State Civil Society Research Articles

(Cautiously) Embracing pro-Palestinian activism in Singapore: civil society in illiberal regimes

ABSTRACT This paper explores the rise of pro-Palestine activism in Singapore. In illiberal regimes like the city–state, the political opportunities for activists to assert themselves are limited, though not non-existent. It is thus instructive to witness how the new surge of pro-Palestine activism in the country, and indeed, worldwide, has been dealt with by the government. I make the following claims. First, while the overall thrusts of Singapore’s foreign and domestic policies remain the same with regard to the Israel–Palestine conflict, especially on Singapore’s special relationship with Israel, the People’s Action Party (PAP) government has given clear concessions to the pro-Palestinian camp. Second, this balancing act is done with domestic electoral and political goals in mind. The issue has special resonance among younger Singaporeans and the Muslim community, and the government is well-aware of that. Politically, if not dealt with properly, the matter could also be a potential racial-religious fault-line, which is why political sophistication was needed to appease the various sides in society. The implication is that even in less democratic polities like Singapore, activists can make significant gains in the realm of both public opinion and policy. This study is situated within the literature on civil society-state relations.

Authoritarianism and civil society in Central Asia: Shifting boundaries

ABSTRACT The traditional narrative on state-civil society relations in the consolidated authoritarian regimes of Central Asia is one of coercion with little room for independent NGOs which challenge the states’ discourse. There is however emerging evidence of a gradual shift in relationships. First, the distinction between independent organizations (NGOs) and government organized bodies (GONGOs) is becoming blurred as the former struggle to remain financially buoyant and the latter find (limited) opportunities to influence the state. Second, the role played by international donors in authoritarian regimes is fraught with obstacles/resistance making internal civil society organizations more self-reliant and the state grants’ application process more competitive. Third, the context is changing with a younger more assertive generation willing to challenge the vestiges of the Soviet era. Using Kazakhstan as a Central Asian case study, this article finds there is an increasing role for civil society along an NGO-GONGO continuum aimed at ‘challenging existing realities’ even within the parameters of authoritarian states.

Understanding the emergence of ‘Communitization’ under India’s National Rural Health Mission (NRHM): Findings from two Witness Seminars

ABSTRACT India’s experience with the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) is notable on account of nationally formalising – at scale – community action in service delivery, monitoring, and planning of health services. A study was undertaken to document and create a historical record of NRHM’s ‘communitization’ processes. The oral history method of the Witness Seminar was adopted and two virtual seminars with five and nine participants, respectively, were conducted, and supplemented with 4 in depth interviews. Analysis of transcripts was done using ATLAS.ti 22 with the broad themes of emergence, evolution, and evaluation and impact of ‘communitization’ under NRHM. This paper engages with the theme of ‘emergence’ and adopts the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) conceptualised by John Kingdon for analysis. Key findings include the pioneering role of boundary spanning decision makers and the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) in advocacy and design of ‘communitization’ structures, and the legacy of rights based social mobilizations and state-civil society partnerships in health during the 1990s influencing the ethos underlying ‘communitization’. Democracy, leadership from the civil society in policy design and implementation, and state-civil society partnerships are linked to the positive results witnessed as part of ‘communitization’ in NRHM.

State-Civil Society Relations

Abstract This paper explores the international comparative potential of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (crc) monitoring process. Interest in such comparisons has increased in recent years; however, several factors limit the efficacy of using crc reporting documents for cross-national comparisons. Focussing on the role of civil society organisations (cso s) in the crc reporting process, we examine how state reliance on cso s to perform vital functions of the crc might influence developments in children’s rights and how these developments get monitored and recorded. Drawing on Social Origins theory, we illustrate how different state-civil society relationships can lead to heterogeneous and uneven provision of, and reporting on, children’s rights issues, interventions and developments. Our evaluation leads us to problematise the use of the crc Concluding Observations to compare the performance of States Parties on their duty to protect the rights of the child.

