Since the emergence of the dissident “parallel polis” in Eastern Europe, civil society has become a “new superpower,” influencing democratic transformations, human rights, and international co-operation; co-designing economic trends, security and defense; reshaping the information society; and generating new ideas on the environment, health, and the “good life.” This volume seeks to compare and reassess the role of civil society in the rich West, the poorer South, and the quickly expanding East in the context of the twenty-first century’s challenges. It presents a novel perspective on civic movements testing John Keane’s notion of “monitory democracy”: an emerging order of public scrutiny and monitoring of power.

This book provides an accessible account of popular political, social and economic movements in the Third World. Focusing on poor and marginalized groups within developing countries, it shows how these groups have been stimulated into action by recent demands for political and economic change. Haynes describes the growing interest in democratic change in the Third World during the 1980s and 1990s, and argues that demands for democracy, human rights and economic change were a widespread catalyst for the emergence of hundreds of thousands of popular movements in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Sometimes these took the form of demands for more political representation and greater economic development; others were concerned with environmental protection, the broad position of women and the establishment of Islamic states and societies. Haynes argues that these emerging popular organizations are best regarded as building blocks of civil society that, in time, will enhance the democratic nature of many political environments in the Third World. The book will be welcomed by students and researchers in development studies, politics and sociology.

O'Connell offers an action guide for citizen leaders and teachers--must-know information to help ensure that the democracy will last another century.

Examines the growing power of nongovernmental organizations by looking at UN World Conferences.

This book introduces radically alternative models of civil society that have been developed outside the liberal democratic frame of reference, models which suggest that civil society does offer new and non-statist democratic possibilities. Drawing on a wide range of civil society theory-practice from Eastern Europe and Latin America (including the Zapatistas in Mexico), and from visions of global civil society too, this book is uniquely positioned to consider the questions posed by these alternative voices for democratic theory and practice. * Are there alternatives to the liberal democratic vision of civil society? * Is a democracy located in civil society rather than the state either possible or desirable? * How and why has the concept of civil society come to be used so widely today? * Can global civil society further the struggle for democracy initiated by national civil societies?

Civil society is receiving renewed attention from academics, politicians, journalists, community leaders, and participants in the voluntary sector. Civil Society, Democracy, and Civic Renewal brings together several of AmericaOs leading scholars_of history, sociology, political science, and philosophy_to explore the meaning of civil society, its positive and negative effects, its relation to government, and its contribution to democracy. The chapters range widely, taking up the connection between social trust and civic renewal, the role of citizen councils in environmental decisionmaking, the growth of self-help groups and their impact on community, historical patterns of civic activity by women and African Americans, and the place of expertise in public deliberation on scientific and medical issues. By examining the many disparate views of the civil society debate, this important volume will contribute to the process of civic renewal.

This book seeks to make accessible a selection of the best pieces written on civil society and brings together theoretical and empirical material. The essays discuss the theory of civil society, civil society in South Asia in particular and ways of strengthening civil society.

Since independence in 1947 India has remained a stable and functioning democracy in the face of enormous challenges. Amid a variety of interlinking contraries and a burgeoning media – one of the largest in the world – there has been a serious dearth of scholarship on the role of journalists and dramatically changing journalism practices. This book brings together some of the best known scholars on Indian journalism to ask questions such as: Can the plethora of privately run cable news channels provide the discursive space needed to strengthen the practices of democracy, not just inform results from the ballot boxes? Can neoliberal media ownership patterns provide space for a critical and free journalistic culture to evolve? What are the ethical challenges editors and journalists face on a day-to-day basis in a media industry which has exploded? In answering some of these questions, the contributors to this volume are equally sensitive to the historical, social, and cultural context in which Indian journalism evolved, but they do not all reach the same conclusion about the role of journalism in Indian civil society and democracy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.