CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE OLD AND NEW MEMBER STATES: Ideology, institutions and democracy promotion

The paper examines the significance of ‘civil society’ promotion as a component of the new modes of governance proposed within the EU and its member states. The concept of civil society has had different meanings and roles in the evolution of the old and post-communist new EU members. ‘Civil society’ is analysed as a form of political coordination under capitalism; as a reform ideology in the process of opposition under communism; as a policy legitimising democratisation; and as an ideological component of neo-liberalism in the enlargement of the European Union. The paper proposes a model distinguishing the different roles played by ‘civil society’ discourse in the transformation of state socialism. In the post-state socialist societies a process of democracy promotion has included the sponsorship of civil society. Analysed empirically, significant differences are shown between the nature of civil society organisations in the old EU member states, new members and post socialist non-members. These data indicate the important changes which have taken place in the new member states. However, in the context of the post-socialist states, in which traditional forms of government have been weakened, there are significant structural weaknesses in civil society organisations. It is shown that there is a serious deficiency with respect to the efficacy of civil society associations as agents in the democratising process, as well as for the articulation and defence of community interests. It is argued that furthering ‘civil society’ forms of participation and management are a part of a neo-liberal economic and political agenda. It is concluded that strengthening democratic state forms of administration and coordination should be major policy concerns.

‘Civil society’ is one of the major themes of the discourse on the transformation of the former European state socialist societies to capitalism; it is also a component in the European Union's ‘new modes of governance’. The first part of the paper considers the different meanings attributed to the term and contends that its promotion is linked to the political and economic interests of its proposers. Class and elite dispositions to civil society promotion in the political map of the old member states of the European Union are contrasted with those in the former state socialist societies. A distinguishing feature of civil society promotion is the attempts of political elites to secure legitimacy for particular types of institutions: in the post socialist societies as a means to secure democratic legitimation in the movement to capitalism; in the European Union to institute ‘new forms of governance’ to remedy its perceived ‘democratic deficit’. The second part of the paper considers data from numerous values surveys and reports from NGOs. It is shown that the initial forms of societal coordination differ considerably between the old and new member states. ‘Democracy promotion’ is a process in which civil society plays an important role. It is suggested that two different sets of relationships underpin the nature of civil society: the organic and the mechanical. It is argued that civil society promotion in the post-socialist states was a part of a neo-liberal vision involving the dismantling of the socialist state and the legitimation of new forms of redistribution. However, the initial conditions in the post-socialist states were not compatible with the imposition of autonomous civil society associations. An alternative policy might have channelled resources into strengthening existing structures and participatory forms of local and regional government.

Before the collapse of state socialism, citizen participation in democratic politics was discussed in terms of representative democracy and the notion of ‘civil society’ played a relatively unimportant role in political analysis of Western societies.¹ Moreover, it is a concept laden with ambiguity and ideological pretensions. In its most general sense, as used in political science discourse, civil society is that social space between individuals and primary groups (the family) and political authority (the state). For many civil society theorists, autonomous associations and institutions fill all this space. These range from privately owned economic corporations to voluntary self-help associations. In liberal democracies, civil society is distinguished by the autonomy of these intermediary groups from the sphere of state activity.

Sociological interpretations consider the structural differentiation of modern society to create different spheres of social life, each interacting, and being interdependent, with one another: the economic system, science and education, mass media and culture. These spheres interact with the family and the political system, the state. The peculiar feature of civil society is that it is ‘a solidary sphere in which a certain kind of universalising community comes gradually to be defined and to some degree enforced’ (Alexander 1998: 7). Alexander conceives of civil society as some independent set of civil ties of communities with their own ‘cultural codes, and narratives in a democratic idiom’ (ibid.). Rather than considering the units of civil society to be ‘autonomous’ and independent of other component parts of society, they are envisaged as interacting with, influencing and being influenced by, other spheres of society (including the state). A similar view is taken by Chris Hann who, criticising the Western model (of essentially ‘autonomous’ units) contends that we should ‘understand civil society to refer more loosely to the moral community, to the problems of accountability, trust and cooperation that all groups face. In this sense, all human communities are concerned with establishing their own version of a civil society … ’ (Hann 1966: 20). This theoretical approach has the advantage that it does not privilege one form or paradigm of ‘civil society’, and does not define it in terms of the market and possessive individualism. It includes ‘reciprocal associations’, informal networks and forms of mutual support.

