CONTEXTUALIZING CIVIL SOCIETY: A KYRGYZSTAN CASE STUDY
Keywords:
civil society, NGOs, liberal civil society, communal civil society, Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia, donorsAbstract
The idea of “civil society” has achieved prominence in political and developmental discourse over the past two decades, particularly in connection with the successive waves of democratization, beginning in Latin America and Eastern Europe and spreading across the developing world. Civil society is an arena where, through free and civilized interaction and communication, individuals obtain and exercise their freedom, as well as pursue their interests. It is a space where people are given an opportunity to enter into social relations free from state interference. The fall of the U.S.S.R. has fundamentally altered the conditions for the emergence of civil society on a global level. The changed political map of Central Asia in general and Kyrgyzstan in particular has made it possible to carry out democratic reforms and, within this political context, various autonomous social organizations have emerged and begun creating their space in the political system. During the past two decades, open political regimes have been providing a more appropriate context within which civil societies are able to thrive. Such systems have provided a legal and regulatory framework guaranteeing the rights of social groups; they permit the existence of lively media, enabling social organizations to communicate their values and programs; and their political elites are acting in ways that reinforce the acceptance of social diversity and political differences. In this context, the present article is an attempt to shed some light on the different models of civil society emerging in the context of Kyrgyzstan.
Downloads
References
See: J.L. Cohen, A. Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory, MIT Press, London, p. 16.
See: Does Civil Society Matter? Governance in Contemporary India, ed. by R. Tandon, R. Mohanty, Sage Publica-tion, London, p. 10.
See: J. Howell, J. Pearce, Civil Society and Critical Exploration, Lynne Rienner, London, 2001, p. 1.
The word used to describe civil society shifted during the Renaissance, as an important translation of Aristotle ap-peared and scholars used the term from these translations to refer to the contemporary phenomenon. Cohen and Arato point out that Aristotle’s politike koinonia, a political community with a unifying ethos, societas civilis was also equated with Re-spublica and used to revive republican thought during the period. In this sense, societas civilis brought up a dualism that did not make a distinction between the state and society. Instead, it formed an opposition between the crown and the estates of the realm—the nobility, the clergy, and the commons. The era of absolute in Europe put an end to the distribution of power be-tween the sovereignty and the estate of the realm, as monarchs sought to monopolize power. It was then that societas civilis could take on the current meaning of “civil society” as opposed to the state (see: International Encyclopedia of Civil Society,ed. by H.K. Anheier, St. Toepler, Vol. 1, Springer, Germany and USA, 2009, p. 350).
See: J.L. Cohen, A. Arato, op. cit., p. 84.
See: J.H. Keane, Civil Society: Berlin Perspectives, Berghahn Books, 2007, p. 13.
See: J. Fisher, Nongovernments: NGOs and Political Development of the Third World, Rawat Publications, New
Delhi, 2003, p. 11.
See: M. Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War, Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd,2003, p. 79.
See: B. Babajanian, S. Freizer, D. Stevens, “Introduction: Civil Society in Central Asia and the Caucasus,” Central Asian Survey, Vol. 24, No. 3, 2005, p. 211.
See: M. Kaldor, op. cit., p. 2.
For example, in 1999, Kyrgyzstan adopted a new Law on Non-Commercial Organizations, which was expected to
alter the regulation of NGOs. It replaced a previous law that regulated the registration and on-going activities of NGOs (see:
http://www.osce.org/publications/odihr/2000/10/12360_141_en.pdf]), p. 8.
See: Civil Society Sustainability Report 2006.
See: Does Civil Society Matter? Governance in Contemporary India, p. 9.
See: J. Giffen, L. Earle with Ch. Buxton, The Development of Civil Society in Central Asia, The International NGO Training and Research Center, NGO Management and Policy Series, 2005, p. 6.
See: D. Armstrong, V. Bello, J. Gilson, Civil Society and International Governance: The Role of Non-State Actors in Global and Regional Regulatory Frameworks, Vol. 10 of Routledge/Garnet Series: Europe in the World, Taylor & Francis,USA, 2011, p, 4.
See: Civil Society in the Muslim World Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by A.B. Sajoo, I.B. Tauris Publishers,London, 2002, p. 1.
See: D. Lewis, The Management of Non-Governmental Development Organizations, Kumarian Press, 2006, p. 29.
A. Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics, Prinston University Press, 1988, p. 3.
M. Walzer, Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory, Vail Ballon Press, Binghamton, 2007, p. 115.
See: J. Kean, Democracy and Civil Society, Verso, London, 1988, p. 14.
See: D. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 26, 58, 92.
See: Does Civil Society Matter? Governance in Contemporary India, p. 30.
See: M.M. Abdelrahman, Civil Society Exposed: The Politics of NGOs in Egypt, I.B.Tauris Academic Studies, Lon-
don, 2004, p. 20.
