IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ifwedp/201880.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Civil society in times of change: Shrinking, changing and expanding spaces and the need for new regulatory approaches

Author

Listed:
  • Anheier, Helmut K.
  • Lang, Markus
  • Toepler, Stefan

Abstract

The relationship between many G20 governments and organized civil society has become more complex, laden with tensions, and such that both have to find more optimal modes of engagement. In some instances, state-civil society relations have worsened, leading some experts and activists to speak of a "shrinking space" for civil society. How wide- spread is this phenomenon? Are these more isolated occurrences or indeed part of a more general development? How can countries achieve and maintain an enabling environment for civil society? The authors suggest that much of the current impasse results foremost from outdated and increasingly ill-suited regulatory frameworks that fail to accommodate a much more diverse and expanded set of civil society organizations (CSO). In response, they propose a differentiated model for a regulatory framework based on functional roles. Based on quantitative profiling and expert surveys, moreover, the paper also derives initial recommendations on how governments and civil society could find ways to relate to each other in both national and multilateral contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Anheier, Helmut K. & Lang, Markus & Toepler, Stefan, 2018. "Civil society in times of change: Shrinking, changing and expanding spaces and the need for new regulatory approaches," Economics Discussion Papers 2018-80, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201880
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/discussionpapers/2018-80
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/184921/1/1040948057.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dupuy, Kendra & Ron, James & Prakash, Aseem, 2016. "Hands Off My Regime! Governments’ Restrictions on Foreign Aid to Non-Governmental Organizations in Poor and Middle-Income Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 299-311.
    2. Anheier, Helmut K., 2017. "Civil society challenged: Towards an enabling policy environment," Economics Discussion Papers 2017-45, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    3. Fox, Jonathan A., 2015. "Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 346-361.
    4. Albertson, Kevin & Fox, Chris & LaBarbera, Jessica & O'Leary, Chris & Painter, Gary & Bailey, Kimberly, 2018. "Payment by Results and Social Impact Bonds," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9781447340706, Febrero.
    5. Anheier, Helmut K., 2017. "Civil society challenged: Towards an enabling policy environment," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 11, pages 1-20.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anheier, Helmut K. & Lang, Markus & Toepler, Stefan, 2019. "Civil society in times of change: Shrinking, changing and expanding spaces and the need for new regulatory approaches," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 13, pages 1-27.
    2. Anheier Helmut K. & Toepler Stefan, 2019. "Policy Neglect:The True Challenge to the Nonprofit Sector," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 10(4), pages 1-9, December.
    3. Katz Hagai & Gidron Benjamin, 2022. "Encroachment and Reaction of Civil Society in Non-liberal Democracies: The Case of Israel and the New Israel Fund," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 13(3), pages 229-250, July.
    4. Doğan Erhan & Genç H Deniz, 2021. "Early-Responding Civil Society and a Late Coming State: Findings from Turkey during the Pandemic," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 127-146, January.
    5. Dean Neu & Gregory D. Saxton & Abu S. Rahaman, 2022. "Social Accountability, Ethics, and the Occupy Wall Street Protests," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 17-31, September.
    6. Lars Waldorf, 2017. "Legal empowerment and horizontal inequalities after conflict," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-50, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Joshi, Anuradha, 2017. "Legal Empowerment and Social Accountability: Complementary Strategies Toward Rights-based Development in Health?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 160-172.
    8. Mayka, Lindsay & Abbott, Jared, 2023. "Varieties of participatory institutions and interest intermediation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    9. Ogbe, Michael & Lujala, Päivi, 2021. "Spatial crowdsourcing in natural resource revenue management," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    10. Haass, Felix & Ottmann, Martin, 2017. "Profits from Peace: The Political Economy of Power-Sharing and Corruption," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 60-74.
    11. Anuradha Joshi, 2023. "What makes “difficult” settings difficult? Contextual challenges for accountability," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 41(S1), March.
    12. Fischer, Harry W. & Ali, Syed Shoaib, 2019. "Reshaping the public domain: Decentralization, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), and trajectories of local democracy in rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 147-158.
    13. Ludger Niemann & Thomas Hoppe, 2021. "How to Sustain Sustainability Monitoring in Cities: Lessons from 49 Community Indicator Initiatives across 10 Latin American Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-16, May.
    14. Gaduh,Arya Budhiastra & Pradhan,Menno Prasad & Priebe,Jan & Susanti,Dewi, 2021. "Scores, Camera, Action : Social Accountability and Teacher Incentives in Remote Areas," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9748, The World Bank.
    15. David William Walker, 2016. "How Systemic Inquiry Releases Citizen Knowledge to Reform Schools: Community Scorecard Case Studies," Systemic Practice and Action Research, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 313-334, August.
    16. Dasandi, Niheer & Erez, Lior, 2023. "The flag and the stick: Aid suspensions, human rights, and the problem of the complicit public," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    17. Mario La Torre & Annarita Trotta & Helen Chiappini & Alessandro Rizzello, 2019. "Business Models for Sustainable Finance: The Case Study of Social Impact Bonds," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-23, March.
    18. Chowdhury Mohammad Sakib Anwar & Alexander Matros & Sonali SenGupta, 2022. "Public Good Provision with a Distributor," Papers 2210.10642, arXiv.org.
    19. Stephen Sherlock, 2020. "Alliances of Instrumental Advantage: Supporting Women’s Agency in Civil Society Organisations in Indonesia," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 147-156.
    20. Ruppen, Désirée & Brugger, Fritz, 2022. "“I will sample until things get better – or until I die.” Potential and limits of citizen science to promote social accountability for environmental pollution," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    civil society; NGOs; Closing Civic Space; nonprofit regulation; G20;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F5 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship
    • H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations
    • K33 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - International Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201880. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwkiede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.