ABSTRACT
Over the last two decades, there has been an upsurge of interest in civil society, both in academic and public discourse. In this process, civil society has been viewed not only as an important thinking space for an adequate understanding of social change, but also as a major actor of democratic transition and sustainable economic development. Moreover, the domain in which civil society has been reinvented both epistemologically and politically is not only national but also regional and global. The regime transitions from authoritarian rules to democracy in Latin America and Eastern Europe, which took place during the 1980s, have contributed significantly to the revival of civil society. Yet it is nevertheless globalization that has constituted an effective foundation for the increasing importance of civil society in coping effectively with the serious problems and dangers confronting humanity. The growing doubts about ‘the capacity of the state to cope with its own welfare, development and environmental problems’ (Anheier, 2004, p. 3), and the increasing awareness that the problems and dangers that the world faces today are global in nature and require global solutions, have together led in academic and public discourse to the perception of civil society as central to capturing and governing social change. Thus, civil society, which ‘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’ (Anheier, 2004, p. 2). Hence, civil society and its effectiveness in creating a better and more humane world has become both a central topic for academic discourse and a desirable policy objective for politicians, policy-makers and practitioners (Edwards, 2004, p. 13).