Writing from an historical perspective, critical writers associate the rise of civil society with the development of capitalism, and consider its formation to be dependent on the bourgeoisie. The emphasis here is on the economic formation distinguished by private property and the continuous quest for profit realised through the market. Alvin Gouldner points out that ‘the social structures of civil society were not independent entities generating bourgeois society but were, rather, forms in which bourgeois society had emerged; that is, they were the products rather than the producers of the bourgeois class’ (Gouldner 1980: 355, italics in original). The institutional set-up was not ideologically autonomous; the legal system enforced rights to private property and made the accumulation of capital possible. Unlike Alexander, for whom all differentiated spheres are ‘interconnected and interpenetrated’, the capitalist economy presides over, or determines, the other segments.

For all these interpretations, civil society has three major components: an area between the individual (and family) and the state; an economy based on private ownership and the market; and a particular set of values and norms which include the legitimating concepts of freedom and democracy. A major division exists between those theorists who include economic institutions in civil society and writers (including the policy makers in the EU) who restrict the term to various forms of social association, and consider institutions of the ‘market’ (as well as the state) to be distinct from ‘civil society’. In the liberal democratic conception, associations are autonomous in character and thereby contribute to political pluralism.

Western liberal democratic conceptions of civil society are predicated on ideas of individual rights, whereas in many eastern European societies, especially Russia and Ukraine, a more collectivist socialist idea of rights is assumed. As Pollis and Schwab have pointed out: ‘ … only in the Western capitalist states, with a shared historical development and a common philosophic tradition, does the concept of individual rights against and prior to the state exist. And only in these countries are political and civil rights implemented to a greater or lesser extent. Most non-Western states, frequently for a combination of cultural and ideological reasons and because of policy priorities set by the demands of economic development do not emphasise or attend to political and civil rights’ (Pollis and Schwab 1979: xiii). Such writers emphasise the interrelationship and interdependence between particular sets of human rights doctrines and the social, political and economic structures in which they are embedded. Hence human rights have a particularistic rather than a universalistic relevance. In the former socialist societies economic, welfare and distributive rights were given a priority and were established in countries which had only rudimentary (if any) individual rights before the socialist revolutions took place. These ideas were then imposed, and/or copied, to varying degrees in the central and east European states. A classification showing the differences between individualistic and collectivist types of rights is summarised below (Figure 1). Policy makers in attempting to ‘create civil society from above’ are confronted with two different conceptions of rights.

The relatively recent advocacy of an autonomous type of civil society which has to be encouraged, crafted and even ‘manufactured’ (Howell 1999) is closely linked to developments which have taken place in the former and post state socialist societies. In the European Union, it is also linked to the ‘democratic deficit’ associated with the electoral and representative processes. To understand the dynamics and ambiguities associated with the role of civil society, one has to take account of the different interests and objectives of those involved in civil society promotion. The creation of civil society in the post-socialist countries has to be analysed in the context of the transformation process: the formation of new states, the introduction of market relations and the privatisation of assets, and realignment in international relations. The paper attempts to formulate a trajectory of policy formation in which are embedded the different structures and meanings given to civil society associations in the old and new member states of the European Union.

It is hypothesised that ‘civil society’ has several different functions, with associated class and elite dispositions and types of legitimacy, policies and outcomes. I distinguish four major functions: as a component of capitalism (this is elaborated in Figure 2A,B); as reform ideology (see Figure 3); as political policy (Figure 4); and as an ideological component of neo-liberalism (Figure 5).

