http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/20973/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34830/ 2012-06-01T00:00:00Z Kees Biekart and Alan Fowler describe what happens in the development of society as a political project. They present their Civic Driven Change: a framework for socio-political analysis and action, which has been refined and elaborated in earlier studies. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/38429/ 2012-02-01T00:00:00Z Setting Setting Setting Setting thethethe scene scene How can the current wave of social protests be understood? Well, one thing that the Arab Spring, the London riots, the Chilean student revolt and the Occupy movement worldwide have in common is that they are not run by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or ‘aided’ civil society groups dedicated to justice for people and planet. Their driving force seems to originate from people’s energy and imagination of a different future that is not determined by ‘outsiders’. In spontaneous protest, people in all walks of life are acting as political players to shape the world they share with others. While results obviously take time to unfold, this way of changing society is very visible, exciting and risky. Less noticeable, but more pervasive, are the ways in which day in day out people are getting together to creatively improve the conditions in which they live, sometimes in wider collaboration, sometimes in conflict. This vital, quiet, slow and dense fabric of social and political life is often overlooked. Instead, attention is focused on social arrangements that can be labelled, registered, counted and ‘governed’ and on citizen action which attracts (brief) media attention.... http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/39065/ 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Nation states are premised on the legitimizing presence of a polity comprised of citizens. The politics of this relationship is central to discourse on how societies evolve. Yet in the discipline of international development studies the topic remains peripheral. Reasons can be found in conceptual confusion, in selectivity in donor thinking and policies towards civil society and in the growth-driven political economy of NGO-ism. Remedies for the political lacunae are being sought through a concerted focus on people’s rights, citizenship and qualities of leadership that all show valuable progress. This chapter will examine a comprehensive complement to such efforts referred to as civic driven change (CDC). Originating in a grounded empirical approach, the constituent principles and elements of CDC offer a lens that can both sharpen and deepen insights and advance analysis of civic agency in socio-political processes. As an ontologically grounded normative proposition, CDC allows exposure and examination of ‘uncivil’ forces stemming from contending claims on citizenship. These factors are typically ignored or denied in an historical harmony model of societal change. A CDC narrative is illustrated by reference to contemporary examples of citizen action that play out at multiple sites of governance. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/30559/ 2011-11-20T00:00:00Z Politics is central to development discourse, yet remains peripheral. And, over some twenty years, a civil society narrative has not fulfilled its potential to ‘bring politics back in’. Reasons can be found in conceptual confusion, in selectivity in donor thinking and policies towards civil society and in the growth-driven political economy of NGO-ism. Remedies for the political lacunae are being sought through a focus on rights, citizenship and leadership that show valuable, focused progress.This paper examines a comprehensive complement to such efforts referred to as civic driven change (CDC). Originating in a grounded empirical approach, the constituent principles and elements of CDC offer a lens that can both sharpen and deepen insights and advance analysis of socio-political processes. As a work in progress, a CDC narrative is illustrated by reference to contemporary examples of citizen action that play out at multiple sites of governance. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34791/ 2011-09-19T00:00:00Z Abstract Politics is central to development discourse yet remains peripheral. And, over some twenty years, a civil society narrative has not fulfilled its potential to ‘bring politics back in’. Reasons can be found in conceptual confusion, in selectivity in donor thinking and policies towards civil society and in the growth-driven political economy of NGO-ism. Remedies for the political lacunae are being sought through a focus on rights, citizenship and leadership that show valuable, focused progress. This article examines a comprehensive complement to such efforts referred to as civic driven change (CDC). Originating in a grounded empirical approach, the constituent principles and elements of CDC offer a lens that can both sharpen and deepen insights and advance analysis of socio-political processes. As a work in progress, a CDC narrative is illustrated by reference to contemporary examples of citizen action that play out at multiple sites of governance. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32140/ 2011-05-01T00:00:00Z It was almost seven years back when Hivos invited the ISS to participate in a new programme that was going to explore possibilities for a ‘knowledge exchange’. The idea of the programme was to take advantage of all the interesting information present in the drawers (and in the heads) of project officers in Hivos and their colleagues in partner organisations worldwide. It was assumed that a ‘treasure box’ existed somewhere out there, containing a wealth of rough but interesting data on civil society dynamics that was begging for systematic and critical analysis. ISS immediately showed an interest, agreed on the conditions, and then became in 2005 the first academic organisation participating in this new ‘knowledge programme’. It soon explored the possibilities for a dialogue between Hivos and its Southern partners on the one hand, and ISS staff and Southern researchers on the other. The knowledge programme focused initially on the practice of civil society building, and in particular on the dynamics of Central American social movements, one of Hivos’ crucial target groups. The ultimate purpose was to learn from the rich experience of Hivos’ partners in order to better understand the complex process of civil society formation. