This research examines the impact of formal democracy on the construction of an effective civil society in Ghana. The theoretical and policy role of civil society has received a great deal of attention in the literature. Especially for democratization theorists, the focus has been on the democracy enhancing qualities of civil society—qualities often credited with playing key roles in democratic transitions in Africa. However, the question of what happens to civil society after a democratic transition has not received much attention in the literature. Using a historical institutionalist approach, the study examines how democratic institutions and institutional arrangements affect the development of civil society. After Ghana’s return to formal democracy in 1992, democratic openings, though not immediately transformative, created an expansion in civil liberties and political rights necessary for the emergence of civil society. Paradoxically, state institutions remained weak and it was such weakness—not the strength, as some of the literature suggests, that allowed civil society to develop. Within the legislative and bureaucratic arenas, persistent institutional weakness became an opportunity for civil society to mobilize resources from foreign donors to strengthen the capacity of state institutions. Through programs aimed at enhancing the capacity of state institutions, foreign donors played a critical role in framing the relationship between civil society and the state. A major finding from this research is the symbiotic relationship between civil society and the state. As the case of Ghana demonstrates, where the state provides opportunities for civil society to develop, an effective civil society in turn contributes to building the democratic state. Findings from this research provide theoretical implications for the literature on civil society and democracy by highlighting the role of democratic institutions in strengthening civil society.

This study investigates how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects implemented through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) impact on the roles, relationship, responsibilities and agendas of the involved actors – the private sector, civil society and the state – and whether these can lead to women’s empowerment and the capacity building of civil society in India, through a case study of the CSR projects of the Indian wind power company Suzlon. The empirical findings in terms of women’s empowerment lead us to conclude that although the first dimension of power, the ‘power over’, reflected in unequal gender structures, only has been addressed to a minor extent through Suzlon’s CSR projects, women’s ‘power to’, ‘power with’ and ‘power from within’ have been enhanced significantly, particularly through the projects specifically aimed to address women’s empowerment. Further, to adequately enhance women’s empowerment requires addressing gender structures and the gender sensitization of men, and not only the capacities of women. Suzlon has contributed to the capacity building of civil society – the NGOs implementing the CSR projects - in terms of enhancing project sustainability, promoting NGO ownership of projects, decreasing donor dependency and enforcing long-term strategies, while some other aspects of capacity building largely have remained unaddressed. Although the respective actors in the PPPs generally are positive of the collaborations, our findings indicate that the state partly withdraws from its responsibility to further development while the private sector increasingly takes on the same. The risk of corporate control of the civil society agenda associated with PPPs is not confirmed by our study although civil society tends to bear the highest costs in PPPs, in terms of credibility losses and insecurity concerning project terms and funding. The findings further confirm the importance of ‘critical cooperation’ and ‘complementary core competencies’ in PPPs.

This thesis aims at studying representatives from three groups in the Egyptian society with an ethnographic method and with regards to their experiences, reflections and stories of the Egyptian revolution. The material of the thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork and on interviews. The purpose of the study is to explore different themes in the informants’ stories related to society, freedom, social justice, human values, peace and civility. The purpose is also to examine the informants' stories with emphasis on various informal learning processes that occurred in the Egyptian social change. The study finds that according to the informants a society should be characterized, among other things, by human values, social justice, non-violence and peaceful methods and approaches. Various informal learning processes involving both individual citizens and active members of civil society and NGO groups were found to be practiced to be able to accomplish these changes in the Egyptian society to create a better future. The degrees of involvement of the various learning processes not only reflect differences between informants regarding the social and cultural background. Although informants' involvement in the ongoing development of society and how different informal learning processes have affected the informants.