A rather simplified way to analyse these different dispositions and civil society outcomes is to consider the way that structures and processes give rise to interests, and dispositions leading to policies. Such an analysis should indicate the contours of the trajectory for change and the consequences for civil society promotion. Policy making is a sequential process having five major stages:

Initial forms of coordination ;> ;dispositions ;> ;legitimations ;> ;policy ;> ;outcomes. Consequentially, the outcomes impact on structures and set off another set of dispositions, legitimations and so on.²

Underlying structures (at a macro level – capitalism, state socialism, in their various formations) give rise to people's expectations, depending on their position in the social structure and these lead to ideological and political dispositions which are not homogeneous. Such dispositions may take many forms: acceptance of the structures, requiring marginal policy adjustments, or dissatisfaction giving rise to a propensity for reform (or in extreme cases, major political change, such as transformation). Political action is the outcome of such dispositions, and needs legitimation in ideological terms. Should dispositions lead to effective outputs, then there are impacts on the structures and forms of coordination.

We may reformulate the questions with respect to civil society by asking how civil society discourses relate to actors’ dispositions and policies and where they fit into the above trajectory. There are significant differences in the trajectories of change in which civil society is embedded.

In the established capitalist countries of western Europe (as far as this paper is concerned, the old members of the EU) capitalism had a long uninterrupted history. The old member states had already secured rights to private property, had economic markets, pluralist polyarchic political coordination through parliamentary processes: they had secured the institutions of economic and political civil society. As illustrated in Figure 2A, they provided institutions which secured coordination, legitimacy and stability of capitalist societies. In this context, civil society forms were relatively autonomous and interacted with political and economic institutions. Democratisation, of which civil society is considered to be a part, occurred concurrently with the marketisation of the economy, privatisation of assets and entry to the world economy. Political institutions (parties, interest groups in civil society, parliaments) in the old member states have sought to protect the public from the destabilising effects of the widening of the free market. They have sought to introduce social mechanisms to protect disadvantaged groups and have been able to do so with varying degrees of success over a period of time.

Forms of representation and participation at the European Union level, however, take a somewhat different form in which civil society promotion has had a more important role. The adoption of civil society associations as a means of citizen participation by the EU is a response to the wide criticism that its institutions had a ‘democratic deficit’,³ which cannot be discussed in detail here. The absence of effective ‘electoral’ representative procedures, the lack of political parties on a European level, the low turnout in European elections and disenchantment by the public, has led the EU to adopt a more ‘participatory’ form of democracy predicated on civil society associations. ‘Civil, policy and social dialogues’ may promote the democratic process. The European Union ‘[promotes] the role of voluntary organisations and foundations in Europe’, its political objective is ‘the building over time of a strong civil dialogue at the European level to take its place alongside the policy dialogue with the national authorities and the social dialogue with the social partners’ (COM (97) 241 final cited in EU 1999).

The ‘New Modes of Governance’ (NMG) exercise covers ‘a wide range of different policy processes such as the open method of co-ordination, voluntary accords, standard setting, regulatory networks, regulatory agencies, regulation through information, bench-marking, peer review, mimicking, policy competition, and informal agreements’ (Scientific Objectives of the NEWGOV Project n.d.). ‘Civil society’ associations are clearly one of the major ‘new modes of governance’. Indeed, the development of ‘civil society’ types of association is one of the political objectives of the enlarged European Union (EU 1999). As part of new modes of governance, civil society organisations should function in a non-hierarchical way and involve private actors in policy formation and implementation (Borzel et al. 2008: 4). The political map at the level of the European Union, in which civil society is embedded, has somewhat different contours to those of the old member states.

In the post-state socialist societies, the meaning and relevance of civil society has changed over time. In the terminal state socialist period, ‘civil society’ discourse originated in the reform movements and provided an intellectual challenge to the structure and process of state socialism. Those disposed to change the parameters of the socialist system were able to legitimate their position through a civil society discourse. Essentially, civil society legitimated a sphere of activity independent of the state and would require a major shift in organising principles (from the mechanical to the organic as summarised above in Figure 1). The proposed type of ‘civil society’ to be formed was predicated on the political sphere; it legitimated rights to certain social strata to pursue their own activity independently of the state. Due to the absence of autonomous (non-state sponsored) associations under state socialism they could not stimulate reform but were consequences of reform. As illustrated in Figure 3, the initial conditions were state coordination and administrative distribution. In the pre-transformation period, ‘civil society’ was not a structure of institutions but an ideology which legitimated reformers intentions for regime change. ‘Civil society’ (in the sense of autonomous associations) did not cause change, but the ideology of civil society legitimated regime change. The outcomes were de-statisation and, initially, hybrid forms of coordination. (Later, as we discuss below, when the outcome of reform was positive, ‘civil society’ then became a policy objective, something that was worthy of constructing.)