Transformations and Continuity of State-Civil Society Relations in Singapore since 2010

Transformations and Continuity of State-Civil Society Relations in Singapore since 2010

“They try to suppress us, but we should be louder”: a qualitative exploration of intimidation in tobacco control

BackgroundTobacco control advocates and researchers face powerful opponents who go to great lengths to protect their interests. While threats and attacks are documented in the grey literature, research into intimidation remains scarce. Building on previous exploratory research, this study seeks to offer in-depth insights into experiences of intimidation in the global tobacco control community.MethodsUsing qualitative description, we conducted a focus group and semi-structured interviews with tobacco control advocates and researchers to explore their experiences, including forms of, and responses to, intimidation, and ways forward. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis.ResultsTwenty-nine individuals from across the globe participated in the study. They reported several forms of intimidation including attacks in the media; online harassment; legal threats; non-legal threats, including death threats; Freedom of Information requests; perceived or actual surveillance; as well as burglary and theft. Responses included non-action (i.e. ignoring attacks); withdrawal (i.e. abandoning a project, area or field); defensive adaptation, for example through self-censorship; and offensive measures, including exposing attacks or filing complaints. Responses were shaped by several factors, including type and level of support from within internal and external networks; as well as an individual’s mindset, skills and experiences; and state-civil society relations. Participants suggested several measures that could help address intimidation: 1) report and monitor intimidation; 2) (better) prepare individuals through awareness raising and training (e.g. IT security, legal); 3) support those in need through legal advice, a peer-support network and involvement in response; and 4) look beyond tobacco control to learn and build connections.ConclusionIntimidation is a significant challenge to tobacco control that needs urgent attention. This study suggests measures to address intimidation that require commitment from, and collaboration amongst, multiple actors including governments, international organisations, funders, researchers and civil society. Moreover, collective action beyond tobacco control is needed to not only manage but move beyond intimidation.

Critical Perspectives on the New Situation of Global Ocean Governance

Global ocean governance is the concretization of global governance. Various interest groups interact with and coordinate ocean issues. Global ocean governance is inevitably linked to the new global governance landscape. In recent years, a series of new scenarios in global governance have emerged. These situations have further shaped the plurality of participants and the diversity of mechanisms in global ocean governance. Science and technology innovation and application are prerequisites and prime movers for the evolution of global ocean governance. Major worldwide crises, represented by global climate change and the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, have added great uncertainty to the future development of global ocean governance. The divergence of interests and positions between emerging countries and developed countries, as well as the reshaping of the global geopolitical landscape in recent years, has led to the stagnation or deadlock of a series of international negotiations and international cooperation platforms related to global ocean governance. With the deepening of global governance, non-state actors are not only objects of ocean governance but also bearers of legal obligations and enjoy varying degrees of legal rights, participating in agenda setting, rule construction, and monitoring implementation at different levels of ocean governance. From a critical jurisprudence perspective, in the practice of global ocean governance, the relationship between non-governmental organizations, states, and international organizations is more likely to be one of reconciliation than the “state–civil society” dichotomy of moral imagination. This new set of circumstances exposes the divisive and fragmented nature of global ocean governance. This study concludes that the new situation of global ocean governance constitutes a historic opportunity for countries to reexamine the role of the rule of law during the Anthropocene to bridge the fragmentation and gaps in mechanisms and achieve a truly integrated, holistic, and closely nested global ocean governance. The question of how to implement the rule of law requires the introduction of theoretical perspectives such as the Anthropocene, complex systems theory, and the community of a shared future for humanity to undertake a fundamental critical reflection and rethinking of global ocean governance.

Negotiating counterstrategies against the far right in Cottbus, Germany: shifting relations between the state and civil society

ABSTRACT This article examines how democratic actors from the state and the realms of civil society and the private sector form alliances to negotiate local counterstrategies against contemporary far-right contestations. It attends to two blind spots in the existing discussions about cities as bulwarks against the global rise of the far right. First, while much scholarly attention is paid to the heterogeneity of progressive civil society movements in this fight, state–civil society relations are understudied. Second, local contexts where far-right actors have already gained significant power are seldomly examined. Based on an explorative case study in the peripheral city of Cottbus, Germany – known as a hotspot of far-right organising – the article uses the Gramscian notion of the ‘integral state’ to analyse how actors come together and how this process is marked by contentious problematisations, positionalities and motivations. The discussion reveals that the state becomes a contested terrain in these negotiations as the far right's success does not leave municipal institutions untouched. While this weakens traditional democratic state–civil society alliances, it also enables the building of new ones as community activists’ perspectives shift from a position of resistance towards (cautious) partnership with the state. To conclude, I discuss the political implications of these findings.