Based in New York, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has been working in the Sudan since the 1980s. During this time, this Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) has shown itself to be a leader in its field. Funded by numerous agencies and aiding hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries, IRCs role in Sudan is constantly growing. Poised between the people whom it serves and the Government of Sudan, in whose territory it operates, the NGO roles as advocates and social service providers places them in a challenging position.<p> Since the first international NGOs entered Sudan during the great famine and war in the 1980s, the government has become increasingly suspicious of their actions. More recently, however, NGOs have become more commonplace in Sudan, funding and managing many of the social programmes in the country, including education, health care, water and sanitation and even infrastructure projects. This presence in the country has lent international political clout to NGOs, but has created resentment by the Sudanese government.<p> This situation is not unique. Around the globe many countries are being pressured by NGOs to alter policy direction. The concept of good governance has become prevalent in Western funding departments and donor organisations, calling for its use to encourage governments to become more democratic. In order to access funding, NGOs must therefore shift their focus to a greater emphasis on good governance as well. This is indeed the case of the IRC whose broad mission includes strengthening civil society and enabling good governance in Sudan.<p> The strong presence of NGOs combined with the sheer number of people they serve, the types of services that they provide, and their influence both nationally and internationally has lent credibility to the belief that these organisations are important entities in Sudan. However, the ability to carry out their mandates in times of emergencies and crisis is challenging as they must work within the constructs of the communities in which they serve and with the government of Sudan, which controls several of their activities.

The constant change of the political, economic, cultural and environmental landscapes of global societies predetermined the upgrowth of the media, the journalistic writings and the blogging practices as a new way of “citizen journalism”. Political blogs are a quite new media phenomenon that gained popularity in the past few years in Bulgaria. Hence, there are limited theoretical case studies.  The lagging performance of Bulgaria in the last Reporters Without Borders Report 2011 together with the explicit recommendations of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) after the Presidential and Municipal Elections 2011 in terms of media policy, ownership and news coverage bring the question of limited freedom of speech and the emergence of the blogs as an alternative platform for expression into discussion. Two methods are used in this thesis: structured interviews with two different additional questions and Critical Discourse Analysis. The empirical material was gathered from interviews with 8 of the most influential bloggers in Bulgaria (5 of whom work as journalists) and through an analysis of the texts of their blog entries (2 articles per bloggers or 18 articles in total). The aim is to underline the possible limitations in the practice of freedom of speech in Bulgaria from the bloggers’ perspective and to show only major patterns of the social environment and the current discourse in Bulgaria. Among the main findings of this study are thаt the lack of clarity in the media ownership and the failure of the media to defend the public interest are alarming for the level of democracy. Moreover, the media dependence on power and lobbying circles, as well as the blurred boundary between politics and the media results in the media self-censhorship and thus are threatening for the democratic foundation in Bulgaria and the freedom of speech which is at its basis. This study confirms the thriving of the blogosphere as an alternative media platform. This paper aims to provide insights and policy recommendations for international media experts.

ABSTRACT Authors: Sara Haugbak &amp; Jenny Thomsen Title: Towards Equality – Oppressed Non-White Women in Cape Town, South Africa Subject: Sociology Level: Undergraduate thesis, D-level, 10 p. Department: School of Social Science Tutor: Svante Lundberg Supervisor: Anders Nilsson Prior to the first democratic election in 1994, South Africa experienced the racist and sexist legislation of apartheid. The democratisation was surrounded by violent struggles amongst the non-white population and the issue regarding gender had to step aside in favour of the struggle against racial discrimination. This study focuses on how the lives of the underprivileged non-white women in Cape Town are affected by the post-apartheid changes. This area will be divided in to four more specific topics: civil society, human rights, collaboration between civil society and the Government and power structures that affect the development and lives of the women. Our methodology is based on interviews with women with insight in the problem area, participant observation, and secondary material constituted by legal sources, reports and statistics. The main findings can be summarised with mentioning that the deprivation are based upon five different dimensions: poverty, isolation, physical weakness, vulnerability and powerlessness. They are all closely linked to violations of human rights, and in order to create a complete picture power is of great significance. There are three different views on power, all of which are surrounded by a complexity of problems. This can be wrapped up in the statement that the society as a whole is permeated by underlying power structures that makes the non-white women of South Africa doubly exposed.