Here we may note some major differences between the old and new post-socialist member states. First, civil society initially was borrowed as an ideology from the established economically capitalist and politically polyarchic countries to legitimate opposition to the socialist state. Second, the emphasis was on the promotion of political civil society, whereas historically in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, economic civil society was achieved first and provided a base from which political civil society could be formed. Reformers in the new post-socialist states sought to achieve (polyarchic) forms of political coordination. Third, the socialist state's powers were very much wider than in western states – and had to be broken. Fourth, with the possible exception of the early post-war transformation of western Germany and Austria, western European states were strongly entrenched in terms of legitimacy and provided a coordinating role between the capitalist economy and society. Civil society associations worked in the context of established state apparatuses, whereas in the new member states, at least initially in the post-socialist period, state activity was regarded as illegitimate.

The dispositions of reformers (both internal to the society and from abroad) were to weaken state forms, to form political civil society (vaguely any kind of ‘people's associations’).⁴ In the transformative post socialist society, civil society policy shifted to the sphere of the economy: it not only legitimated the privatisation of state property, but it also infringed on the socialist state's practice of social transfer. Policy sought to reduce not only the hegemonic power of the state, but to reduce state social welfare activity.

These are the frames in which democracy promotion had to take place. In the old member states, new types of democratic government (the NEWGOV initiatives) were responses to quite different economic and political demands, particularly the need to promote citizen participation in the context of a democratic representative ‘deficit’. Autonomous civil society activities had an organic role and arose out of existing socially based associations. While neo-liberal policies of destatisation, marketisation and privatisation have narrowed the scope of government activity, the nation states in the EU remain relatively strong. In this context, new modes of governance, originating from EU elites, weaken the coordinating roles of the state with ‘society based’ political activity. This political map is illustrated in Figure 4.

In the new member states, the context was quite different. The initial conditions did not have established capitalist economic and political structures. The initiatives for new modes of democratic governance occurred in a hybrid society – one with market elements, but only rudimentary polyarchic structures and very weak representative institutions. Elite dispositions in the transformation period came from the EU which was led by the elites responsible to the then member states and which defined through the Acquis the conditions for membership. Hence the trajectory of democracy policy formation was a consequence of an external EU elite which called for the manufacture of civil society. The sequence is summarised in Figure 5.

In the eastern European member states seeking membership, the bargaining powers of the applicants were weak. They were given comprehensive conditions in the form of the Acquis for joining. However sceptical appellant new members might have been, they had to adapt to the conditions, or face exclusion. While ‘informal groups’ and civil society advocates such as Klaus and Havel were important as ideologists in the fall of state socialism, civil society institutions (as autonomous articulators of social interests) were only embryonic. Trade unions and political parties had no experience of working in a capitalist framework, let alone a testing neo-liberal one.

In this context, civil society had to be made by the political elites in the post-communist countries, with the assistance of their sponsors from abroad. How then did the next process of civil society formation proceed and what differences are there between the old and new members of the EU? The analysis now moves to consider civil society in the form of an empirical social formation.⁵

Detailed comparative data on the constitution of civil society in central and eastern European member states of the European Union have been collected by the European Social Survey, the European Values Survey and the World Values Survey,⁶ and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).⁷ We need to bear in mind that statistics are collected for the use of the people who commission them and contain biases in definition, classification and collection which serve to promote their own interests.⁸ This calls for care in interpretation. These sources, however, in combination present a picture of the strengths and weaknesses of civil society in the emerging post-communist societies.