Urban entrepreneurialism 3.0 and the export of urban expertise: The case of South Korea’s international information and telecommunication technology program

Several modes of urban entrepreneurialism, variously composed of central-local, state-market, state-civil society, and domestic-international relations, have been apparent since the 1970s. Drawing inspiration from East Asian developmental states, we argue that it is under the most recent mode of urban entrepreneurialism 3.0 that the urban sources of exports and national economic development have been most fully mobilised by states. We illustrate this export of urban expertise with the case of South Korea’s International Information and Telecommunication Technology Program (ITTP), offered by Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), which trains future ICT and city leaders from developing countries. We trace the history and effects of the ITTP through original empirical research involving interviews and a survey of graduates from the program. The ITTP is revealing of state intrapreneurialism in the export of sector-specific urban expertise with effects on national brands, new markets and the formation of new institutions. The case of the ITTP is one among a variety of means by which East Asian states in particular have projected urban expertise internationally. It also points to these states’ struggle to coordinate institutions involved in, and generate consensus around, national models of urban expertise to be exported.

Black Poetics of Affect: Intimate Public Encounters with Strangers in Claudia Rankine’s Just Us (2020)

This article aims to explore how Jamaican-born writer Claudia Rankine displays the ways in which, as a black woman and a first-generation migrant settled in the United States, she ‘regularly has to negotiate conscious and unconscious dismissal, erasure, disrespect, and abuse’ (Rankine [2020] Just Us: An American Conversation, New York: Penguin, p. 23). Just Us: An American Conversation is a genre-defying work that includes poems, essays, photography, visual art, posts from social media, and academic and journalistic sources that tackle the discursive constructions of whiteness in cultural and political life in the United States. In this volume, the private and the public merge through conversations with white strangers and friends at the airport and the train station, in the classroom, in the backyard, in the street and in social distancing interactions via Zoom. Berlant ([2011] Cruel Optimism, Durham: Duke UP.) writes about public spheres as ‘affect worlds’, where emotions precede rational or deliberative thought, attaching strangers to each other and defining the terms of the state-civil society relation. I also use Sara Ahmed’s idea of ‘encounter’ (2000, 2012), defined as a meeting with others that surprises and involves conflict, because it shifts the boundaries of the familiar or assumed knowledge. In this sense, Rankine creatively looks for traces of racialized and gendered experiences in encounters that involve bodies or texts, including the devastating effects of Covid-19 on marginalized black communities. The volume completes a vital trilogy that includes the hybrid book-length poems Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (2004) and Citizen (2014). This lyrical series conform what I call ‘a black poetics of affect’, shaped by intimate public encounters with racism and sexism that disrupt the fantasy of a post-racial society. Rankine’s sustained reflections on ‘the affective dimensions of Black life’ (Palmer [2017] ‘“What Feels More Than Feeling?”: Theorizing the Unthinkability of Black Affect’, Critical Ethnic Studies 3:2, pp. 31–56.) provide new and situated insights on affect theories and feminist studies.

Brazilian Civil Society and South–South Cooperation: Countering the Green Revolution from Abroad

Having transformed its hinterland to become a major exporter of agricultural commodities, Brazil has, since the mid-2000s, set up a range of South–South cooperation (SSC) initiatives to export its agri-food policies and technologies to othe countries, mainly in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Both the domestic agricultural policies and SSC have been scrutinised and shaped by interactions with civil society actors, from peasant associations and trade unions to rights-based non-governmental organisations. This article explores modes of interaction and interdependence between different civil society and state actors in the context of SSC relating to food security and agricultural development. It analyses changes and continuities in civil society engagement, and mobilisation and de-mobilisation dynamics. Recently, the government’s de-prioritisation of the South–South agenda has been accompanied by very limited civil society activism. The article discusses why this needs attention and the challenges that need to be considered to reinstate productive state–civil society dynamics.

No Longer ‘Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards’? Advances in Local State-Voluntary and Community Sector Relationships During Covid-19

Abstract Despite the significant influence of localism on policy discourses in the UK in recent decades, there has been limited evidence of any fundamental changes in state-civil society relationships. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 created a new context for cross-sectoral collaboration, as the local Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) and local communities moved to the forefront of the crisis response. This paper draws upon 49 semi-structured interviews with local authorities (LAs) and VCS organisations across England, Scotland and Wales, to explore how the pandemic has reshaped LA-VCS collaboration. Examining the evolution of a range of local collaborative frameworks during the Covid-19 crisis, the article examines what enabled these collaborations to develop, how they operated and what insights can be derived regarding both the conditions for collaboration to flourish and the capacity to sustain this going forward. The findings offer insights into what more progressive forms of collaboration might look like during the transition from crisis and into recovery. It contributes to broader debates about whether the models deployed during Covid-19 represent a pathway to more consensus-based collaboration after a decade of antagonism between civil society and the state.

