Organised Civil Society and European Governance CIVGOV

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Organised Civil Society and European
Governance(CIVGOV)

• Coordinator Università di Trento -- Carlo Ruzza
• Countries covered Italy, Belgium, Spain Basque
  Country, Spain Santiago, Germany, Greece,
  France, Sweden, the UK - Essex, the UK
  Stirling, Hungary, Poland.
• Brussels 18.11.05 -- 9.15- 10.00 - Objectives
  and Methodology of Project

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Introduction civil society and governance

• Definitions of civil society why and how it
  should be studied
• Functions of civil society
• Reasons for its contemporary relevance
• Europe and connecting the local, national and
  supranational levels
• Studying the impact of civil society
• Philosophical aspects and Policy implications

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What is civil society?

• Definitions Civil society is constituted by the
  set of individuals and linking institutions which
  connect the public sphere and the state. It
  encompasses social institutions such as churches,
  social movements such as environmental movements
  and public interest groups such as consumer
  associations.
• Status of economic actors.
• One important dimension of OCS is its political
  role. This is connected with direct participation
  of individual citizens and associations.
• Social Movement organizations have become
  institutionalised and are increasingly connected
  to other parts of organized civil society.

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1. The return of civil society

• Renewed attention to civil society (CS) in social
  theory and policy maing. Collapse of ideologies,
  Secularization, balancing the power of business,
  enhancing the public shpere
• It is seen as linked to institutional performance
  and effective democracy, new forms of
  participation and the crisis of politics.
• The potential importance of CS at different
  territorial levels. Governments and international
  organizations are advocating a stronger civil
  society Transnational, national, local CS

• Growth of associationism and institutionalization.
  Social movements are an accepted and popular
  part of organized civil society
• This situation contrasts with the view of
  interest groups of the 70s which was concerned
  with people sovereignty, factionalism and
  rent-seeking behaviour, weakness on political
  equality and distributive equality.
• Governance as a system of political,
  multicentric and changeable coordination

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Civgov Questions

• To what extent do the activities of
  public-interest associations, activist
  coalitions, and movement-parties bridge the gap
  between the citizenry and different policymaking
  levels? Does the involvement of organized civil
  society (OCS) influence decision-making?
• The prospects for good governance are hampered by
  what we may call representational blockage.
  Several Member States and the EU provide little
  space for channelling concerns arising from civil
  society. Are there recognizable patterns?
• Crisis of politics. OCS inclusion has been seen
  as a potential solution. However, policy-makers
  are selective in their inclusion processes,
  favouring business associations more often than
  public interest groups. Are there sectoral and
  country differences?
• Civil society organizations find it difficult to
  perform some of their functions i.e. acquiring
  and channelling information and aggregating their
  base. Are there sectoral and country differences?
• Briefly, we will address questions related to the
  advocacy activities of OCS.

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Objectives

• We wish to test the hypothesis that different
  countries and sectoral policy styles
  characterise types of OCS involvement
• The project studies the extent to which advocacy
  groups concerned with different policy sectors
  reflect citizens preferences, channel them to
  decision-making fora and are successful in their
  advocacy efforts
• We examine the way preferences are formed, and
  acted upon in the policymaking process, at the
  subnational, national and European levels of
  governance.

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MACs and Policy-Making

• This project examined the role of three types of
  civil society organizations connected to social
  movements. Referring to them as movements
  advocacy coalitions (MACs) - loosely coordinated
  networks of social movement actors, and
  influential sympathisers in policy-making roles
  (institutional activists) - we conceive them as
  collective agents representing citizens.
• We focus on environmental, anti-racist and
  regional policy. We wish to examine whether
  MACs-related OCS involvement is significant and
  whether it is a source of policy innovation.
• The Civgov project involves 12 teams in 10 EU
  countries and deals with the role of MACs in 3
  sectors anti-racism, environmentalism and
  regionalism
• 700 interviews at national and subnational level
  with activists, institutional actors and
  privileged witnesses (wp2), 180 looking at the
  interface between the EU and national levels
  (wp3) and 30 at EU level (wp4).

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Environmentalism, Regionalism, Antiracism

• We will examine movement-inspired advocacy
  coalitions (MACs) impact on three policy sectors
  - environmentalism, regionalism, and antiracism
  (including xenophobia) - at the subnational,
  national and European level.
• We focus on two policy sub-areas for each sector
  
• for environmentalism, the cautious assessment of
  genetically modified (GM) foods and the
  regulation of transport
• for regionalism, the preservation and promotion
  of minority languages and cultures and the
  defence of socio-economic cohesion within the EU
  
• for antiracism, the promotion of antiracist
  values and the adoption of labour market
  anti-discriminatory measures.

