreements: lessons from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership \u2013 a qualitative study of policy actors\u2019 views

BackgroundThe Regional Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) is a mega regional trade agreement signed by fifteen countries on 15 November 2020 after 8 years of negotiation. Signatories include the ten members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus China, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Australia. India was a negotiating party until it withdrew from the negotiations in November 2019. The RCEP negotiations were initially framed as focused on the needs of low income countries. Public health concerns emerged however when draft negotiating chapters were leaked online, revealing pressures on countries to agree to intellectual property and investment measures that could exacerbate issues of access to medicines and seeds, and protecting regulatory space for public health. A concerted Asia Pacific civil society campaign emerged in response to these concerns, and in 2019, media and government reporting suggested that several of these measures had been taken off the table, which was subsequently confirmed in the release of the signed text in November 2020.ResultsThis paper examines civil society and health actors’ views of the conditions that successfully contributed to the removal of these measures in RCEP, with a focus on intellectual property and access to medicines. Drawing on twenty semi-structured qualitative interviews with civil society, government and legal and health experts from nine countries participating in the RCEP negotiations, the paper reports a matrix of ten conditions related to actor power, ideas, political context and specific health issues that appeared to support prioritisation of some public health concerns in the RCEP negotiations.ConclusionsConditions identified included strong low and middle income country leadership; strong civil society mobilisation, increased technical capacity of civil society and low and middle income negotiators; supportive public health norms; processes that somewhat opened up the negotiations to hear public health views; the use of evidence; domestic support for health issues; and supportive international public health legislation. Lessons from the RCEP can inform prioritisation of public health in future trade agreement negotiations.

Don’t Touch My Constitution! Civil Society Resistance to Democratic Backsliding in Africa´s Pluralist Regimes

AbstractAnalyzing civil society resistance to elite‐led democratic backsliding in Africa, the article argues that the non‐militant, civil society‐based transitions experienced in the 1990s left a legacy of a pro‐democracy cleavage that is mobilized when central constitutional rights are threatened. Building on insights from social movement theory, the paper argues that the conduct of multiparty elections at regular intervals provides an opportunity for contestation over constitutional rules, and the historical legacy of pro‐democracy movements provides a mobilizing structure for civil society to organize for the protection of constitutional rights. The theoretical argument is illustrated by a comparison of the democratic trajectories in Zambia and Malawi. In both countries, incumbent elites’ have attempted to remain in power through constitutional revisions. However, processes of executive aggrandizement have been stalled by civil society mobilization that again have resulted in incumbent defeat and electoral turn‐overs. Recent waves of democratic backsliding suggest that the autonomy of civil society from political parties may be a key factor for the ability of civil society to challenge autocratization. Malawi’s civil society has maintained a high degree of autonomy but in Zambia, the close cooperation between civil society and the Patriotic Front (PF) and the resulting cooptation of key civil society actors have resulted in a process of autocratization.

Sustaining the Private Sponsorship of Resettled Refugees in Canada

For more than 40 years, groups of Canadian residents have raised funds and offered their time and energy to support over 325,000 refugee newcomers to Canada through the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program. In 2020, targets for private refugee sponsorship in the Canadian context were double the number of government-assisted refugees. Private sponsorship is therefore an important focus of analysis in relation to refugee resettlement, representing a complementary pathway to refugee protection through civil society mobilization. Yet, little research to-date has focused on private sponsorship. Based on an original qualitative study, this paper probes how voluntary sponsorship has beensustainedover decades, despite the high personal and financial costs it entails, by analyzing the insights of those who have experienced sponsorship: former refugees who came through the program, long-term sponsors, key informants, and other community leaders. The authors argue that private refugee sponsorship is a communitypractice, a routine action that is part of a collective commitment, a way of connecting local community actions to global politics of injustice and displacement. Furthermore, refugee newcomers who land in Canada as permanent residents becomepart ofthe communities and society in which they stay. Having left family members behind in refugee camps and cities of refuge, many become sponsors themselves. This phenomenon of ‘family linked’ sponsorship is a defining and sustaining feature of the program, motivating family members in Canada to team up with seasoned sponsors to ‘do more’. Our data show that sponsorship occurs across scales—linking local sites in Canada to countries where human atrocities are common and neighboring states that host those who flee. Sponsorship connects people in various communities across the world, and these transnational links are important to understanding the sustainability of sponsorship over time in Canada. Our research pays attention to the narratives of sponsors and those they support with the objective of documenting the momentous contribution of this complementary, and expanding, pathway for refugee protection.

Why did Ghana's national health insurance capitation payment model fall off the policy agenda? A regional level policy analysis.

Provider payment reforms, such as capitation, are very contentious. Such reforms can drop off the policy agenda due to political and contextual resistance. Using the Shiffman and Smith (Generation of political priority for global health initiatives: a framework and case study of maternal mortality. Lancet 2007; 370 1370–9) framework, this study explains why Ghana’s National Health Insurance capitation payment policy that rose onto the policy agenda in 2012, dropped off the agenda in 2017 during its pilot implementation in the Ashanti region. We conducted a retrospective qualitative policy analysis by collecting field data in December 2019 in the Ashanti region through 18 interviews with regional and district level policy actors and four focus group discussions with community-level policy beneficiaries. The thematically analysed field data were triangulated with media reports on the policy. We discovered that technically framing capitation as a cost-containment strategy with less attention on portraying its health benefits resulted in a politically negative reframing of the policy as a strategy to punish fraudulent providers and opposition party electorates. At the level of policy actors, pilot implementation was constrained by a regional level anti-policy community, weak civil society mobilization and low trust in the then political leadership. Anti-policy campaigners drew on highly contentious and poorly implemented characteristics of the policy to demand cancellation of the policy. A change in government in 2017 created the needed political window for the suspension of the policy. While it was technically justified to pilot the policy in the stronghold of the main opposition party, this decision carried political risks. Other low- and middle-income countries considering capitation reforms should note that piloting potentially controversial policies such as capitation within a politically sensitive location can attract unanticipated partisan political interest in the policy. Such partisan interest can potentially lead to a decline in political attention for the policy in the event of a change in government.