Uncivil Society Research Articles

‘We will not be pacified’: From freedom fighters to feminists

Whether hailed for transitioning to the ballot box, or condemned for failing to hold elections, Africa’s postcolonial states exhibit profound contradictions in the arena of gender politics. Where reforms have been achieved, implementation remains minimal, as undemocratic state structures and uncivil societies alike lack the political will to change. This article addresses the emergence of feminism as an intellectual and political force for freedom that radically challenges the ongoing exploitation and oppression of women in Africa. It focuses on the contribution of radical intellectuals to the theory and practice of women’s movements, arguing that the research, analysis, and activism they carry out defines them as a radical public intellectual cadre that continuously mobilizes with, by, and for women to pursue liberation for themselves as much as others.

COVID-19 - Enacting a ‘new normal’ for people who use drugs

The COVID-19 crisis has magnified existing social, economic and political inequities. People who use drugs are particularly vulnerable due to criminalisation and stigma and often experience underlying health conditions, higher rates of poverty, unemployment and homelessness, as well as a lack of access to vital resources – putting them at greater risk of infection. On the other hand, COVID-19 presents an opportunity to confront the mistakes of the past and re-negotiate a new social contract. The International Network of People who use Drugs (INPUD) believe that this crisis must be an occasion to rethink the function of punishment, to reform the system and to work towards ending the war on drugs. This commentary presents a set of recommendations to UN agencies, governments, donor agencies, academics, researchers and civil society, challenging these actors to work alongside people who use drugs to enact a new reality based on solidarity and cooperation, protection of health, restoration of rights and dignity and most importantly to mobilise to win the peace.

Uncivil Society: How democracy is being undermined from within

Uncivil Society: How democracy is being undermined from within

The shrinking democratic space in India: uncivil society and an illiberal state

The shrinking democratic space in India: uncivil society and an illiberal state

Civil Society in Illiberal Democracy: The Case of Poland

The threats to democracy from populist political projects are more and more often commented on and analyzed around the world. The Polish case is not an exception as there are numerous scholarly papers on the changes in public discourse, politics, democratic institutions and the like. The case of civil society is, however, sometimes overlooked and downplayed in this stream of thought. This article looks at the recent reconfigurations within the sphere of civil society in Poland as well as in the ways this sector of activities is conceptualized and analyzed by scholars and commentators alike. This approach stems from understanding civil society in Poland as a political project, a process begun around the transition of 1989, but that also had political meaning during the years of consolidation of democracy. Only the recent reconfiguration and accumulation of power and consequent shift in politics and public discourse to the right has resulted – among other things – in higher levels of activism among citizens and politicization of numerous topics. The observed higher levels of citizen engagement have pushed some observers and scholars to re-define the concept of civil society in Poland and to include within it forms of activism previously excluded. With the numerous and often politicized collective actions of Poles – such as nationalist activism, urban activism, and participation in street protests – not only is the concept of civil society being stretched but also some previously used distinctions, such as the notion of ‘uncivil society’, are no longer in use.

COVID-19, the UN, and Dispersed Global Health Security

AbstractThe response to COVID-19 demonstrates an inclusive and dispersed form of global health security that is less reliant on the UN Security Council or the World Health Organization (WHO). While WHO remains central to fighting the pandemic, the dispersed global health security addressing the crisis is inclusive of the wider UN system, civil society, and epistemic communities in global health. As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay argues that instead of facing crisis or criticism like WHO, this inclusive and dispersed form of global health security provides mechanisms of resilience and support to the UN at the height of global political tensions surrounding COVID-19.

Indigenous Peoples, Data Sovereignty and Self-Determination: Current Realities and Imperatives

This study explores the current state and dynamics of the global Indigenous data sovereignty movement-the movement pressing for Indigenous peoples to have full control over the collection and governance of data relating to their lived realities. The article outlines the movement's place within the broader push for Indigenous self-determination; examines its links to big data, open data, intellectual property rights, and access and benefit-sharing; details a pioneering assertion of data sovereignty by Canada's First Nations; outlines relevant UN and international civil society processes; and examines the nascent movement in Africa. The study identifies a fundamental tension between the objectives of Indigenous data sovereignty and those of the open data movement, which does not directly cater for Indigenous peoples' full control over their data. The study also identifies the need for African Indigenous peoples to become more fully integrated into the global Indigenous data sovereignty movement.