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34789/ 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32141/ 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z Contents: Alan Fowler y Kees Biekart / El cambio dirigido por la acción cívica: el poder de la imaginación ciudadana -- Evelina Dagnino / El cambio dirigido por la acción cívica y los proyectors políticos -- Philomena Mwaura / El cambio dirigido por la acción cívica: espiritualidad, religión y fe -- Alfonso Gumucio Dagron / Seis grados y mariposas. Communicación, ciudadanía y cambio -- Nilda Bullain / El cambio dirigido por la acción cívica. La ley y los foráneos -- Shirin Rai / El cambio dirigido por la acción cívica: opportunidades y costes -- Harry Boyte / El cambio dirigido por la acción cívica y la democracia en desarrollo -- Rajesh Tandon / Del voto a la voz: el cambio dirigido por la acción cívica para la profundización de la democracia -- Teivo Teivainen / La democratizacíon global dirigida por la accioń cívica como agencia política -- Alan Fowler and Kees Biekart / El cambio dirigido por la acción cívica: implicaciones y aplicaciones http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/17530/ 2009-04-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/17529/ 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z Modern cities have always been the locus of both inequality and opportunity. However, neoliberal policies pursued since the 1980s have intensified urban disparities. Cities are increasingly shaped more by the logic of the market than the needs of their inhabitants. This article, which introduces a collection of papers on the topic, examines the implications of the neoliberal turn for the ‘right to the city’ as the fundamental tenet of urban citizenship. While evidence suggests a formidable challenge from market forces to the ‘right to the city’, the authors argue that the neoliberal city remains a highly contested urbanity in which poor inhabitants continue to struggle for citizenship in highly diverse ways. The challenge for scholarship is to discover and document those intricate modes of claim-making. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/31324/ 2008-11-01T00:00:00Z The idea of mapping civil society organizations and developing an index to measure civil society strength goes back to the 1990s, shortly after the Eastern European regime transitions. It started with the efforts by Anheier and Salamon and their Johns Hopkins initiative to map non-profit associations throughout the world (Anheier and Salamon, 1998). This was soon followed by similar mapping exercises in East and Central Europe financed by the large international donors, and implemented by academics such as Goran Hyden (for UNDP), Marc Howard, and James Manor (IDS, Sussex). Stimulated by the interest in the role of the non-governmental sector in governance programmes, these projects wanted to establish some sort of benchmark to judge civil society strength in its organizational dimension (see Heinrich, 2005: 214–5). ... http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/23130/ 2008-10-01T00:00:00Z Background The CDC initiative started from a conviction that the mix and nature of today’s global problems requires a wider range of solutions than those coming from government and market. A missing story is one of people themselves acting as citizens to change the society they live in, not as needy beneficiaries, participants, political clients or economic producers and consumers, but as agents of their own future. Finding out what such a story might look like has been the guiding objective for the core group of ten internationally recognized practitioners, analysts and writers. But the CDC story arising from their work is a starting point for a much bigger task. This is to take forward the challenge of promoting a public debate about the role of citizens - from all walks of life and active in civil society organizations and other spheres - to explore ways in which international cooperation can embrace a different approach to development. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32236/ 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z The Civic-Driven Change (CDC) Initiative provides a story and frame of reference which can add value to the work of (private) aid agencies. However, aid agencies vary, and the stage of development of this understanding - which competes with other methods - is such that a first engagement with CDC would be for agencies to critically reflect on their ‘being’ and ‘doing’ as civic agents of change. In focusing on what this might mean in practice, this briefing paper draws on essay 10 in the CDC volume and complements others policy briefs. It is not prescriptive. Illustrations of what CDC could entail for development strategy, principles and practices can help initiate public discussion, foster organizational debate and invite ‘rediscovery’ of civic agency in aided development. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/31325/ 2007-11-01T00:00:00Z Susan George was born in the United States, but has lived in France since the mid-1950s. She has published over a dozen books on poverty, food, debt, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and social movements. She is Chair of the Board of theTransnational Institute (TNI) in Amsterdam, a decentralized fellowship of scholars living throughout the world whose work is intended to contribute to social justice and who are active in civil society in their own countries. Shewas aVice-President ofATTACFrance (Association for Taxation of Financial Transaction to Aid Citizens) from 2000 to 2006, and an International Board Member of Greenpeace. She has received Honorary Doctorates from Newcastle University and the Universidad Nacional de Educaci´on a Distancia of Madrid, and the first Outstanding Public Scholar Award from the International Studies Association in 2007. Her books include Another World is Possible if. . . (2004); The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the 21st Century (1999); The Debt Boomerang (1992); A Fate Worse than Debt (1987); and How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger (1976). http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32196/ 2007-01-01T00:00:00Z Four ISS students successfully completed their MA thesis in late 2006 as part of the civil society-building programme with Hivos, one of the larger Dutch private development aid agencies. One of the successful students wrote to us recently that the Hivos internship had been crucial in getting a new job with a local NGO in South Africa. The programme with Hivos will be expanded in the coming years according to Kees Biekart, who co-ordinates the programme for ISS. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32209/ 2007-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32242/ 2005-04-01T00:00:00Z Summary: Many Latin American partner organisations that received support from European donor NGOs in recent years for contributing to structural poverty alleviation had expected that these agencies will gradually withdraw from the Latin American region. It is feared that funding will decrease and these funds are going to be channelled to Africa and other (poorer) regions of the world. This expected withdrawal was and is, however, generally based on irrational fears rather than on hard evidence. Therefore, a number of European and Latin American NGOs, gathering at the Foro Social de las Americas in Quito in July 2004, decided to make an inventory of changing policies and priorities of European NGOs towards Latin America. The idea was that only with solid data it would be possible to really confront these expected policy changes. The inventory that followed, a so-called ‘mapping exercise’ (mapeo), involved 18 European NGOs and two European networks of NGOs and was implemented by a team of five researchers that gathered data and interviewed representatives of these European NGOs. The first part of this mapping exercise focused on changes in policies, funding, and priorities in the last ten years of European NGOs in Latin America, while the second part also looked at lessons learned and at future policy intentions. The key question here was: “how do European (non-governmental) donor agencies envisage their future policies and relationships with their Latin American partner organisations?” .... http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32266/ 2005-01-01T00:00:00Z Introducción: Durante la década pasada han tenido lugar en América latina algunos cambios que han afectado gradualmente las prioridades y las políticas de ayuda de la comunidad internacional de donantes. El impacto de la globalización, la crisis de la ortodoxia neoliberal (véase la crisis del peso en Argentina) y la respuesta popular a la privatización y al aumento de la desigualdad, han accionado toda una nueva agenda. Migración, remesas, descentralización y generación de recursos locales, aumento de la violencia criminal de pandillas de jóvenes, sólo para nombrar algunas de las tendencias, han cambiado el contexto anterior en el que la democracia, los derechos humanos y la desigualdad eran los temas centrales. Contra la perspectiva de este contexto cambiante, en América Latina algunos creen que las agencias europeas de ayuda están alejándose gradualmente de la región. Después de casi tres décadas de desembolsos y de una ayuda en constante crecimiento a organizaciones contraparte latinoamericanas, una desviación a regiones más pobres como África parece ser una tendencia inevitable. En particular organizaciones contraparte de los países relativamente más prósperos como Brasil, Perú, Colombia y El Salvador temen que puedan ser afectadas por esta reducción de ayuda extranjera. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32203/ 2005-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32234/ 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z An external evaluation was carried out in July-August 2003 to assess the results and the implementation process of the first 15 months of IMD’s programme in Guatemala. The central objective of this programme is to strengthen political parties and the party system in a sustainable way. Several unfavourable conditions limit the realisation of this ambition: (i) the political party system in Guatemala has been unstable, fragmented, polarised and discredited, (ii) political parties were often not more than electoral machines, lacking a programmatic and ideological base, and generally figured among the weakest actors in society, (iii) political participation by citizens has been very low, especially among the indigenous majority of the population. Against this background, since March 2002 IMD developed in a joint venture with UNDP an ambitious project for a multiparty dialogue process, trying to generate consensus on a shared National Agenda that reflects the basic principles of the Peace Agreements. The basic idea was that collaboration and dialogue among the parties is a prerequisite for future democratic stability, as none of the individual parties is able to sustain such a national project. Moreover, the national Congress does not function as a forum for dialogue given the polarized political climate in the country....