The 1995–1997 World Values Survey points to a much lower level of participation in 13 post-communist countries than in eight ‘older democracies’ (USA, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, Japan and Federal Republic of Germany). Rates of organisational membership for the former were 2.39 memberships per person compared to only 0.91 memberships in the post-communist countries – Macedonia and the German Democratic Republic were the highest with scores of 1.5 and Hungary had 1.0: countries of the former Soviet Union were below 1.⁹

A later European Values Survey conducted in 1999/2000 can be used as a basis for comparison between the new and older members of the European Union. Figure 6 illustrates the percentage of the respondents in different countries who participated in political parties and trade unions in 1999/2000. To simplify the comparisons, only three old members of the EU (Great Britain, Germany and Spain) have been selected to illustrate differences with the new EU members (data include Romania but not Bulgaria), and four post-socialist non-members (Croatia, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia) to illustrate those left out. As there were considerable differences between the countries in each group, an average is used in terms of the median.

In terms of the types of trade union and political party membership, the survey shows important differences between the older democracies and post-communist countries. Rather surprisingly perhaps, the new members had trade union participation rates higher than those of the old members. However, we must bear in mind that the post-socialist countries had the imprint of the paternalist trade union movement, providing social support services as part of the welfare state, rather than the economistic Western trade unions. This illustrates the point make above about the state socialist societies being based on a type of ‘mechanical’ rather than ‘organic’ solidarity. It is when one considers political associations that a greater real gulf is observed. In all the new EU states, membership of political parties is less than 1 percent with extremely low participation in Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia (0.2 percent and under of the respondents). Comparatively, in the three old EU states, membership is higher than 2 percent and in the non-EU post-communist societies membership is about the same, even slightly higher. Clearly, as part of de-statisation, the hegemonic communist party (or equivalent) was discredited (and sometimes made illegal), and has not been replaced with other more spontaneous and ‘autonomous’ political associations.

The autonomy of associations is to a considerable extent dependent on the extent of their assets and financial means. The European Social Survey (2002/2003) asked people about their financial contributions to various types of voluntary organisations. This survey has the advantage that it enables comparisons to be made with western European countries having different types of civil society organisations and support structures. Figure 7 shows the percentage of respondents who contributed financially to various associations. (I have selected from the data only politically oriented activities – trade unions, business/professional organisations, political parties and scientific/educational, though the average calculated here is that of all voluntary associations.) Here only six countries have been selected to illustrate differences. It shows that in all aspects of financial support, the new member states have a significantly lower level of contributions than in Britain and Germany; there is still a difference from Spain, though this is less marked.

If we consider civil society organisations in a wider sense, we again find a similar pattern. Unpaid voluntary work and participation in rights activity (including Third World activity) are fairly robust indications of the strength of civil society. Data have been collected and analysed for all European societies¹¹ and the medians for the old EU members, new members and post-socialist societies excluded from the EU are shown on Figure 8. These data refer to 2003 and have not been repeated since. With the exception of Belarus, all the post-socialist countries are again below the median for participation in Third World and Human Rights associations. In terms of civil society participation in human rights and Third World countries, in old EU countries it is 9.5 times greater, and for participation in voluntary unpaid work, it is 7.25 times greater. This is evidence of a ‘civil society deficit’ in the new member states.

The medians of the two sets of countries (old and new EU members) bring out that GDP is 2.44 times greater in the old EU countries. Not surprisingly then we find very high correlations between GDP and participation in civil society associations. The correlation coefficient between the level of participation in unpaid voluntary work and GDP is 0.52 and between human rights activity and GDP is 0.63.¹² Typically, societies with active civil societies are prosperous and citizens have considerable spare time and disposable income. Overall, however, the new EU members from central and eastern Europe had a participation gap far in excess of the differences in GDP. With the exception of Slovenia (not shown on the figure) all the post socialist countries are below the median GDP, and the same may be said about participation in voluntary work.

A second set of data which indicates political participation is the proportion of citizens who vote in European elections. Here again the data are unequivocal; the average turnout in the EU as a whole was 45.6 percent; for the old members it was 52.9 percent and for the new CEECs, 31.2 percent. (Cyprus and Malta are included in the total in the text, but omitted from Figure 9.)