Распространение эпидемий, пандемий и массовых заболеваний как глобальный вызов современности

The article focuses on the spread of mass diseases as one of the critical modern global challenges. It analyzes the negative consequences of this phenomenon, including medical, economic, social, political, and legal consequences. The author provides a brief overview of major epidemics that occurred in the recent history, assesses economic damage inflicted by them and identifies spheres of human activity most vulnerable to pandemics. The article also raises the issue of legal responsibility of states and international organizations for actions (or inaction) that contribute to the spread of mass diseases. Recommended strategies to increase the level of global epidemiological security include the need to both strengthen national health systems and ensure international exchange of knowledge, technologies and materials, including viruses and laboratory samples, and to develop and expand overall international cooperation in this field. The author argues that the World Health Organization should continue to play the key role in this process on the basis of its systems of epidemiological surveillance, global warning and response, its long and solid experience as a global leader in public health and its partnerships with governments, UN system organizations, civil society, academia, private sector and media.

On the Relationship between Art and Religion

Social science believes that religion is a cultural phenomenon that has emerged in the development of human society to a certain historical stage, an illusory reflection of the objective world, and a social ideology. Primitive religions, also known as tribal religions, refers to the religions of the ancient times and the religions of uncivilized society, such as nature worship, elf worship, totem worship, witch cult, etc. Art refers to a social ideology that uses images to reflect reality but is more typical than reality, including literature, calligraphy, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, dance, drama, film, and Chinese Quyi. There is a close relationship between art and religion, and their production and development are closely linked.

Myanmar’s Top-Down Transition: Challenges for Civil Society

This article historicises the nature of political transition in Myanmar to better appreciate the challenges faced by civil society. After Myanmar’s political reforms in 2011, Western donors rushed into the country in support of what they misunderstood as a remarkable instance of democratisation. In 2019, escalating civil war, ethnic cleansing, and contracting civil liberties urge a rethink. This article argues that viewing transition in Myanmar through the lens of democratisation has always been misleading and problematic. Partial liberalisation was orchestrated by the military to safeguard its own power. Reforms have not only benefited civil society but also enabled the growth of uncivil society, fuelling sectarian violence and bolstering military rule. Operating on the assumption of democratisation, Western donors shifted funds from grass-roots networks to militarised state bureaucracies that seek to co-opt peace-building and development projects for the purposes of ethnocratic state-building and counterinsurgency. Rethinking the nature of transition is pivotal for preventing inadvertently aiding authoritarianism and conflict.

Development as a historical component of the United Nations’ crime policy agenda: From social defence to the Millennium Development Goals

This article presents a historical analysis of the intellectual and institutional origins of the international community’s interest in the link between crime and development leading up to the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000. Drawing on a combination of documentary sources and interviews with long-time international crime policy insiders, it traces this interest back to the United Nations’ social defence agenda which emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War. We situate this agenda in relation to the Western aspiration to advance the Modernization project and reflect on how its shortcomings together with ideological, economic and geopolitical shifts at the international level contributed to the diversification of the United Nations’ crime policy agenda during the 1970s. These conditions collectively influenced the international community’s growing concern with crime as an existential threat to economic development during the 1980s. Our analysis highlights how this framing was reinforced by the rise of transnational organized crime as a threat to global capitalism following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was against this historical backdrop that the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention was established to lead the international community’s fight against ‘uncivil society’. We conclude by reflecting on United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention’s tumultuous early years along with the omission of ‘crime’ from the Millennium Development Goals and suggest that these conditions, along with the adoption of the United Nations Conventions Against Transnational Organized Crime and Corruption, set the stage for the organization’s future advocacy for the inclusion of crime in the Sustainable Development Goals.

Corruption, governance, and Nigeria’s uncivil society, 1999-2016

The interface between corruption and governance has been widely discussed, with corruption generally acknowledged as leading to poor governance outcomes. The intersection between the two is also generally believed to be a key driver of insecurity. This paper demonstrates that not only do corruption and bad governance drive conflict and insecurity, but that the latter often provide the cloaking for the perpetuation of corrupt and unaccountable governance. Using the Niger Delta militancy and the Boko Haram insurgency in South and Northeast Nigeria respectively as its units of analysis, the paper demonstrates the specific ways in which the activities of these uncivil society groupings led to the perpetration of large scale corruption and irresponsive governance in Nigeria during theperiod under study.