After the 1978 economic reform in China, the society is slowly detaching from the control of state. The civil society in China is also growing, the grassroots (local) NGOs increase fast. Along with the globalization, China is unable to avoid the INGOs activities inside the country. This study is going to discuss what¡¦s the effect and function(change)that INGOs would bring to China. For these years, be a part in global society is the most important work for China. That¡¦s why this study takes global civil society as background, and firstly research how INGOs interact and cooperate with the local NGOs in China. Second, observe the interaction mode between these two type NGOs through the framework of advocacy networks. Finally, we would understand the NGOs¡¦ development in China by Corporatism, and we could prove that the local NGOs¡¦ activities are affected by the global civil society and advocacy networks. We could clearly understand what is the effect of INGOs bring to China through these three structures. And what is China¡¦s attitude toward the INGOs. Besides the discussion on theories, this study also uses the statistical analysis to analyze 246 INGOs which have actual work in China. We will discuss their activity project, area, organizational funding, and the related legal regulation. After analyzed these 4 factors, we could find out what¡¦s the role China is playing in those INGOs activities. In the end, from the analysis of state, local NGOs and INGOs interactions in China, this study also discovers that INGOs in different areas would implement different activity project, and the outcome would also be different.

The term of ¡§migrant worker¡¨ appeared after the 1978 economic reform in China, since then, millions of farmers or rural inhabitants squeezed themselves into cities for better payment and life. However, the residency system restricts those workers with the rural residence registration from sharing the same working treatment and social welfare as the city residence. Until today, the migrant worker issue is not only become the toughest problem that Chinese government confronted, also this unfair condition increase the attentions of labor issue related I.O. and NGOs. Migrant workers and rural development are the developmental dilemma while Chinese government is perusing for higher GDP growth index. But, after 1990, big amount of social issue related NGOs increased, just in time for make up the insufficiency of government and enterprsies. This study focuses on the migrant workers problem, and its helping NGOs. To make a clear prove, this study provides four important migrant workers¡¦ educational and rights maintaining NGOs for case study. Through the research of these NGOs, we could figure out how those NGOs actually help those migrant workers. The amount of NGO is rapid growing, no matter how hard Chinese government intends to restrict those NGOs, it still represents that along with the trend of globalization, and the demand of civil society in China is also rising.

The thesis explores the impact of European Union funding on Turkish non-governmental organizations in the post-Helsinki period. The European Union financial aids in the post-Helsinki period is analysed with a specific emphasis on civil society and how Turkish civil society is affected from these financial aids. The search for impact analysis is done through case studies of three different civil society organisations at several levels. The organisations studied are, Women Entrepreneur&rsquo / s Support Foundation of Turkey (KAGiDER), Mother-Child Education Foundation (A&Ccedil / EV) and Southeast Anatolia Project- Entrepreneurs Development Centres (GiDEM) The importance of these three cases is being representative of different strata of civil society and operating in priority areas in such as, women, entrepreneurship and basic education the pre-accession stage. The effects of EU funding will be analysed in different subject areas and levels, such as organisational changes, operational changes, mission differentiations and changes in relations with third parties. The study concludes with the analysis if these impacts have a permanent effect on Turkish civil society and civil society organisations, together with the critiques of the extent EU funds can be utilised by an average NGO.

This study mainly investigates the reason of living in civil society, the motives of people to live under the government and necessity of commonwealth by design to live in peace based on modern social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke. Hobbes has a decisive role for developing a western political thought and Locke goes a step further to put superiority of the community and latitude of thought in his theory. In order to examine these topics, similarities of both philosophers in terms of their effort on setting free political thoughts from medieval world view, and their differentiations regarding considerations on human nature, desires and rights of men, formation of the society and the role of government are focused on.