Portrait Archipelago Government In Implementing E-Government (Implementation System Government based Electronics in Provincial Government - Riau Islands, Indonesia)

Revolution technology information and communication (ICT) provides an opportunity for the government To do innovation development state apparatus through the application System Government based Electronics (SPBE) or E-Government, that is, maintenance government using ICT to _ give service to agency government, apparatus state civil servant, perpetrator business, society, and parties others. However, SPBE implementation is not always smooth Because of various influencing factors _ and a slow implementation rate. Method research used is approach qualitative with technique data collection used is with analyze and study document. The documents to be analyzed are document study literature, news, and related regulations. Maintenance System Government-based electronics in the Province Riau Islands Known that achievement target maintenance government-based technology integrated information can be measured from indicator Index System Government based Province Electronics (SPBE). Riau Archipelago. In 2022, the SPBE Index will be obtained from the results evaluation using the SPBE instrument. Structure SPBE assessment is divided into four domains, eight aspects, and 47 indicators respective assessment given weight. Evaluation of Government SPBE index Province Riau Archipelago in 2022 is summation weight each domain. From the results summation weight, each domain got a Government SPBE index Province Riau Archipelago of 2.68 (Good).

Negotiating State-Civil Society Relations in Turkey: The Case of Refugee-Supporting Organizations

How do nonstate organizations carry out their programs in political contexts hostile to civil society activity? This paper examines the case of refugee-supporting organizations in Turkey, which hosts over 3.6 million Syrians under a temporary protection regime. While the Turkish state has taken a central role in refugee reception, nonstate organizations have played a sizeable role in refugee support. Analyzing interviews with key personnel across 23 organizations in Istanbul, the paper finds that organizational capacity and organizational identity together explain variations in CSO-state relations. While high-capacity organizations that adopt a variety of “rights-based” and “needs-based” identities will cooperate with state institutions, lower-capacity organizations use comparable signifiers to justify selective engagement or avoidance of state institutions. The paper argues that analyzing how organizations negotiate their identities can help explain variations in CSO-state relations in restrictive contexts without relying on a priori assumptions about CSO alignment with or opposition to the state.

New municipalism in South America? Developing theory from experiences in Argentina and Chile

Working towards social transformation through forms of participatory and economic democracy is a core element of the new municipalist agenda. While utilising a ‘politics of proximity’ to develop citizen-led collectives in various forms and at various scales, these projects reimagine and reclaim the local state for social and ecological justice. However, much of the empirical literature that has fed into the development of this conceptualisation of new municipalism, while having a global ambition, has been based on European experiences. Thus, there are key questions around its applicability to other places, particularly in the Global South. South America has generated some of the emblematic cases of struggles against neoliberalism through reclaiming public services, from important interventions in reversing privatisations in the region to influential municipalist innovations, including participatory public policies such as participatory budgeting. This article seeks to critically interrogate new municipalism through an engagement with key social and political changes, state–civil society dynamics and political concepts in South America, illustrated with examples from municipal grassroots initiatives in Argentina and Chile. It argues that municipalism can be more extensively theorised by, first, engaging with a broader temporality than just moments of crisis; second, being attentive to the longer history of diverse participatory municipal initiatives in the region; and finally, incorporating the concept of territory ( territorio in Spanish), which has emerged as a key dimension for understanding social transformations in the region.

Producing and Contesting Meanings of Participation in Planning: The Case of Singapore (1985–2020)

This paper examines how the concept of participation in planning has been constructed by state and nonstate actors in the politico-institutional context of Singapore. Our objective is to gain a deeper understanding of the political dynamics shaping ideas about participation, and the impact of these contested constructions on the perpetuation of the ruling party's political control. Drawing on strategic-relational institutionalist planning and cultural political economy theories, we analyze 312 documents including government and civil society periodicals, parliamentary debates, and academic publications, focusing on the planning and participatory practices of Singapore's national planning agency from the mid-1980s to 2020. The findings reveal that state-led coalitions continuously reframed participation as an instrument of economic growth, nation-building, and activism-management, while nonstate-led coalitions emerged to transform state-civil society relations through promoting and materializing alternative meanings of participation. These dynamics demonstrate the potentialities and limitations of democratizing urban planning and governance in Singapore's hybrid regime.