Civil society and its outside: Analysing the boundary between civil and uncivil society in the Danish anti-radicalization discourse

ABSTRACTThe literature on the boundary between civil and uncivil society has reached an impasse between approaches that oppose these societies to each other and those that dismiss the boundary altogether. This article suggests an analytical shift to a governmental approach that asks how the relation between civil and uncivil society figures in social practices. The approach is applied to the case of the Danish anti-radicalization discourse which revolves around subjects that cross the boundary. Through a discourse analysis of governmental papers, the author argues that the boundary appears twice. First, as a categorical difference that is simultaneously erected and annulled. This is not a paradox that must be superseded but one which structures a rationality of the governed in Civil Society that a governmental rationality pegs itself to inside an indefinite time. Second, this rationality is only possible through the rejection of violence. This creates a void which serves as an object of the discourse while existing outside the indefinite time of governmentality.

The role of ‘uncivil’ society in transitional justice: evidence from Bougainville and Timor-Leste

ABSTRACTTransitional justice (TJ) scholarship and practice often pins much hope on civil society. It generally assumes that civil society organisations demonstrate ‘civility’, have broad-based memberships, support liberal democratic values and promote TJ approaches based on liberal-legal justice strategies. Yet there is nothing inherently virtuous about civil society and in conflict-affected societies it often lacks these desired properties; it can be underdeveloped, unruly and disruptive. So, what role do, and should, ‘uncivil’ society groups play in TJ processes? To answer this question this article uses comparative case studies of the role of uncivil society groups in Bougainville and Timor-Leste. These cases exhibit similar broad cultural, socio-political and socio-economic characteristics. In both cases uncivil society groups are organised around societal divisions, attempt to operate as alternatives to the state, oppose liberal democracy and liberal-legal TJ processes and engage in unruly behaviour, including violence and criminality. These uncivil society groups are not regarded as internationally legitimate, but they nevertheless have strong local legitimacy, particularly when the state is absent or weak. Consequently, this article concludes that in conflict-affected societies it is necessary to engage with groups regarded as both civil and uncivil to promote locally legitimate and effective TJ, and peace more broadly.

Vigilantism A 'Twilight Institution': Islamic Vigilante Groups and the State in Post-Suharto Yogyakarta

The paper attempts to comprehend the nexus between identity politics, vigilantism, and citizenship within Islamist groups in Yogyakarta in the post-Suharto era. As numerous studies have revealed, post-Suharto era’s democracy in Indonesia has been marked by the persistence of militias, gangs, vigilantism, and street politics. These groups have largely embraced ethnicity, religion, and localism as their symbolism that represents a community that they claim they are defending. The widespread of identity-based groups that frequently breaking the law and public order have been portrayed either as the emergence of ‘uncivil society’ elements that challenging the state authority and threatening the very foundations of civil society and democratic values (see Beittenger, 2009, Jones, 2015, Hefner, 2016) or as the criminals that defend the political and economic interest of the oligarchic elites (Hadiz, 2003:607). Without rejecting certain degree of fact within these studies, the article suggests that these explanations failed to understand the complexity of such groups and what constitutes their persistence in the local political landscape. This article argues that such groups have exercised a form of citizenship that is characterised by the mobilisation of local support, patronage politics and discourse of localised ‘Islamic populism’. In this regard, it suggests that the prominence of Islamist-vigilante groups in Yogyakarta lies in their role as ‘Twilight institution’ that can channel the citizens into the state institutions not just to negotiating their basic rights such as employment and public service through exploiting violence, patronage, and security business but also to defending their imagined and localised Ummah community. In doing so, it embraces the notions that boundary between state and non-state is far more complex and often blurred; therefore, it will be fruitful to recognize that the state authority should be regarded as mingled result of the exercise of power by a variety of local institutions and the imposition of external institutions rather than a coherent and fixed institution (Migdal, 2004, Lunds, 2006).In making such arguments, the paper takes the role of Islamist groups in Yogyakarta particularly groups that loosely associated with the Development United Party (PPP) such as Gerakan Pemuda Kaaba (Kaaba Youth Movement), Gerakan Anti Maksiat (Anti-Vice Movement), and Laskar Hizbullah (Hizbullah troops) as the exemplar for elucidating the intersection between identity politics, vigilantism, and citizenship in localized political landscape. The primary data was conducted through in-depth interviews as well as participatory observations during 2014-2016.