These data show that there is a serious deficiency with respect to participation in voluntary organisations with a political ‘input’ which has important implications for the efficacy of civil society associations as instruments in the process of a democratic system as well as for the articulation and defence of community interests. These quantitative data need to be qualified with respect to the structures of the associations and the processes which helped or hindered their formation.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has collected data on the development of civil society organisations for all CEE countries as well as for Eurasia since 1999 (USAID 2006). Their annual reports are collected from field workers in the relevant countries. While they lack the comprehensive measurement of participation rates comparatively, they bring out the organisational character of the associations and government policy towards them. As noted above, we need to take into account that the reports were written for USAID and it would be naïve to assume that they would not be biased towards their own values. USAID has measured the ‘sustainability’ of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the post-communist countries. A score of between 1 and 3 indicates consolidation of the society into a western type democracy; 3 to 5 mid-transition stage and early transition 5 to 7. These scores are aggregated from seven components of civil society associations as estimated by USAID field workers: legal environment, organisational capacity, financial viability, advocacy, service provision, infrastructure and public image. The top scores giving a ‘consolidated civil society’ show what Western policy makers consider to be a vibrant civil society.

In view of the weakness of civil society, indicated above by the survey measures, USAID's measures take a relatively low threshold for a ‘consolidated civil society’. USAID contends that a ‘western type democracy’ was attained already in 1997 for those countries that constituted the new member states (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia). Countries like Russia and Ukraine have remained (by 2006) at the mid-transition point. The scores are shown on Figure 10. Here we may note that, for the new members, there has been only a very slight improvement in the sustainability of non-governmental organisations between 1997 and 2006. We may conclude that the situation described in the surveys cited above for earlier years has not changed very much.

Study of the USAID annual reports brings out the structural weaknesses of civil society organisations. On the positive side, since the collapse of the state socialist system, a legal framework is being set up, training of staff has improved and input to the decision making process has grown;¹³ civil society organisations have become ‘a means to attain political power’.¹⁴ Financial sustainability is insufficient for a number of reasons – governments have falling resources, socio-economic development is inadequate, the business sector is weak and there is no tradition of philanthropy (USAID 2006: 20). It is widely conceded that international donor assistance has been and is necessary to promote NGO sustainability (USAID 2006: 21). Sponsorship, particularly by foreign organisations has been a major source of finance. Many organisations have been formed on the basis of sponsors’ purses; they lack transparency, self-regulation, and independent forms of finance. Policy priorities assumed by organisations such as DFID, USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Foundation, and Freedom House do not always coincide with those of people living in the areas concerned.

There is a need for greater answerability of the growing number of NGOs and Civil Service Organisations (CSOs), many of which are founded and funded by foreign bodies. The withdrawal of ‘long-term supporters such as USAID and British DFID … caus[ed] a substantial reduction in the annual amount of support available to the … NGO sector’ (USAID 2006: 177). The 2006 report notes that by 2004, ‘most foreign donors had departed and domestic funding sources were still insufficient to sustain civil society organizations’ (USAID 2006: 39). A considerable portion of NGO funding is sourced from public funds.¹⁵ What becomes clear is that the EU, and national government funding are seen as a necessary condition for the fulfilment of the objectives of NGO organisations.

One might question, however, whether such objectives for civil society associations should be supported. The effects of neo-liberal economic policies have led to restrictions in government budgets. These impact on the capacity of governments to defend citizens consequent on the deleterious effects of policies, including the public provision of social services. Supporting civil society organisations in these circumstances leads to the promotion of the sector as the political counterpart of neo-liberal economic policies. As the 2006 NGO Sustainability index puts it:

While nation states have in the twentieth century moved away from the nineteenth-century model of philanthropic support (and volunteers) to provide social services, the shift to NGOs reverses this trend. The lack of foreign donors also pushes civil society organisations into their own income generating activities. The introduction of ‘fees for services’, advocated by USAID, leads to commodification of the public sector and a diminution in the public sphere of service provision. Whether this is desirable or not is a matter of political preference. However, these forms of civil society activities do not enhance ‘democracy promotion’ advocated by the political philosophy of the EU. As noted above, civil society associations, as autonomous ‘people's representatives’, are notably absent.

