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Chapter 1
Measuring Civil Society: Why and How
Thought takes the form of visual images.
Really, to impress the mind a concept
first has to take visible shape.
J Huizinga (1954, p284)
This book is about civil society and how to measure, analyse and interpret it. The book's basic premise is that social scientists, policy-makers and practitioners alike have not yet found the conceptual and methodological repertoire adequate for discussing civil society in ways similar to how they would debate the state of the economy or the performance of government. Whereas most readers would have an intuitive understanding of such abstract concepts as āmarketā and āstateā, would, indeed, be able to attach meaning to the ālanguageā of market experts and political analysts alike, and, what is more, even be quite capable of engaging in ongoing debates, little such understanding and capacity exists for civil society.
To a great extent, and irrespective of its present currency, civil society remains āuncharted territoryā in a world long dominated by a two-sector view of market versus state. The major social science theories and political ideologies from Marxism to neo-liberalism relate to them, and the world's statistical information systems are designed to privilege data on the economy, demographics and politics, leading to a benign neglect of data on civil society. This lack of systematic information on civil society is, of course, a function of basic conceptual deficiencies in social science when it comes to describing phenomena that are neither market- nor state-related. These two weaknesses have reinforced each other for much of modern social science history, creating an underdeveloped conceptual, methodological and statistical repertoire for describing and analysing civil society.
However, in the course of the last decade, following the events of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe, and democratization processes in many parts of the world, civil society has become an important concept in the social sciences (Keane, 1998; Kaviraj and Khilnani, 2001; Anheier et al, 2001; Kaldor, 2003). What was once a rather obscure term of interest to historians and political philosophers has emerged as a central term in modern social science discourse that straddles the boundaries of policy-making, advocacy and the academy (Kaldor, 2003). Whether in the US, Europe or other parts of the world, a āstrong and vibrant civil society characterized by a social infrastructure of dense networks of face-to-face relationships that cross-cut existing social cleavages such as race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation and gender that will underpin strong and responsive democratic governmentā (Edwards, Foley and Diani, 2001, p17) is seen as a desirable policy objective.
Civil society has thus emerged as a central topic among policy-makers and practitioners alike (Naidoo and Tandon, 1999), from civic renewal projects in the US to counteract increased social isolation and distrust among citizens (Sirianni and Friedland, 2000), efforts by the German parliament to revitalize voluntarism (Enquettekommission, 2002), and attempts by the UK Cabinet Office to modernize the voluntary sector (Strategy Unit, 2002) to the World Bank's new approach to economic development, the European Union's encouragement of a Citizensā Europe, and NATO's programme to seek ways of constructing a ācivil societyā in countries torn apart by civil war ā all of these are indications of heightened policy relevance.
ā¦ civil society has emerged as a central topic among policy-makers and practitioners ā¦
With such prominence comes a need for information and ways to position civil society and its various dimensions in a wider policy dialogue. Unfortunately, no such system exists at present, and civil society leaders, academics and policy-makers alike are frequently frustrated by the absence of a common language and the lack of basic data that could be as easily communicated and understood as economic growth rates, electoral returns or information on government spending and budget priorities. In this respect, the purpose of this book is to introduce, develop and illustrate the basic elements of such a system for presenting the major contours of civil society in a systematic and user-friendly way.
The development of an information system on civil society is as difficult as it is challenging. There are major conceptual and methodological issues involved in developing an approach for measuring and assessing civil society that would apply across countries and regions, but may differ significantly in terms of culture, economy and politics. Therefore, at the most basic level, the book has to reach at least some initial agreement on aspects that are still unsettled and continue to be debated among experts. Such issues include questions such as what is meant by civil society? What characteristics are significant for measurement purposes, and how should relevant data be presented and analysed? Establishing such agreements is no small task and the academic literature on the concept of civil society alone, leaving aside issues of measurement and aspects of policy, easily fills several bookshelves (see, among others, Cohen and Arato, 1997; Keane, 1998; Kaviraj and Khilnani, 2001; Kaldor, 2003).
