Civil society and good governance

Readings and class materials for Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Readings

  •  Alisa Herrero Cangas, “The Good Governance Agenda of Civil Society: Implications for ACP-EU Cooperation,” Brief (Maastricht, Netherlands: European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), December 2, 2004), https://ecdpm.org/work/the-good-governance-agenda-of-civil-society-implications-for-acp-eu-cooperation.

  •  Chapters 5–6 in Robert D. Putnam, Robert Leonardi, and Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

  •  Chapters 2–3 in Shamima Ahmed and David Potter, NGOs in International Politics (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2006).

  •  Michael W. Foley and Bob Edwards, “The Paradox of Civil Society,” Journal of Democracy 7, no. 3 (July 1996): 38–52, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.1996.0048.

Article discussion reminder

How to discuss an article in a seminar

  • Who wrote the article? What’s their background?
  • General summary of the article
  • Strengths
  • Weaknesses
  • How does it connect to other readings?
  • How does it connect to the broader course themes?
  • How does it connect to current events?
  • What does it add to our Global Bureaucracy Toolkit™?

Plan for the day

  • What is civil society? What counts as “civil society”?

  • What does civil society do? How does it promote governance?

  • Civil society and good governance

    • Herrero Cangas, “The Good Governance Agenda of Civil Society.”
    • Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti, Making Democracy Work.
    • Ahmed and Potter, NGOs in International Politics.
    • Foley and Edwards, “The Paradox of Civil Society.”