USAID considers the NGO sector should develop an ‘adversarial’ model of accountability to the state rather than ‘a corporatist model of civil society as in Germany’ and policy should avoid state funding pushing civil society associations in the direction of ‘public organizations’ (USAID 2006: 41). There is clearly an ideological preference for civil society associations to become state critics and thereby to enter the political arena. This again illustrates the ideological preference for an ‘organic’ Anglo-Saxon type of civil society, rather than the more ‘mechanical’ one, discussed above.

The rise of the phenomenon of ‘coloured revolutions’ brings the civil society as a social movement into political perspective. The 2006 Sustainability Report highlights the ‘transformational impact of civil society’ pointing to the fact that regimes (such as Slovakia, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan) channel civil society ‘energies and resources into a get out the vote campaign or an opposition movement’ (USAID 2006: 22). However, these activities are recognised, even by USAID, to be counter productive (Hungary, Latvia in 2006 are singled out [USAID 2006: 2], and Ukraine is also a notable example) in that the public become sceptical of NGO activities. Coloured revolution activities are usually heavily backed by foreign sponsors and adopt a neo-liberal political economic position.

NGOs are lacking in resources, the professional qualifications of employees are low and the infrastructure of support is weak. Active membership of CSOs is small and puts in question their effectiveness as autonomous groups articulating public interests. The sector is lacking in organisational capacity and regularised forms of accountability and transparency. In the public image, NGOs are compromised due to their lack of competence and transparency. It might be questioned whether they are bodies which can effectively take over responsibilities which are traditionally the role of local and central government. While answerable to their sponsors, there is an absence of accountability to users of services or to the public sphere as a whole. The sector is unable to respond to the needs of potential service users. There is a general tendency for these groups to be separate from society. Consequently, they are often viewed by the public with suspicion, especially so when they become involved with foreign political sponsors engaged in electoral politics.

‘Civil society’ can be interpreted as sets of relationships set in two different types of society – mechanical and organic. In Western societies, particularly those based on the Anglo-Saxon model, civil society is a form of political articulation and coordination based on autonomous associations working in a capitalist market framework. This is the first component of civil society defined in the introduction of this paper. In the state socialist societies there was no civil society in this sense, though there were networks and groups interlinked with the state system. In the terminal period of state socialism, ‘civil society’ discourse adopted yet another dimension: it became part of a counter ideology delegitimating the socialist political system – the third component of civil society defined in the introduction. In the construction of capitalism and a pluralist democracy in the candidate member states, spurred by the policy of the EU, which had its own legitimacy problems, civil society promotion became a policy objective – it was a social component of the move to markets and polyarchy. Here the second component – the building of capitalism – is emphasised in the neo-liberal economics of transformation, but severely neglected in civil society discourse.

Unlike the conditions in the old EU member states in which ‘new modes of governance’ provided alternative forms of democratic participation, in the post-socialist states, civil society associations had not only to be encouraged, but formed by the new incumbents of power. In this context, the previous forms of association were severely weakened, if not destroyed, as part of the anti-statist philosophy guiding transformation. Democracy promotion proposals were introduced in a period of rapid and comprehensive changes in the fabric of the society: economically – the introduction of markets internally and on a world scale and the privatisation of state assets; politically – the dismemberment of the hierarchical political system and the introduction of a pluralistic polity; socially – the formation of a new class system and the curtailment of previous networks of welfare (including employment). All these concurrent developments worked against the installation of new types of democratic participation.

Another obstacle to democracy promotion is that the level of GNP was lower than in the old EU states and the economy experienced a marked decline during the early period of transformation. As GNP is highly correlated with the vitality of civil society associations, a major precondition for autonomous civil society development was absent. The disposable income and social energy of the population was insufficient to lead to investment in political civil society associations. The economic downturn and social vacuum caused by the transformation process led in turn to the artificial ‘manufacture’ of civil society and the intrusion of foreign donor interests which became counter-productive – they undermine the autonomy of associations (a fundament attribute of the liberal concept of civil society) and form a strata of managers and executives responsible to donors, rather than to clients.