ā¦this book is about civil society and how to measure, analyse and interpret itā¦
At the risk of great oversimplification, one could say that work on civil society tends to be of two kinds: conceptual and policy-related. By contrast, due to the frequently abstract nature of current work in the field, there is a relative absence of systematic empirical analysis of what civil society actually is and what its contours are ā that is, dimensions or measures similar to those with which one would describe an economic or political system. Moreover, given the bias in official statistics described above, there are significant technical challenges in terms of data coverage and availability. Many of the data items that would be part of a future civil society reporting system are simply not readily available at the levels of quantity and quality needed. Therefore, any approach developed must be able to deal with the very complexity of the task, while aiming to preserve a high degree of simplicity and practicality.
Yet, while the task may ultimately be too immense to accomplish in a single book, there can be little doubt that even the rudiments of such a systematic information and reporting system on civil society are very much needed. For one, as suggested above, the topic has come to occupy much attention across academic disciplines and across the political spectrum. Second, while it is regarded as a major component of what makes modern society possible, it is also increasingly seen as something āproblematicā and changing, and as something that can no longer be taken for granted. The recent debate about the decline in social capital and the increase in social disengagement in the US and other countries is one indication of this trend (Putnam, 2000; 2002).
Civil Society and the Non-profit or Voluntary Sector
In many countries, the (re)discovery of civil society coincided with renewed emphasis on the role of non-profit organizations (Deakin, 2001). In the course of the last decade, most developed market economies in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific have seen a general increase in the economic importance of non-profit organizations as providers of health, social, educational and cultural services of many kinds. On average, the non-profit sector accounts for about 6 per cent of total employment in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, or nearly 10 per cent with volunteer work factored in (Salamon et al, 1999).
Prompted, in part, by growing doubts about the capacity of the state to cope with its own welfare, developmental and environmental problems, analysts across the political spectrum (see Anheier and Kendall, 2001; Deakin, 2001) have come to see non-profit and community-based organizations as strategic components of a middle way between policies that put primacy on āthe marketā and those that advocate greater reliance on the state (see Edwards and Gaventa, 2001). Likewise, institutions such as the World Bank, the United Nations or the European Union (UNDP, 2002), together with bilateral donors and many developing countries, are searching for a balance between state-led and market-led approaches to development, and are allocating more responsibility to NGOs (see Clark, 2003).
The basic argument for a greater non-profit role in both developing and developed countries is based on public administration (Salamon, 1995), which suggests that non-profits or NGOs are efficient and effective providers of social and other services that governments may find costlier and more ineffectual to offer themselves. As a result, cooperative relations between governments and non-profits in welfare provision have become a prominent feature in countries such as the US (Salamon, 2002), Germany (Anheier and Seibel, 2001), France (Archambault, 1996) or the UK (Plowden, 2001; Strategy Unit, 2002).
Where such partnerships with government emerged, the role of nonprofit organizations is more pronounced than in countries where collaboration did not prevail (Anheier and Salamon, 2003). As part of public sector reform in many developed and developing countries, this partnership is opened up and seen in the context of privatization. The rise of quasi-markets and publicāprivate partnerships under the heading of ānew public managementā stresses the role of non-profits as providers of services, typically as contractors of services paid for, at least in part, by government (Ferlie, 1996; McLaughlin, Osborne and Ferlie, 2002). As a broad label, new public management includes several related characteristics that draw in the non-profit sector, specifically:
- a move from third-party government (Salamon, 1995), where non-profits served as either extension agents or partners of governments in service delivery, to a mixed economy of social care and welfare that includes businesses and public agencies next to non-profit providers (Knapp, Hardy and Forder 2001); and
- a move from simple contracts and subsidies to āconstructed marketsā (Le Grand, 1999), particularly in health care and social services, with a premium on managed competition. For example, the long-term care insurance in Germany and services for the frail elderly in the UK are based on competition among alternative providers through competitive bidding for service contracts.
ā¦ the political discourse about non-profit provision has expanded from the welfare state paradigm to include pronounced civil society elements.