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The Workpackages

• We began by examining public opinion research
  through national literature reviews, secondary
  analysis of survey data and media discourse, and
  we will provide a map of issues of concern to
  selected EU publics.
• Second, we examined how public-interest
  organisations respond to these concerns, their
  agenda-setting strategies, how they decide which
  issues to bring to the EU level and which at
  national level, and we will examine the
  interaction between the two levels.
• Third, we sought to understand the mechanisms
  linking national MACs and those activists
  residing permanently in Brussels (EMACs). We see
  EMACs as filters for conflicting demands, and
  occasionally ready to craft their agenda
  independently from the preferences and
  aspirations of their national organisations.

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Findings the functions of civil society

• EU institutions utilise civil society to address
  policy-makers information deficit,
• aggregate interests
• formulate efficient and accepted policies
• to monitor outcomes
• help with implementation
• approach policy crises in a concerted manner
• to enrich decision making with new policy ideas
• to spur collective processes of policy learning
• for legitimacy reasons

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2. Findings Comparing Civil Society in different
Member States

• Within the EU Italy, Germany, France and Great
  Britain, are large countries, Poland and Spain
  are medium-sized, and Sweden, Belgium, Hungary
  and Greece are small. This allows a clarification
  of the effect of size on mechanisms of
  representation.
• Secondly, our selection of cases contrasts
  countries with well known levels of civil society
  associationism in the North to European countries
  that are only recently developing relevant NGO
  sectors in the South.
• Thirdly, we have countries from different
  accession periods.

• Findings Country size is less important than
  sectoral variables, policy-making traditions,
  forms of state structure
• Historical traditions of associationism continue
  to the present. Scandinavian countries display
  high levels of civil society involvement but it
  is highly structured along an insider-outsiders
  continuum.
• Time of accession important and autonomous cs
  only flowered after the fall of the Berlin wall.
  Also tendency towards the adoption of Western
  models of cs organizations.
• Spain and Greece are also late developers,
  emerging from stifling traditions of state
  autoritarianism. In Italy an autonomous civil
  society has only recently broken free from the
  dominant Catholic and Communist subcultures.

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3 Findings OCS and its Sectoral Strategies

• In terms of strategies we found that civil
  society organisations have a large repertoire of
  actions, and seek to address both institutions
  and the general public in order to bridge the gap
  between them.
• Environmentalists are more likely to employ
  strategies that address the general public
  compared to anti-racists and regionalists.
• For instance environmentalists tend to employ
  direct actions, demonstrations and petitions more
  than anti-racists and regionalist organizations,
  while the latter participate more frequently in
  formal consultations and in decision-making
  processes.

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4. Findings OCS Strategies and Public Opinion

• Our results suggest that the perceived support
  from public opinion has a decisive influence on
  strategies and actions. Environmentalists
  perceive themselves as having the highest level
  of support, while anti-racists think that the
  public is less sympathetic to their concerns.
• These differences lead to different opinions
  about the importance of being representative and
  more generally on the importance of public
  consensus.
• Organisations that experience low levels of
  public support are less willing to employ forms
  of direct actions and demonstrations or consider
  them counterproductive whereas organisations that
  rest on wide public support evaluate them as very
  or fairly effective.
• The most effective strategy for associations with
  low support from citizens is providing expertise
  to decision-makers the most effective strategy
  for associations that are able to gain consensus
  from people is media campaigns.

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5. Findings OCS and territorial levels

• At local and regional levels activists are most
  often involved in organizing public meetings and
  media campaigns in order to make people aware of
  problems.
• At the EU level, the most frequently adopted
  strategies are lobbying, petitions, participation
  in formal consultations and providing expertise.
  It is interesting to note that activism is mainly
  directed at addressing political institutions,
  and that demonstrations and direct actions are
  fairly absent at the supranational level.
• In this sense our data confirms evidences from
  previous researches, highlighting the relative
  absence of traditional forms of public
  mobilization in Brussels.

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Theoretical Implications effective and potential
contributions of civil society

• To address concerns with output legitimacy
• To address the globalization-driven re-location
  of ambits of power to civil society
• To construct the citizen.
• To construct a public sphere
• To increase political legitimacy

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Involvement European level
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Involvement national level
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Strategies at different territorial level