Civil society has become a central partner of international actors seeking to support democracy, good governance and political reform. Across contexts of democratic transition, European integration, development, and post-conflict reconstruction, international organisations, regional organisations and bilateral donors provide civil society organisations with funding, training, expertise and opportunities for participation. Such interventions are commonly framed through the language of partnership, empowerment, capacity-building and local ownership. Yet they also create relationships in which external actors may exercise considerable influence over the actors they support, the priorities they pursue and the standards according to which legitimate civil society is defined.
This panel invites contributions examining the relations of power that emerge through external support for civil society and the ways in which these relations are produced, negotiated and contested. Rather than approaching external assistance either as straightforward empowerment or as one-directional domination, the panel is particularly interested in the everyday interactions through which political authority takes shape. How do funding practices, capacity-building programmes, consultation mechanisms, conditionality and professional standards affect civil society organisations? How do external actors construct ideas of legitimate, representative or 鈥渃apable鈥 civil society? How do local actors appropriate, negotiate, reproduce or challenge these expectations? And under what conditions does external support expand opportunities for civic action, reshape relations between civil society and the state, or generate new forms of dependence and hierarchy?
The panel welcomes theoretical and empirical contributions from different geographical contexts and encourages dialogue between research on civil society, democratization, external governance, democracy promotion and international assistance. Comparative and single-case studies, as well as diverse methodological approaches, are welcome. Particular attention is encouraged to the tensions between empowerment and authority, partnership and hierarchy, and external intervention and local agency, as well as to how these tensions are changing in an increasingly contested international environment.
