There are also limits to what civic pressure can achieve in the absence of institutional reform of the state system itself. The wide array of public sector reforms under way in Africa has different implications for civil society. Reforms of state capacity tend to be market and management oriented, while those of governance and security are concerned with political equity and participation. They call for varying forms of engagement between organized groups in civil society, state institutions and policy makers. This paper also considers theoretical debates around the concept of civil society.
Civil society has no widely agreed definition.