Uncivil Society: Tracking the Funders and Enablers of the Demonization of Israel

Uncivil Society: Tracking the Funders and Enablers of the Demonization of Israel

Terrains of Civil and Uncivil Society in Post-Apartheid Durban

Post-apartheid Durban civil society politics reflects not only durable anti-racist activism, but primarily, Karl Polanyi’s pendulum of a ‘double movement’ of the market against people and environment on the one hand, and social backlashes against neoliberalism on the other. The most important movements and campaigns of a socioeconomic nature can be summarised as follows: local resistance to economic disempowerment and lack of service delivery in various trade union strikes (1994–present), South Durban’s fight against polluters and the port’s expansion (1996–present), Chatsworth’s water and electricity battles (1999–2012), the Treatment Action Campaign’s access to AIDS medicines (early 2000s), Abahlali baseMjondolo’s anti-eviction campaigns (2005–present), the defence of the Early Morning Market (2009–10), the Umlazi Occupy (2012), and sporadic community protests throughout. Resistance has occurred in urban poor neighbourhoods and townships and also penetrated the Durban inner city and university campuses. Durban activists’ tactics range from militant protests to ‘occupation’ of space ranging from townships to the Speaker’s Corner next to the Convention Centre, innovative door-to-door campaigning and court action. While the limits of single-issue and often assimilationist civil society politics are becoming obvious in one of the world’s most unequal cities, there still has not yet been a successful ‘united front’ project to fuse interests, in part due to ideological division and the geographical diffusion of dissent.

Laundering Cash, White Washing Reputations

A growing body of analysis has explored how kleptocrats systematically capture and loot their domestic state institutions, but scholars and policy makers have paid less attention to how globalization enables grand corruption, as well as the laundering of kleptocrats' finances and reputations. Shell companies and new forms of international investment, such as luxury real-estate purchases, serve to launder the ill-gotten gains of kleptocrats and disimbed them from their country of origin. Critically, this normalization of everyday kleptocracy depends heavily on professional intermediaries: Western public-relations agents, lobbyists and lawyers help to recast kleptocrats as internationally respected businesspeople and philanthropic cosmopolitans. The resulting web of relationships makes up a transnational uncivil society, which bends global-governance institutions to work in its favor.

The Illiberal Turn or Swerve in Central Europe?

Scholars are coming to terms with the fact that something is rotten in the new democracies of Central Europe. The corrosion has multiple symptoms: declining trust in democratic institutions, emboldened uncivil society, the rise of oligarchs and populists as political leaders, assaults on an independent judiciary, the colonization of public administration by political proxies, increased political control over media, civic apathy, nationalistic contestation and Russian meddling. These processes signal that the liberal-democratic project in the so-called Visegrad Four (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) has been either stalled, diverted or reversed. This article investigates the “illiberal turn” in the Visegrad Four (V4) countries. It develops an analytical distinction between illiberal “turns” and “swerves”, with the former representing more permanent political changes, and offers evidence that Hungary is the only country in the V4 at the brink of a decisive illiberal turn.

Pluralism and proportionality in the representation of European international civil society within the UN framework: a sub-regional comparison

ABSTRACTThis research utilized the United Nations’ Integrated Civil Society Organizations (ICSO) database in analyzing case studies of spatial variations among connections between the UN and international civil society/NGOs in Europe. In effect, this study is a means of gauging and comparing the degree of connectivity between the UN and international civil society/NGOs across the sub-regions and countries of Europe. Findings indicate substantial variation in representation of NGOs within the UN-civil society dynamic across Europe’s sub-regions with Northern Europe, Western Europe and the British Isles represented to a far greater degree proportionate to their populations than Mediterranean or Eastern Europe. The study also found substantially higher proportional representation of NGOs headquartered in EU or EU-candidate nations as opposed to those not in the EU or seeking membership.