By Prof John Haberson
When civil society advocacy becomes contentious in a constitutional democracy such as Kenya, which came about in large part through the exertions of those advocacy groups, it is time to re-examine the origins, significance, and issues raised by this phenomenon. It comes as no surprise that an authoritarian regime, like Ethiopia’s, would take draconian steps to all but suppress civil society advocacy, as indeed it has. So what, once again is this thing we call civil society, and why is it so important?
The first question concerns the definition of civil society, and the short answer is that emergence of phenomenon preceded its original definition rather than the reverse. At root, civil society has been conceived as an essential societal foundation for the erection of the political order itself by political philosophers, who were themselves deeply committed to the building or rebuilding of their own political orders. Some scholars trace it to the 4th Century B.C. Aristotle recognised that the polity rests on the basis of a secure socioeconomic foundation, from whence derives one contemporary definition that civil society consists of all the organisational space between the family and the state, a definition I have always found to cover almost everything in general and, thus, nothing in particular very well.
In modern times, the leading philosopher of 19th Century Germany’s unification quest, George W.F. Hegel, reduced civil society’s significance to something akin to an economic market society, even as he regarded it as an indispensable foundation for a rebuilt political order. In my judgment, the true modern origins of the idea of civil society lie with the 17th Century English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, both deeply concerned with rebuilding the English political order after civil war, and with the 18th Century French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is properly regarded as a prophet of the French Revolution. For these philosophers, the state was built on the foundation of civil society, and civil society had interdependent horizontal and vertical dimensions. Horizontally, individuals find terms for coming together to solve profoundly threatening problems, collectively, that they are unable to solve on their own—insecurity for Hobbes, property conflicts for Locke and Rousseau. Vertically, having come together for these reasons, for Locke they consent to the formation of a state they control to secure their lives, liberties, and property.
In a word, civil society for these philosophers was the glue for simultaneously holding the state accountable for these purposes, and for holding individuals and groups in society together so as to make pursuit and maintenance of security of persons and property, and enjoyment of liberty, generally possible.
For undoubtedly very complex reasons never really investigated, as far as I am aware, this idea of civil society, if perhaps not the reality, goes into eclipse for much of the 19th and 20th Centuries. It is resurrected late in the 20th Century as democracy triumphs over and replaces authoritarian regimes in much of Latin America, southern Europe and, especially with the end of the Cold War, in eastern and central Europe. The popular upsurges that led to these replacements acquire among scholars the label “civil society” in action. Bilateral foreign assistance organisations first applied this label in sub-Saharan Africa in the mid-1990s, notably in South Africa to domestic organisations opposing apartheid, and in Kenya to organisations campaigning for a new and more democratic constitution.
The problem has been that in its resurrection through the exertions of both academics and policy makers, civil society’s central purpose of advocating and upholding civil liberties and democratic constitutions has been soft-pedalled by aid organisations, and even undermined in some academic discourse. The key idea and purpose of civil society, given its provenance, has, thus, been weakened at the very time that it most needs strengthening and reinforcement to sustain and advance democracy when some sub-Saharan African governments have moved to corral and weaken civil society advocacy.
How has this unfortunate and untimely weakening occurred? In some academic writing, civil society has been conceived retroactively as synonymous with the democratisation of western governments by vibrant middle classes, a uniquely European/North American accomplishment and, therefore, not replicable in very different sub-Saharan African circles. Similarly, some writers have discredited civil society in Africa as the work of small urban professional classes lacking a popular base.
At some level, I think insufficient sharpening of the idea and purpose of civil society as democratic advocacy, both horizontally and vertically, is a significant factor in the evident stalling of democratic momentum across much of sub-Saharan Africa.. Mahmood Mamdani’s important book, Citizen and Subject, published in 1996, complained that deracialisation of sub-Saharan African polities had not been accompanied by lowering colonially imposed ethnic spheres of influence. Fifteen years later, it is apparent that the protective utility for these communities of these boundaries has sharply diminished, but the “horizontal” task of civil society to cultivate commonalities and terms of participation in democratic governance mutually acceptable to these diverse communities remains insufficiently accomplished.
It is increasingly evident that in weak, incompletely democratised sub-Saharan states, the focus of democratisation and state rebuilding has continued to focus disproportionately on the world of elected elites.
It needs to focus far more on ordinary citizens.
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