See: Civil Society: History and Possibilities, ed. by S. Kaviraj, S. Khilinani, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2001,p. 15.
See: J.L. Cohen, A. Arato, op. cit.
See: M. Glasius, D. Lewis, H. Seckinelgen, Exploring Civil Society: Political and Cultural Contexts, 2004, Rout-ledge, USA and Canada, pp. 24-25.
See: Civil Society: History and Possibilities, p. 16.
See: J. Manor, M. Robinson, G. White, Civil Society and Governance: A Concept Paper, University of Sussex, Insti-tute of Development Studies, 1999, available at [http://www.ids.ac.uk].
See: A. Lewis, D. Lewis, The Management of Non-Governmental Development Organizations, Routledge, London,2006, pp. 63-64.
See: Does Civil Society Matter? Governance in Contemporary India, p. 31.
See: Y.W. Bradshaw, M.J. Schafer, “Urbanization and Development: The Emergence of International Nongovern-mental Organizations Amid Declining States,” Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 43, No. 1, Spring, 2000, p. 4.
See: J. Manor, M. Robinson, G. White, op. cit.
Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society, ed. by S. Chambers, W. Kymlicka, Prinston University Press, 2002, p. 8.
See: J. Giffen, L. Earle with Ch. Buxton, op. cit., p. 11.
See: Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, ed. by V. Tismaneanu, M.E. Sharpe,New York, 1995, p. 298.
See: Ibid., p. 294.
See: S. Cummings, Oil, Transition and Security in Central Asia, Routledge, London, 2003, p. 84.
Ibid., p. 86.
See: Ibid., p. 91.
See: Civil Society in Central Asia, ed. by H. Ruffin, D. Waugh, Center for Civil Society International, University of Washington Press, USA, 1999, pp. 30-31.
See: Civil Society in Central Asia, p. 5.
See: B.-M. Petric, “Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan or the Birth of a Globalised Protectorate,” Central Asian Survey, Vol. 24,No. 3, 2005, p. 1.
A. Garbutt, S. Heap, Growing Civil Society in Central Asia, INTRAC, Occasional Papers Series No. 39, 2003, p. 5.
See: “NGO Law Monitor: Kyrgyz Republic,” available at [http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/kyrgyz.html], June 2013, p. 3.
By 1998, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan laid claim to over 7,000 registered nongovernmen-tal organizations, of which 4,500 were in Kazakhstan, 1,500 in Kyrgyzstan, 800 in Turkmenistan, and 270 in Uzbekistan.
owever, only 514 NGOs are active at present. This is 6% of the total number of NGOs registered in Central Asia at that time as public associations, public foundations, and associations of legal entities.
See: J. Giffen, L. Earle with Ch. Buxton, op. cit., p. 7.
See: J.H. Keane, op. cit., p. 107.
See: Civil Society in the Muslim World Contemporary Perspectives, p. 123.
See: Ch. Buxton, The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia, Kumarian Press, USA, 2011, p. 31.
See: Counterpart International, The Program of Civil Society and NGO Development for the Central Asian Region,
available at [www.counterpart.org], p. 2.
See: J. Giffen, L. Earle with Ch. Buxton, op. cit., p. 9.
See: Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, p. 292.
[http://www.icnl.org/news/1999/15-Oct.html], 4 July, 2013.
See: The 2005 NGO Sustainability Index for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, 11 November, 2012.
See: B. Babajanian, S. Freizer, D. Stevens, op. cit., p. 211.
See: Civil Society in the Muslim World Contemporary Perspectives, p. 14.
As Bryan Turner sums up, the argument is that “Islamic society lacked independent cities, an autonomous bourgeoi-sie, rational bureaucracy, legal reliability, personal property, and the cluster of rights that embody bourgeois culture” (Civil Society in the Muslim World Contemporary Perspectives, p. 14).
See: Civil Society in Central Asia, p. 3.
See: Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, p. 298.
See: B. Babajanian, S. Freizer, D. Stevens, op. cit., p. 215.
See: Civil Society in the Muslim World Contemporary Perspectives, p. 125.
See: Ibid., p. 130.
See: Ibid., pp. 133-34.
See: B. Babajanian, S. Freizer, D. Stevens, op. cit., p. 218.
M. Glasius, D. Lewis, H. Seckinelgen, op. cit., p. 120.
See: B. Babajanian, S. Freizer, D. Stevens, op. cit., p. 215.
A. Wolfe, Whose Keeper? Social Science and Moral Obligation, University of California Press, 1989, p. 20.
See: J. Anderson, “Creating a Framework for Civil Society in Kyrgyzstan,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 52, No. 1,2000, pp. 77-93
See: Ibidem.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2015 AUTHOR
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
- The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made . You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Notices:
You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation .
No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.