In the post-socialist new member states, membership and structures of civil society associations are very much lower and weaker than in the old ones. Qualitative studies show that in the former, such associations are poor articulators of social needs and are unable to provide satisfactory levels of services. The EU proposals for the introduction of new forms of democracy, as far as civil society associations are concerned, have not been as successful as anticipated in the new post-socialist member states. There are a number of reasons for this and some are related to the ‘initial conditions’ of the new member states. First, while the legitimation of transformation was in terms of political ‘civil society’ promotion, the transformation process has focussed on the formation of markets and private companies (‘economic’ civil society) consequent on the destruction of the statist system. This has led to much weaker governmental institutions than in the old EU member states. Second, problems of government were compounded by the shocks and socially destabilising effects of economic and political transformation. Third, the statist structures inherited from the socialist period were either destroyed or left an imprint of different types of statist network associations – not autonomous civil society associations as found in capitalist societies.

The new post-communist societies of CEE lacked sufficient political capacity to cope adequately with the social and economic turmoil which ensued with the move to a market society. The old had been swept away – the socialist state lost its redistributive character and service provision functions. The EU provided a model for the new but it could not be delivered. Autonomous civil society associations were not appropriate vehicles for policy implementation and interest articulation. The types of associations promoted by Western agencies were incompatible with the legacy of authoritarianism and socialism and also with the installation of a social democratic welfare state, which might have been more in keeping with the former statist form of welfare.

Possibly the neo-liberal political bias should have been countered by a more robust political opposition. But there was a political deficit: there was insufficient social and political energy to resist conditions in the Acquis which did not meet the needs of the population. Clearly, the EU elites defined the conditions of transformation. It is outside the scope of this paper to define the winners and the losers. But it is clear that the rise in wealth creation and living standards did not materialise as predicted by the reformers seeking to transform state socialism; ‘civil society’ did not arise from the ashes of the latter; the new forms of governance did not lead to higher levels of democratisation – at least as far as many in the population had hoped.

Systemic weaknesses of the new states were a consequence of the policies of transformation.¹⁶ One might question whether conditions in the post-communist societies are appropriate for the development of a non-profit ‘civil society’ sector as an alternative provider of services to the welfare state. Such attempts may weaken even further state provision which suffers under stringent budgetary reductions in keeping with neo-liberal economic policy. The influence of foreign donors has even more distorted the provision of services. It has also led to the criticism that the kind of civil society sponsored by the West is part of its political hegemony: ‘ … civil society begins to look less like a way of fostering democratic rights and responsive governments and more like part of the dominant ideology of the post cold war period: liberal market capitalism’ (Rieff 1999).

Civil society promotion, as in the late Soviet period, again takes an ideological form, but in this case as part of a legitimation of a hegemonic power relation – the European Union. A greater reliance on the market and reduction of the state as an agent of redistribution and social provision increases levels of social inequality which in turn leads to social stress and political instability. The ‘new forms of governance’ advocated by the European Union might enhance participation in the context of stable, effective and durable democratic societies having in place robust autonomous associations and forms of representative democracy. However, in the environment of the formation of capitalism and polyarchic state structures, ‘new forms of governance’ may hinder rather than strengthen the development process.

The author acknowledges the support of the EU New Modes of Government Project (NEWGOV) CITI-CT-2004-506392, and particularly Heinko Pleines who was the organizer of the research team of which the author was a member.

David Lane is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, and previously Professor of Sociology at the University of Birmingham. He is currently the recipient of a British Academy Research award on the transformation of Ukraine and Russia. His recent work includes: The European Union and World Politics, 2009 (with Andrew Gamble), Varieties of Capitalism in Post-Communist Countries, 2006 (with Martin Myant), and The Transformation of State Socialism: System Change, Capitalism or Something Else?, 2007.