‘Does the Prime Minister Care?’

Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s theorization of care as a “fictitious commodity”, Rashna Darius Nicholson’s article ‘‘Does the Prime Minister Care?’: Spectacular solidarity, infelicitous performatives and the doubly fictitious commodification of care in India during the COVID-19 pandemic’ describes how organised gestures of care in India work to interpellate Indians into soft, palliative forms of populism and authoritarian governmentality. Through an analysis of inter-related state-sanctioned gestures of care such as symbolic acts initiated by the Narendra Modi administration during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the PM Cares fund, and artist-in-aid programs, this article suggests that state-affiliated, spectacular care functions in the contemporary Indian context as a doubly fictitious commodity. Fictionalized first through commodification by the neoliberal marketplace and subsequently by a government seeking to advance a Hindu nationalist project, care as state-affiliated mass spectacle has become an infelicitous performative, that is, a seductive aesthetic mode that facilitates the political choreographing of (extra-)legal political interventions. Through an analysis of the infelicities of institutional care, the article shows how the state’s systematized affirmations of public concern obfuscate the breakdown of civil society-state relations, normalization of Hindu culture and increasing violence in contemporary India.

Strategic exclusion, co-option and containment: towards an integrative theory of state-CSOs relations

ABSTRACT Although there have been attempts to theorise state-Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) relations in the Counter-Terrorism (CT) context, including the “co-option and containment” and “duality of coercion” perspectives, these two-way articulations have failed to account for the range of strategic options open to the state in regulating CSOs. This study presents the framework of Strategic Exclusion, Co-option and Containment (SECC) to underscore the general patterns of state engagement of CSOs in the context of CT. It mapped secondary evidence in 19 countries and used three illustrative case studies (Australia, Uganda and Russia) to examine the elements of SECC, namely, states’ exclusion of CSOs in law and policymaking on CT, the use of strategic ambiguity in enacting and interpreting CT laws, delegitimizing or criminalising advocacy and influencing the transformation of CSOs into state adjutants. This pattern of engagement with CSOs is transforming voluntary and associational life in precarious ways. The article advances the Copenhagen School and rational-actor model of global strategic decision-making, and contributes to discourses on the closing of civic spaces, democratic recession and the resurgence of authoritarianism. It lays a foundation for generalisable theory and future empirical research on state behaviour towards CSOs in the context of violence, conflict, and security.

Continuity and change 10 years after 3.11: Processes and dynamics in state-society relations

ABSTRACT This introduction presents the three papers of the special section and embeds them in the broader debate on continuity and change in state-society relations within the first decade after the triple disaster of March 2011. We first discuss reconstruction efforts by the government and their social and environmental impacts. This is followed by an assessment of changes in civil society and dynamics in state-civil society relations. We find that access to politics became increasingly difficult for civic groups since 2012. This led many of them to readjust their strategies for pursuing their goals. We then show how the three papers tie into these debates and carve out issues for further research: i.e., whether demobilized sectors of civil society would be ready for remobilization in case of a new political opportunity, the long-term effect of newcomers with new left values on the protest scene, as well as the state’s power over the meaning-making of the disaster and how this feeds into national identity and politics.

Private security and national security: The case of Estonia

Most studies of private security postulate exclusively internal, primarily economic, causes of the industry's growth and regulation. In contrast, based on the case of post-Soviet Estonia, we investigate how a state's external security environment influences private security. Estonia's tense relations with neighbouring Russia and related pursuit of EU and NATO membership have generated several policies through which private security evolved from a lawless, politically contested industry to a modest, lightly regulated one: (1) the exclusion of public police from private security and an effective campaign against organized crime that together enabled an autonomous and non-criminalized security industry to emerge, (2) free-trade policies that permitted western companies to acquire Estonian security firms, and (3) an 'all-of-nation' approach to national security that promotes comprehensive state-civil society security cooperation. Estonia thus clarifies how high politics shapes private security, while also revealing the factors that make the industry relatively uncontentious in most industrialized democracies.