cultural and political polarization, the deepening privatization and commercialization of the public sphere, and the increasing bureaucratization of NGOs and other nonprofit organizations. Taken together, these trends pose a serious threat to the health and vitality of civil societies everywhere and to the values, principles, and mechanisms that underpin them.
The widespread resurgence of authoritarianism has curtailed civic space and freedom of expression in many parts of the world, including in countries like Brazil, Egypt, India, and the United States which were previously seen as sites of great promise for civil society development. ICNL and CIVICUS, two NGOs that monitor this situation, report that more than 120 laws constraining freedoms of association and assembly have been proposed or enacted in sixty countries since 2012, with just 3 percent of the world’s population now living in countries where civic space is defined as “fully open.”2 The criminalization of dissent and the imprisonment or murder of activists like Berta Caceres in Honduras in 2016, and journalists such as the Saudi-American Adnan Kashoggi in Turkey, Kateryna Handzyuk in Ukraine, and Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta (all in 2018), are especially chilling examples of this curtailment, but there are many “softer” strategies like the imposition of restrictions on the registration and receipt of foreign funding by NGOs, the rise of state surveillance under the guise of fighting terrorism, voter suppression and intimidation under gerrymandering and other similar tactics, attacks on the press as “enemies of the people,” and the closure or forced removal of independent institutions like the Central European University in Budapest. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was unequivocal about his intentions: “you can be sure there will be no money for NGOs,” he said during his election campaign, “Those useless people will have to go to work.”3 The end result of these developments is to erect higher barriers to civic participation and to weaken independent advocacy, activism, and accountability – precisely the opposite of what’s required to promote a healthy and democratic civic life.
Authoritarianism both encourages and thrives on polarization and fearmongering as a way of stoking up support for leaders who claim to be defending “the nation” or “national values” against inside or outside threats and enemies – most notably in the contemporary context, immigrants. The apparent depth of this polarization in the United States after the election of President Donald Trump, in the United Kingdom around the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, and in the nationalist agendas of politicians in countries like Hungary, Italy, and France, has taken many people by surprise, but the signs of such schisms were visible well before 2016 for those whose eyes were open enough to see them. For example, Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol’s careful analysis of the US Tea Party found that much of this movement was an authentic expression of disaffection among conservatives, especially white rural Americans who began to mobilize against what they saw as the domination of politics and culture by disdainful liberal elites in the cities.4 Other research uncovered a consistent pattern of resentment that was making its way into politics as the Republican Party moved rightwards,5 though the “culture wars” that divide “red” and “blue” America stretch back much further in time, through President Bill Clinton’s battles with House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the 1990s to the rupture that emerged around Roe v. Wade in 1973. These divisions have since grown to seemingly unbridgeable levels, morphing into the rise of right-wing hate groups and networks of white nationalists on the right and the arrival of sometimes violent counter-protests on the left.
Many commentators have lamented the erosion of civility and the breakdown of public norms that has taken place as a result of these developments. Senator John McCain’s funeral in 2018, for example, was full of eulogies to a man who seemed to embody the virtues of America’s unifying “civic religion” under threat from partisans, captured beautifully in McCain’s own posthumously published “farewell letter.”6 But the low-grade civil wars that are unfolding in the United States and in other countries can also be read as an incomplete process of civil society development in which certain visions of the good society have been marginalized, while others have been privileged. This has always been the case with minorities and other non-dominant communities; the difference now is that groups that are in some ways privileged are also organizing around their own resentments. Sorting through these divisions in order to build a civil society that is both genuinely diverse and holds together sufficiently to prevent a slide into permanent conflict is an urgent task. Easier said than done of course, but as the examples given in chapter 6 show, the most powerful way to get people to stop demonizing each other is to encourage them to meet, talk, and work together. Just as a weak democracy can only be strengthened through more democracy, the answer to problems in civil society lies through more civil society.
Traditionally, civil society theorists have seen polarization as something that can be managed through an active and democratic public sphere which enables common ground to be negotiated across the lines of difference, but when the structures of communication are themselves privatized and fractured, this is obviously more difficult. One of the most alarming features of politics and organizing in the United States today (and to a lesser extent elsewhere) is that public spheres have ceased to operate, or perhaps even exist, as people of different views imprison themselves in mutually exclusive social media bubbles and information sources. Traditionally independent and citizen-controlled media have also been outcompeted by much larger and wealthier commercial platforms such as Facebook which have contributed to the problem.
In the third edition of this book I took the view that the “digital age” was both a threat and an opportunity for civil society in equal measure, but during the last five years I think the “negatives” have started to outweigh the “positives.” The rise of authoritarianism and state surveillance, increasing polarization and the widespread closing of open minds, and the speed and superficiality that seem to go along with digital cultures are in danger of closing off the opportunities that exist to use information technology to promote greater unity, equality, and thoughtfulness in civic interaction, as well as greater innovation in modes of organizing and association. The revisions to this edition therefore take a more critical view, arguing for a rediscovery of face-to-face engagement while remaining open to the advantages that virtual connections can bring.
Face-to-face engagement is important for another reason too: the need to re-democratize the world of associational life so that it becomes less dominated by technocrats, bureaucrats, and wealthy donors and more responsive to the concerns and priorities of ordinary citizens. The decline of membership-based organizations and the rise of professional advocacy and service-providing groups has been an important feature of recent civil society history. This process has produced mixed results in the struggle against inequality and discrimination, but one development is clear and unambiguously damaging: the disappearance of opportunities within civil society for people of different political views and identities to debate, strategize, and organize together. This is a significant factor behind the rise of cultural and political polarization.
It would be unfair to say that this problem has been caused by the “professionalization” of the nonprofit sector and the rise of billionaire philanthropists with unprecedented spending power like Bill Gates and the Koch brothers, but it is certainly true that popular influence over the direction of the voluntary sector has waned over the last 30 years, and that the ecosystems of the nonprofit sector in most countries have become increasingly unbalanced as resources have flowed overwhelmingly to larger charities and more established causes.7 There is a pressing need to rebuild broad-based, nationally federated, independent, and internally democratic networks and associations that can act as meeting grounds and conduits for grassroots voices, leadership development, and accountability from the bottom up.
The furore surrounding alleged sexual harassment and abuse at Oxfam, Save the Children, and other international charities that exploded in the United Kingdom in the spring of 2018 was seen by some commentators as evidence that large nonprofit bureaucracies cannot be trusted to live out their values just because they claim the mantle of civil society rather than government or business, especially when they see themselves as competitors in a global market for humanitarian assistance.8 Any
