IN SEARCH OF REALITY : PROMOTING DEMOCRATIC GOOD GOVERNANCE THROUGH CIVIL SOCIETY

Good governance as a concept has drawn a sweeping public attention since 1990s. Civil society, as a non-state actor, has been gaining prominence day by day for accelerating the movement of democratization in many developing countries, while Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) as components of civil society are also making their considerable efforts to advance this process. The main objective of this paper is to explore the linkages between civil society and democratic good governance, and also to appraise the role of NGOs in promoting the democratic good governance through their initiatives. Introduction The idea of civil society as a debatable issue among academics and scholars has become more prominent in political and developmental parlance in the early 1990s. This is mostly due to successive waves of democratization across the developing countries. Political scientists and some other development practitioners have come to the realization that it is not just the state institutions that essentially ensure a high standard of democratic governance but also the civil society has the role to play. The concept of civil society can be applied in order to change and enhance the relationship between citizens and sate as well as the policy formulation and its implementation in the state sphere. In the present era of globalization state is essentially important, and at the same time market economy, while civil society and other transnational forces are increasingly and equally influential as well because all these factors have led the state to play a role to promote the national interests in relation with the international funding institutions. Now for the developing countries, the concern is to strengthen the role of the states and enhance the efficiency of the state apparatus through good governance in order to cope with the force of globalization and to achieve development goals. Good governance, a much talked about issue, generally, encompasses a broad range of practices that maximize the common good. Some of the attributes of good governance are democratic practices, participation, rule of law and respect for human rights, transparency and accountability. Civil society here is an important force of democratization process because it provides a vital link between citizens and the state. It also creates an environment that can be used to enhance community bond and decisionmaking, which is vital to civic participation, and also promotes its development. Therefore, the role of civil society cannot be ignored in any case considering its contributions to the governance system. The paper focuses on various conceptual arguments of civil society and tries to explore as to how civil society and democratic good governance are linked to each other, and thus, civil society plays a role in ensuring its practices. Moreover, the role of NGOs as components of civil society is under assessment so as to discover their contributions to expedite the ongoing movement of democratization in developing countries. Here in this paper an attempt also has been made to address the major challenges for civil society in this era of globalization. Clarifying Key Concepts The role of civil society is gradually increasing in the current world of globalization, and hence the horizon of civil society is also expanding. The discourse of good governance has an inherent cooperation between civil society and political society, between the state and citizens. From realistic point of view, “civil society and its building blocks cannot replace a state; they may have a complementary role by engaging government/bureaucracy to be more productive and efficient” (Parnini, 2006: 189). Thus, civil society has been instrumental to enhance good governance in developing countries. NGOs also have been development partners of the governments and advocating for democratic good governance in many developing countries. In this regard it is important to clarify and understand the meaning of the terms civil society and good governance and their relationship in this context. Civil Society: Conceptual Clarification The term civil society owes its origins to the word ‘civics’, which derives from the Latin word ‘civis’ meaning citizen. Both the Romans and Greeks had the same terms meaning political society where citizens being active in the political life of the state helped shape its institutions and policies (World Health Organization, 2002). Historical evidence shows that as a term civil society has a rich, evocative and long history of political philosophy. As a result, there is no consensus and universally accepted definition about civil society or organizations formed to represent civil society, but one way to think of it is in terms of activities undertaken for the public good by groups or individuals in the space between the family, the state and the market (Salamon and Anheier, 1998). Civil society also can be defined as “the domain of social organization within which voluntary associative relations are dominant” (Warren, 1999: 14). But in a modern society definitions based on simple state-society relations are not sufficient to conceptualize civil society. Because in this case they fail to identify power relative autonomy of the market as well as fail to identify the distinctive means of civil society organization. Thus, civil society can be thought of as the domain of associations that are based on associative relations, and which shade into associations that interact with states, market and intimate relations (ibid). Some theorists consider civil society as a space which is independent of the state and the market, while other compares it with the voluntary sector of organization (Keane, 1998, in Parnini, 2006). After a long historical journey, civil society has been an important agent though which people can express their voices and defends against their rights and can resist the tyranny of the governments. According to the London School of Economics: “Civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of the state, family and market, though in practice, the boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated. Civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy and power. Civil societies are often populated by organizations such as registered charities, development nongovernmental organizations, community groups, women’s organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trade unions, selfhelp groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy groups”(LSE, 2004, in Wood, 2007: 2). Civil society which is also considered as the third sector or the nonprofit sector is used to describe all aspects of society, and that the boundary extends beyond the realm of public and private sector (Pharr, 2003, in Teegen et al., 2004). Brown et al. (2000, in Teegen, 2004: 664)), defines “civil society as an arena of association and action independent of the state and the market in which citizens can organize to pursue purposes that are important to them, individually and collectively”. The common understanding regarding the civil society is that it represents general public interests providing the social power of its networks of people where their ideas, information, services and expertise are used to press forward the interests of people by seeking to influence the state and the market. Uphoff (1995) argues NGOs not being representative enough to the reality of civil society suggesting that it should be seen as an operational space between the public and the private. (Uphoff, 1995, in Parnini, 2006). But with the change and demand of time NGOs have taken the position of civil society by its own rights, making less clear divisions between what and what NGOs are not. However, civil society is a group of people in a country having regular concern for the social and political affairs of that country not being involved in the political parties. NGOs as being synonymous with civil society by the western donors are engaged in the functions that the way civil society performs, though some scholars considers NGOs as one of the small parts of civil society. In addition, an array of civic elements is active in the public sphere. They are trade unions, foundations, faith-based and religious groups, community-based organizations, social movements and networks and ordinary citizens. De Tocqueville (1990), and very recently Robert Putnam (1999), have seen the civil society as a network of association which safeguards the democratic space between the state and the family (ibid). Civil society as a non-state, non-profit, voluntary organization constituted by people within the social sphere of civil society has been gaining increasingly accepted understanding of the term, and this organization draws from community, neighborhood, work, social and other connections, which have become a common channel for people seeking to exercise citizenship and contribute to social and economic change (World Health Organization, 2002). However, it is mentionable here that the boundaries between local, national and international civil societies are gradually becoming nebulous and loose due to the effect of globalization, which has essentially brought the world much closer to the people. In other words, this global civil society has been a platform where people argue about, campaign, negotiate about or lobby for the arrangements that presupposes to shape global developments. (Kaldor, 2003). There are many civil societies at global levels with a range of issues offering the possibilities to participate in debate about the much talked about global issues such as democracy and good governance. The concept civil society here in this pape