Thirteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The place and role of civil society has been the topic of a heated debate in many arenas, with priority on the academic and political. It is regarded as important for a variety of reasons, among them its impact on “social capital,” its role in public service delivery, and its political role. The functions of the civil society, such as articulating citizens’ interests and demands, defending their rights, and meeting their needs are deemed to be central to democratic accountability. In performing these functions, the civil society organisations (CSO) enter into several types of relationships with the governing authorities (Najam, 2000) and allegedly transform the power relations. This paper examines those relationships from a number of perspectives in an attempt to apprehend their nature, including what power is involved, how it influences the other side in the relationship, which relationships are productive, and what drivers they create. It analyses the changing forms and spaces of power through institutional arrangements and street-level strategies, with a focus specifically on the dimensions of public service delivery and political work, and investigates what is behind claims of increasing marketisation, managerialism, de-politicization, and convenience interactions. The conclusions are based on research and observations of national and various European CSOs, a qualitative dataset from interviews, and a structured questionnaire data. The analytical framework departs from strategic institutional interests, dwells upon whether reality gets strained by rhetoric and discusses the strength of identified explanatory factors.