With the rise of new public management, the emphasis on non-profits as service providers and instruments of privatization casts non-profit organizations essentially in a neo-liberal role. Examples of this include Germany's efforts to modernize its subsidiarity policy by introducing competitive bidding into social service contracting (Anheier and Seibel, 2001); New Labour's Compact in Britain in the UK (Mulgan, 1999; Plowden, 2001), or France's unemployment policy of āinsertionā (Archambault, 1996).
The political discourse about the role of non-profit provision has expanded from the welfare state paradigm that long characterized the field to include pronounced civil society elements today. While their economic function, particularly in terms of welfare provision, has been a common, though often overlooked, feature of non-profits in most developed countries, the emphasis on civil society, however, is new and reflects profound changes in the wider political environment. The non-profit or voluntary sector is seen as the social infrastructure of civil society, creating as well as facilitating a sense of trust and social inclusion that is seen as essential for the functioning of modern societies (see, for example, Putnam, 2000; Anheier and Kendall, 2002). The explicit or implied joint emphasis on service provision and civil society, however, brings with it many theoretical and policy-related challenges.
More generally, we have to address anew āthe proper role and appropriate balance of state, market and civil society in public lifeā (Naidoo and Tandon, 1999, p4). With the end of the Cold War, a āglobal associational revolutionā (Salamon, 1994) began to gather momentum, aided by the expansion of a more confident middle class, and the introduction and spread of new information technologies such as the internet, among other factors (Anheier and Salamon, 2003). Within a short period of time, the world changed from a place dominated by the monologues of autocrats to the cacophony of conversations among individuals and groups of many different kinds (Naidoo and Tandon, 1999).
What is the proper role and appropriate balance of state, market and civil society in public life?
At least to some extent, these conversations ā however diverse or similar, shrill or soft, poignant or comforting, effective or ineffective they might be ā are, ultimately, expressions of democracy and citizenship, and are about individual freedom, social participation and responsibility. While the individual voices of civil society are part of a democratic social order, they are not necessarily democratic themselves ā nor are they necessarily responsible or tolerant, let alone supportive, of freedom or citizenship for some group or another. Many of the voices are; but civil society includes a great diversity of views, as the sometimes grey area between some civil society groups and organized violence demonstrates (Glasius and Kaldor, 2002; Clark, 2003). The crucial point, however, is that such voices are being expressed and heard when, for most of the 20th century, they were not.
The cacophony of civil society that Naidoo and Tandon (1999) describe, and the diversity of voices it expresses, is a relatively new phenomenon in many parts of the world. Yet, how can we know how many voices there are, what their strengths and weaknesses might be, or their potential for democracy and greater social equity, and what impact they could potentially have? What are the contours of civil society? How large or how small is it, and relative to what? How can we understand civil society conceptually, how and where can we locate it empirically, and with what measures and techniques?
How can we understand civil society conceptually, how can we locate it empirically, and with what measures and techniques?
These are some of the questions that motivate the present effort to develop an information system for civil society. Indeed, one of the first impressions one gains from examining civil society is this: the diverse voices of civil society at local, regional, national and, increasingly, international levels have neither a common map nor a compass and a set of instruments that could frame and guide the conversation.
An Impossible Task?
Even though civil society has become an important topic, there is, at the same time, little in terms of a systematic empirical basis for, and conceptually grounded information on, what civil society actually is āin the real worldā. At present, we have no systematic way to answer the questions posed above. Moreover, little is known about how policy-makers and practitioners could anticipate, track and address trends in civil society over time, and how they could explore the impact of actual and potential policies in the context of such changes and developments. Put simply, civil society is a term without much of the methodological and empirical underpinnings needed to make it a useful and fruitful concept in the long term. To provide this infrastructure for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers is the ultimate goal to which this book is meant to contribute.
The diverse voices of civil society have neither a common map nor a compass and a set of instruments to guide them.
More specifically, the objective of the civil society information system proposed here is to provide a tool for describing the empirical contours of civil society in a systematic way. In turn, this would enable the assessment of the āhealthā of civil society by providing indications of strengths and weaknesses with a view to suggesting policy options. What is more, the information system should help to assess the impact or contributions of civil society at large and in particular fields, and suggest measures for improvement and further development.
The approach developed here provides a tool for describing the empirical contours of civil...
